For Blind Vets, German Shepherd Guide Dogs And Independence

Today, some in Congress support a measure to fund organizations like Fidelco in Bloomington, Connecticut, which breeds and trains German Shepherd guide dogs.

Arthur Warren, an 82-year-old sight-impaired Marine veteran enlisted in the 1950s. Arthur says his gradual loss of vision, which was not service related, devastated him.

“When you first find out that you’re blind or you’re told you’re legally blind and someone says, ‘But you’re going to be alright,’ it’s hard to believe,” Warren says. “And you don’t believe it.”

Warren, who’s from Amherst, Massachusetts, says the day he got his guide dog, Zeke, his life started improving.

Now, a year later, with Zeke sitting alert but quietly by his side, Warren says the relationship is like a romance because it gets better every day.

“When I’ve got my Marine hat on and I’ve got a 90-pound German Shepherd, even though I was in 65 years ago, I’m ready to go,” he says.

Fidelco has provided hundreds of veterans, like Warren, German Shepherd guide dogs in the last 50 years.

“We believe it’s our duty to provide guide dogs to our blinded military,” says Fidelco’s executive director, Eliot Russman.

Russman says the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have sent home a lot of young service members with traumatic eye injuries.

“They were part of a unit and are no longer part of a unit because of their injuries,” he says. “But they want to get back into the game.”

That’s something Russman says is exactly what guide dogs can accomplish. But, he adds, it’s expensive and time consuming.

It takes $45,000 a dog and the training is vigorous — all 15,000 hours of it. To get a better idea of the challenge, Fidelco’s Peter Nowicki takes me through a blindfolded obstacle course with a guide dog named Harley.

“Good boy, up to the curb,” Nowicki says. “When you hear that it’s safe to cross the street, you give him the command of ‘forward,’ and he goes.”

Fidelco relies overwhelmingly on private donations, but this last year it got a $106,000 federal grant, the first federal money the organization has ever received. It came from the Department of Defense and is part of an effort by Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern to pass a measure called the Wounded Warrior Service Dog Act.

So far, it’s stalled in committee. But McGovern’s been able to wrangle money from the DOD to get the pilot program started. Mcgovern says he’s also seen first hand, how effective a guide dog can be for a vet with PTSD.

“When they had nightmares at night the dog was trained to wake them up,” McGovern says. “You know the dog could even open the door. So they need to be a regular part of treatment because they work.”

Still, the VA doesn’t currently approve service dogs to treat PTSD, but is studying it.

Until then, McGovern says he’ll continue to push for passage of his bill, so more vets like Arthur Warren can team up with more dogs like Zeke.

Special thanks to Susan Kaplan and New England Public Radio