June is PTSD Awareness month, a month dedicated to build understanding about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In honor of this month, American Dog Rescue has partnered with paws4vets for our ‘Hero for a Hero’ campaign in an effort to raise $10,000 to directly pair a veteran with a trained canine companion.

Paws4vets is an organization that places specially trained Assistance Dogs with veterans and military dependents with various physical, neurological, psychiatric or emotional disabilities.

American Dog Rescue’s Founder, Arthur Benjamin, works closely with paws4vets, and serves as their Advisory Board Chair.  By identifying and carefully selecting special rescue dogs to be trained as service animals, and raising money to train them, American Dog Rescue can help cut the normal costs of a veteran getting a service dog by more than half, and see that more dogs are made available.

Studies estimate that 1 in every 5 military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan has PTSD. Dogs have proven extremely effective at helping fight anxiety, stress and depression for a human being. We feel that the best way to help a veteran work through their specific disability is to provide them with a trained dog that can compensate mentally, emotionally and physically for what they cannot.

The process of a veteran learning to utilize their Psychiatric Service Dog to mitigate their symptoms is known as Intervention Transfer Training (ITT). With the help of other paws4vets clients and paws4vets peer mentors, this training process leads to a helpful recovery for the veteran.

Advocate Carol Mitchell, mother of SGT Jeff Mitchell—“These dogs are able to touch a place in our souls that other human beings can’t. Right now, paws4vets is able to help dozens of veterans work with their service dogs a year. Our goal is to be able to help hundreds of veterans every year. With your support we can meet that goal.”

Every donation helps aid the paws4vets Assistance Dog Placement Program in its success at training and placing the right hero for a hero.