Jun 30, 2010
Jun 11, 2010
NOTE: I previously incorrectly referred to the VA payments as a monthly stipend. I’ve made those corrections here and on other posts as well. There’s enough misinformation on the subject of service dogs out there already without me adding to it – my apologies.
My friend Christina Roof at AMVETS just posted a reminder about this a few days ago, which reminded ME that I shoulda put this up when it first happened in April, and didn’t (no good reason).
Veterans with service dogs are now eligible for the same VA benefits that veterans with guide dogs have been receiving for years.
Details here: “VA Clarifies Veterans’ Assistance Dog Policies, Offering Benefits For New and Previously-Denied Claims”
This is an absolute must-read for anyone with an interest in service dogs for veterans (i.e., EVERYBODY). It explains the VA policy on service dogs, the process to have one approved, and how to apply for the benefits VA provides for care of the dog. (BTW, the link in that article to the VA site is wrong – this is the correct one: http://www.prosthetics.va.gov/ServiceDogFAQ.asp )
I talked about this issue back in September of last year (“Finally, The Real Story About The Department Of Veterans Affairs And Service Dogs For Veterans”). As I said at the time, it seemed like, after 7 years of saying they weren’t gonna do it, the service dog change just ‘showed up’ on the VA website one day without any announcement. Plus it also appeared that veterans were still getting differing answers about that change depending on what office they talked to.
This clarification addresses those issues. And, as the AMVETS release says, you need to reapply for this benefit even if – in fact, ESPECIALLY if – you were turned down before.
The big issue here, and my concern all along, has been that there could’ve been many veterans who might’ve applied for a service dog, but haven’t because they’ve been concerned about handling the routine expenses, and they just didn’t want to say that.
We’re never gonna know how many we missed in the 7 years it took to make this change, but at least that’s not something we should have to worry about any more.
Assuming, of course, the process works as advertised. I’m VERY interested to see people’s experiences with it - please let me know what they are, good or bad.
ble for the same VA monthly stipend for expenses that veterans with guide dogs have been receiving for years.Jun 3, 2010
KDVR Channel 31 in Denver just did a great news story a coupla days ago with Canine Companions for Independence graduate Matt Keil and his wife Tracy promoting a wonderful organization, Homes For Our Troops, who built their beautiful house. Matt’s CCI Service Dog Gus, who was raised in the prison program at the Kit Carson Correctional Center in Burlington, Colorado, makes a brief working appearance in the video, too.
As Matt explains in the video, he’s a wounded warrior who was paralyzed with the exception of his left arm by a sniper’s bullet near Ramadi, Iraq on February 24, 2007. You can read more details about that in a number of places, including here: “After Surviving Sniper’s Bullet, Soldier Looks to Future”
Matt and Tracy have been super representatives for wounded warriors and their families in general and a number of organizations as well, including CCI, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Homes For Our Troops – pretty much anything they are involved with.
This is another placement that I’d describe exactly the same way I did Andrew Pike’s (Andrew and Matt are good friends, BTW) back late last year:
“Every Service Dog Placement With A Veteran Should Be As Great As This One”
May 16, 2010
When I heard Rocky Bleier was coming to the Warrior Games, I knew I had to meet him, although I had no idea how to make that happen.
If you don’t know who Rocky is or his story….well, you should. Go look it up right now – I’ll wait.
I grew up in Pittsburgh in the 60s and early 70s and was already in the Air Force by the time Rocky and the Steelers won their first Super Bowl in 1975. Matter of fact, I was actually home from DC for the Martin Luther King Day weekend and went to the parade that Monday on the way back to the airport. (Yes, for those who aren’t old enough to remember, there was actually a time they played the Super Bowl in the middle of January and not February. But I digress…)
When they won the next one a year later in Jan 1976 I was in Thailand, and watched it in the middle of the night on one of the first live satellite TV broadcasts the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service did – in fact, might’ve been the first. By the time they made it back in Jan 1979, I’d been to language school in the States again and was back overseas, this time in the Philippines, but again watching them live on TV in the middle of the night as they beat the Cowboys in a game that my Dallas fan friends still get tight jaws about to this day (and which still gives me great pleasure to see them get). For the last of the first four in Jan 1980 I was back in Omaha.
I don’t think any of that is unusual or makes me special – there are thousands of men and women who could tell the same story, only with the locations changed. And I didn’t ask him, but I bet Rocky hears those stories all the time. I think he really likes to still hear them, but then again he could just be the nice guy I truly think he is and he’s just humoring all of us.
Rocky was probably always my favorite Steeler, and my reasons are what I really think are the obvious ones. Doing his time when he probably coulda gotten out of it, coming back from being so badly wounded, and going on to win four Super Bowls.
What I always liked most, though, was even when the Steelers were at the top, Rocky seemed to be the guy that got overlooked by other teams, didn’t get the credit for being the fantastic player he was, and he was always happy to burn the teams that did that. They’d be looking for Franco, or Stallworth, or Swann, and – bang – Bradshaw hands the ball off to “little” Rocky and he either eludes a buncha guys, or pounds down the middle with a few of them – almost always much bigger than he was – hanging on for dear life.
So, when I was standing at the end of the Olympic Training Center pool Friday afternoon about quarter to 5 just as the final event of the games had ended, and I looked up and about an arm’s length away, there was Rocky… Well, once I got past that momentary delay your mind does as it realizes “Yeah, that’s really who that is”, I knew I had to say hello.
We took that great picture you see, and then talked for several minutes – no crowds, “posses’, anybody – just us. (And, yes, he does look that good. I didn’t realize he was 64 until I looked it up later – I should look that good now, much less then, and had I thought about it, I’d have asked him what the secret was.)
Perfect ending to what has been one of the most wonderful – and emotional – coupla weeks of my life.
Oh, yeah…
Since the focus of this site is service dogs, in particular dogs for veterans and from Canine Companions for Independence, you may be wondering what this post has to do with that. Well, we were there with our current puppy in program, Ophelia, and Rocky, just like everybody else I meet, got to hear about that subject in some detail from me (actually, he asked ME about it).
Rocky, thanks again.
May 15, 2010
I’ve been trying to come up with a way to sum up the Warrior Games experience of the last coupla weeks, and I’m really having a hard time – it was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life and truly a first-ever event in more ways than one.
For me personally, there have been so many overlapping and intersecting worlds – friends on the Air Force team who were competing, Air Force Academy coaches along with training and events at USAFA, a Canine Companions for Independence graduate on the AF team – it’s just been overwhelming. I’ve met a lotta ‘old’ friends – people who I’ve been talking to for years in some cases but had never met in person – and made a ton of new ones as well.
It’s really been the center of the wounded warrior universe here for the last week or so, and we reached critical mass with all of the elements that have never before been assembled in one place at the same time.
First, you had the inspirational competitors – 200 wounded warriors from all the services setting an example for all of us that has just left me in awe. In fact, “awesome” is a word that used to be reserved for events like this before it became just another meaningless overused trite expression.
This paragraph from the American Legion blog Thursday is the best description I’ve seen of what’s gone on here – I was there Wed afternoon, and it happened just this way:
My “I wish I brought a hankie” moment came in the Mens 50m freestyle. The heats were divided into 3 categories, Lower Body Injuries, Upper Body Injuries, and TBI/PTSD athletes. In the LBI heat there were 6 competitors, the first 5 of which finished the heat bunched up closely at around 45 seconds. But the 6th competitor trailed by a lot. In fact, he was only about 15 meters in to his swim. It was a young Marine….a young marine with no legs. He could have stopped, he could have turned around, since he was about 1/3 done. But that isn’t what Marines do. The entire crowd was on it’s feet. I even saw a guy in a wheelchair painfully push himself to a standing position to cheer. The other athletes in the heat didn’t exit the pool, they turned around, and treaded water while yelling, clapping and cheering on this survivor, this athlete who was going to finish no matter what. It was incredibly loud in there, and behind me a marine mom was crying as she cheered. She wasn’t alone, a good 50% of the crowd was either crying, and a good 49% of the remainder was blinking as rapidly as they could. I would have been in the first category, but somehow held it together. There are events you witness in your life that awe and inspire you, this was one of them. When that Marine finished the 50m, the crowd was ballistic. Athletes, coaches, fans, media, military and even the folks running the event all screaming and clapping. Perhaps one of the most moving things I ever witnessed.
The guy that was written about is Chuck Sketch, who I later had the great privilege of meeting, and who was chosen by the winning Marine team to accept the Chairman’s Cup at the closing ceremonies:
On top of that very emotional environment, you had a collection of the real “movers and shakers” from different organizations in the wounded warrior world coming together in an unprecedented way. Based on my experience, I have a feeling we will see some great things coming from all the conversations that I know went on here.
For me, it was an opportunity to talk service dogs for veterans with many varied groups – veterans thinking about getting dogs, nonprofits and government agencies looking at helping veterans get dogs, people interested in puppy raising, and so on. In case it’s not already obvious, there is a tremendous interest in service dogs in this world, but the reality is also that most people aren’t aware what’s available, and, even if they are, don’t know where to go, what to look for, and who the best organizations are.
And, trust me, all service dogs and organizations are by no means equal – might look that way (and some organizations may even intentionally try to make it look that way), but they are not.
The best way I know to get that point across is for people to see what a real service dog team looks like and then let them make their own judgments and comparisons, and having Jason Morgan with his CCI Service Dog Napal here was absolutely invaluable in doing that. Here’s a nice picture from my friend Agnieszka Obstoj taken right after Army Chief of Staff Gen Casey presented the AF team with bronze medals for wheelchair basketball – Jason, Napal, and Rich Pollock:
This is exactly what a service dog should look like in public a lot of the time – lotsa hoopla, excitement, and noise, but the dog is lying down relaxed, leash firmly in the hand of the human. Look around and notice how many times that’s not what you see, and you’ll have even more appreciation for CCI dogs like Napal.
Jason and Napal very definitely provided the example, and when I explained to those who saw them – and there were many – that it takes two years of very serious and focused effort to produce a dog like Napal and a match like those two have, and only about a third of the dogs make it all the way through, without fail, their eyebrows went up and their eyes got real big.
There’s lots more I could say – I’m not really speechless, but there are just so many thoughts and emotions still buzzing through my head a day after the events ended I can’t get them all out. So I’ll just leave it here for now.
May 10, 2010
Having gone to the opening ceremonies today, I can tell you it’s already become apparent on the very first day that the Warrior Games is a unique and very special event, and it’s not gonna be possible for me to even begin to keep up with it here.
So, I’ll just give you a coupla neat things to look at which, given my military background, not surprisingly have a definite Air Force bent.
First, a great picture that was taken of the Air Force team with Gen Gene Renuart, NORTHCOM / NORAD commander and ranking officer in Colorado Springs. Even better because Canine Companions for Independence graduate Jason Morgan and his service dog Napal are in the front row at the right:
Second, something funny – Gen Renuart’s comments about the ‘interservice rivalry’ – I think he pretty much nailed it here:
May 9, 2010
It’s been my great privilege over the last three days to spend a lot of time around the Air Force team that’s here in Colorado Springs to compete in the first-ever Warrior Games, including Canine Companions for Independence graduate Jason Morgan and his service dog Napal II, who I wrote about a few days ago in this post.
Jason and Napal visiting with Lt Ryan McGuire at the Air Force Academy track.
Last night my wife Joann and I spent several very enjoyable hours at dinner with Jason and Napal. Not only is Jason a really nice guy and Napal the classic CCI service dog, Jason’s story of how he came to be injured and his recovery is truly incredible.
It’s not something he’s talked about a lot for a number of good reasons, so most people – including those associated with CCI – don’t know it. I did find one place where Jason’s written about it, though, and if you wanna read an amazing story, just go to this link:
http://www.clinesrunningcorner.com/archives_09/formerspecialforcesmemberadjusts_09.pdf
Rumor has it we’ll be seeing them on the cover of Airman Magazine in the near future. I know I’ll definitely be watching and rooting for them in competition this week.
May 5, 2010
Here are two brand new videos with quick glimpses of the Canine Companions for Independence graduate team of Air Force wounded veteran Jason Morgan and Service Dog Napal II training here in Colorado Springs for the inaugural Warrior Games next week.
They can be seen zipping around the track at the one minute point of this Today Show video:
And also about 30 seconds into this local news story from KOAA Channels 5 and 30:
As a retired Air Force Chief, I can’t tell you how proud I am of all these wounded warriors representing the AF, and with my deep involvement with CCI, particularly the veterans initiative, having Jason and Napal here is just the proverbial icing on the cake.
Mar 27, 2010
There’s a new CNN video up today about an AMVETS and Paws With a Cause sponsored Capitol Hill visit of veterans and their service dogs last week that’s getting a lot of attention, and rightfully so.
Definitely watch the video, but the real key here is WHY they were visiting – concerns over both existing/pending legislation and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ response – and you really need to read the two AMVETS blog posts associated with the visit to understand that.
“AMVETS, Paws With A Cause Take the Hill”
“AMVETS, Paws With A Cause Take the Hill (Part 2)”
As explained in the first post:
AMVETS Deputy National Legislative Director Christina Roof and Paws With A Cause National Marketing Manager Deb Davis joined the veterans, helping to explain shortfalls in current policy toward assistance dogs and pushing to close loopholes and improve access for veterans who could benefit from new programs.
The post then describes some of the major concerns Assistance Dogs International accredited and member organizations have with both the legislation and the VA response (which, in spite of the impression that may have been created elsewhere, is still being worked on and has not been finalized):
- Statutes and policies must be clear to veterans and implemented throughout the VA system with a clear point of contact. The current language found in Title 38 of the U.S. Code is too vague, failing to identify what VA’s actual responsibilities should be.
- When drafting responsible assistance dog placement and training legislation for veterans, a standard must be established based on proven assistance dog industry standards and practices exemplified by Assistance Dogs International, or ADI, and the International Guide Dog Federation, or IGDF. The bills currently before Congress are too vague and misuse certain industry terms interchangeably, such as guide dog, service dog, therapy dog, and assistance dog, making policy nearly impossible to properly implement.
- Decisive action must be taken in the short term, since thousands of veterans could potentially benefit from any new program, and AMVETS and Paws With A Cause are happy to work with legislators to make this happen. Though VA may have concerns over cost, the return on investment from veterans who take advantage of assistance dogs would have far-reaching effects as veterans re-enter the work force and live up to their full potential.
I can tell you that volunteers and staff from Canine Companions for Independence and other ADI member organizations as well as other veterans organizations are actively working those issues and have been making visits to Congress, both formal and informal, for some time.
You normally don’t see much, if anything, in the news about those visits, though, so it’s very nice to see this kind of publicity, and kudos to AMVETS and PAWS for making that happen.
Bottom line, as I’ve been saying for a long time, is that it’s not enough to just say we’re for service dogs for veterans, we have to make that happen in the right way.
Mar 1, 2010
Article today at NorthJersey.com (“Canine Corps“) about service dogs for veterans that’s really just so-so (I’ve seen many better, honestly), but there is one key quote in it:
“We have always served veterans … but it wasn’t until around late 2006 that we actually embarked on what we called the Veterans Initiative to make our services known and to target veterans returning home from the current conflict.”
- Clark Pappas, Director of Participant Programs at Canine Companions for Independence
That’s something I’m convinced most people, including veterans - especially veterans, in fact – aren’t aware of, and that we need to continually get across. (Clark is a super guy, BTW, and someone I’m proud to call a friend.)
I'm very active with Canine Companions for Independence as a volunteer, to include being a past member of the Veterans Task Force and puppy raiser. Retired US Air Force Chief Master Sergeant with my last assignments at the Air Force Academy as the Fourth Group Sergeant Major and Dean of Faculty Superintendent. More...
