Seventeen veterans commit suicide a day on average. To combat that, K9s for Warriors is passionate about providing service dogs to military veterans suffering from PTSD, traumatic brain injury and military sexual trauma. 92% of veterans are able to reduce their medication or stop taking it altogether within 6 months of graduating from their Warrior-K9 pairing program.
One of those veterans is E6 Staff Sgt. Carlos Manuel Cruz, Jr., US Army retired. Cruz served for more than 20 years as a military policeman.
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“I joined the Army in May of 1997 out of San Antonio, Texas,” said Cruz. “I traveled all over the world. I went to Korea, North Carolina, Panama, San Antonio, Texas, at the Air Force Base. Germany, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Afghanistan. The whole time, I was a military policeman. But I did different things in the military police corps. First I was a line unit patrolman. And then I decided to go, it’s called SRT. So special reaction team is kind of like SWAT in the civilian sector. And then after that, that’s what I decided to go canine. And I became a bomb dog handler. And I did that for about 11 years of my career.”
In 2012, Cruz deployed to Afghanistan.
”So when I was deployed, we don’t deploy with hundreds of other soldiers. We deploy as a dog team, like just me and the dog. So I got to go when I supported Special Forces, we were out away from the big bases in Afghanistan, we were out in the thick of it, where I was at, we were in a valley, surrounded by Afghanistan villages. So you don’t know who, where, whatever is going to happen. So when you hear soldiers talking about, ‘Oh, I went outside the wire, like four or five times in the year’, I was outside the wire every day, because I was in charge of checking the incoming vehicles that were not supported by the military.,” said Cruz. “So they came from the civilian side, like, fuel trucks, Afghanistan police that were coming to us for support for whatever reason, it was my job, me and my dog, to go out there, outside the gate, and check the incoming vehicles to make sure that, you know, nothing was going to happen.”
Cruz said it was a high-stress situation. He’d also go out on missions at night with the teams to find the enemy, which also had the potential to be dangerous.
“The biggest thing for me was May 28, where we got into our firefight,” said Cruz. “Not many people really consider how long 80 minutes is. But it was over an 80-minute firefight that we were in. So good thing is we didn’t take any casualties. We delivered some casualties, but we didn’t take any.”
But it wasn’t until a few years later Cruz realized just how severely he was affected by his experiences on deployment.
“After I got back from my deployment, I got assigned to Fort Gordon, Georgia. And I was part of what’s called the Warrior Transition Battalion. And that’s where they’re responsible for taking soldiers that are wounded in combat, been deployed or something happened to them for some reason that they can’t serve anymore,” said Cruz. “That’s when I started learning I had issues. You know, my wife was already telling me I had issues but you know, it’s like, whatever. You don’t know what you’re talking about. But it wasn’t until being around other soldiers that had similar conditions, and that told me, ‘You’re crazy, man, you got some problems.’ I was like, ‘What?’ So that’s when I took the first step and I went to go see a psychiatrist. That was the start of me finding out I had it worse that I thought I did.”
Finally, someone introduced Cruz to the world of service dogs. And that’s how he hooked up with K9s for Warriors and ended up with his service dog, Hannah. K9s for Warriors CEO Carl Cricco said he hears stories like Cruz’s all the time.
“I think one thing that Carlos just hit on is, you know, he wasn’t really sure how bad he was right? Until he started to converse with his colleagues and fellow veterans. One of the things that we come across a lot is, a lot of veterans just don’t really want to ask for help, or they don’t think they’re bad enough, right? Because they have kind of extreme cases to compare themselves against where they’re like, ‘Well, I’m not that guy, you know, I’m okay’. And I think it’s one of the things that we really try to share, which is if you’re a veteran who’s dealing with isolation, depression, etc., reach out for help.,” said Cricco. “We’re one of many organizations that are filling a void that is there in terms of post-service, you know, what does that look like? And how do we get these ladies and gentlemen back into a life worth living?”
That’s where the dogs come in. Hundreds of thousands of veterans from the Vietnam, Gulf and post-9/11 eras suffer from PTSD, traumatic brain injuries or trauma related to military sexual assault. Research shows that the use of service dogs in conjunction with other treatments may improve symptoms. So K9s for Warriors trains and provides service dogs to veterans free of charge. But it’s not just the veterans themselves the organization is getting results for.
“We like to rely majority on rescues. That’s a secondary mission that we’re addressing, the euthanasia of dogs. So the majority of our dogs are from rescue shelters. You know, we are headquartered in Florida. So I’d say the majority of those dogs come from the southeast,” said Cricco. “Once those dogs are brought into our program, we train them for anywhere from about five to eight months, some dogs are quicker, some dogs learn slower. And I would say around 50 to 60% of these dogs don’t make it to be service dogs, for a number of reasons, but we never bring these dogs back to shelter. We always find forever homes for these dogs.”
Once the dogs are trained and determined eligible to continue as service dogs, the matched veteran visits their campus for a three-week training period. Again, during this time, the in-house training program including meals , equipment, veterinary care and training is provided to the veteran at no cost. To date, K9s for Warriors has graduated more than 800 Warrior-K9 teams and rescued nearly 2,000 dogs overall.
“The program is mainly to have the veteran learn how to utilize that service dog. The three-week program is all about bonding and allowing that veteran to truly understand how to leverage this dog and utilize this dog to help with their PTSD symptoms. And the other thing that we did we really do facilitate here is that camaraderie, right, you’re in a group of a dozen veterans who are in a very similar place as you are. And that’s healing in itself. Just spending three weeks with like-minded individuals who are struggling with the same thing,” said Cricco. “After they graduate, they get that dog, that’s their service dog, their battle buddy for life.”
For Cruz, having Hannah in his life has made all the difference.
“It was cake because she made it easy. Whoever trained her did an amazing job,” said Cruz. “She’s done a lot, and not just for me., she’s done a lot for my family. For me, she hugs me. She licks me, she calms me down. One of the things I love to tell people that when I first brought her home my wife said that there was a couple couple of nights that she would find Hannah laying on top of me in the middle of the night. I must have been going through something, I don’t know, when I sleep, I sleep hard. So I didn’t notice that she climbed on top of me to calm me down for whatever. And I went back to K9s and I talked to, his name is Greg, an amazing individual at K9s, and I said, ‘Greg, did you guys train Hannah to do something like this?’ He goes, ‘No. We didn’t train her to do any of that.’ That’s something that was a bond rapport between us, between her and I.”
Cruz said he urges any veteran struggling with mental health to reach out and get the help they need.
“I can understand about what they’re going through, how they feel. You know, the push, you have to suck it up and drive on mentality and stuff like that,” said Cruz. “But you know what, once you get out, you got to take care of yourself. And nobody’s going to do it for you, but yourself. So if you feel like you need help or whatever it is, reach out to K9s, if not K9s, reach out to somebody because if you need help, there’s no reason to sit there and just keep struggling and fighting this fight on your own.”
K9s for Warriors relies on donations to continue to provide veterans with their life-changing program. If you’d like to donate, click here. If you’re a veteran, you can apply for your own service dog here. And if you’d like to give a pup that K9s has rescued but won’t be continuing in the service dog program, click here.