Story and photos By Gareth Kelly
As military veterans return home from conflicts overseas, many struggle with reentering normal life at home. Many come back with either mental or physical disabilities and sometimes both. One in three combat veterans are diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), one in three are homeless and more than 22 veterans commit suicide every day.
One solution to some of these problems is to pair a veteran with a service dog which in turn can help prevent suicides, enrich relationships, save community resources and decrease the need for medications. However, it takes a special dog and roughly six months to train them and anywhere from 15 to 70 thousand dollars. Undeterred by any of this, Jack Gould started New Life K9’s based in San Luis Obispo at the same location as Thousand Hills pet resort.
Running the program is Nicole Hern a former social worker. “We owe a lot to Jack,” she said. “He’s really helped get us going and through Thousand Hills has really helped with funding. Some places spend nearly 70 thousand dollars training dogs, we’re hoping to be able to graduate dogs for around 15 thousand.”
Such is the importance of matching the right dog to the right owner based on their respective personalities that so far they have graduated one dog, Nara. Nara’s owner is Alex Roacho an Army veteran.
“My wife applied for the program,” said Roacho. “I didn’t even know about it at first, but I’m glad she did. I fell in love with Nara straight away. She’s part of the family now. She’s so sweet and attentive and loving. Sometimes I get really anxious about being in large crowds of people but Nara really makes me feel at ease. Sometimes I get kind of jealous. People always want to pet her and say hi to her, my wife loves her. She really helps me every day.”
Nara was a rescue dog, but not every dog is right for the program.
“We spend a great deal of time finding the right dog,” Hern said. “Sometimes we use puppies and have special puppy trainers that help us, and other times we use rescue dogs. Each dog has to have the right personality. We look to see if they’re easily excitable or easily frightened. One of the most important things we look for is laziness. A service dog can’t be lazy. Not every dog is a good fit and we only graduate about 50 percent of our dogs.”
Having now matched Roacho and Nara together New Life is hoping to quickly add more dogs to the program and help more people. They currently have six dogs in training but need help with not only finding dogs and funding but also veterans.
“We need veterans to match with the dogs,” said Hern. “Maybe people don’t know about us yet or sometimes veterans aren’t good at asking for help but if you know of anyone that might get a benefit from a service dog please contact us.”
New Life K9’s is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization. They welcome volunteers, monetary donations as well as donations of cars, trucks, motorhomes and boats. You can find out more information about them at www.newlifek9s.org or call them at 805 544 LIFE (5433)
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