Emily and Mercedes are joined by Trish and Renee from Pawsitive for Heroes. The program pairs up a service dog with a veteran to help them live their life as they should.
There are four stages for training the dog. Renee says there is canine good citizen training that starts out, then it goes to advance training and then urban training for canine good citizen. She says, “Chris went ahead and just added the American working dog certification which is an annual certification that the dog and the handler will go through but that really gets down to every single detail like, what is the dog doing when the veteran has to go to the bathroom in public. She says these are things that people on average don’t think about, and this level of training that the veteran and the dog go through, increases their bond immensely and just grows that bond and also enables the veterans to just live life.”
When asked how excited are you to contribute in this way, Trish says “I am super excited. My dog allows me to do so many more things I wasn’t able to do. It allows me to get out into the public more, volunteer more, be in large crowds, be in smalls spaces where before I constantly had my head on a swivel trying to see what was happening behind me and around me. She allows me to have that opportunity to be a part of my community and give back to my community.”
For more information go to WNYheroes.org
