U.S. Armed Forces Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) live in a grey world filled with anxiety, depression, hyper-vigilance, isolation, addictions, or anger.  Many times not knowing or realizing why.  With veterans their PTSD normally is from combat situations.  The war may be over physically, but not so in their mind.  Even with treatment they still deal with it daily.  PTSD truly is an invisible wound for many men and women veterans.

Veteran’s Puppy for Life Organization, a Colorado Charity and 501(c)(3) Non-profit, was founded to provide these veterans with a puppy when it is eight-weeks old. Going through training together the puppy will eventually become the veteran’s service dog.  The goal s to help them focus on their puppy and not on themselves.  In a word does it work?  “Yes”!  The service dog is not a crutch for the veteran as some people might want to believe.  The purpose of a psychiatric service dog is to mitigate, or make better, an impending episode.  The alerting the service dog provides is telling person, “Hey, something is about to or is happening here and I need to let you know!”  Of course dogs can’t speak, that’s why they are trained to perform certain alerting task.  Allowing their handler to take necessary steps.

Since inception in 2015 your donations have helped 30 Colorado men and women veterans living with PTSD graduate their puppy as their own service dog.  In addition, there are currently fifteen veterans with their puppies in our program.