Sir:
I have been working at NEADS (Dogs for Deaf and Disabled Americans going on 10 years. I am a retires Combat Corpsman serving with te Marines for 23 years.
I have always wanted to repay our wounded warriors with the debt owed to them for serving our country.
That day came almost 7 years ago when I along with the CEO of NEADS founded Canines for Combat Veterans. There are many organizations that place dogs with disabled veterans, but I am proud to say that we were the first.
So far to date we have placed 42 dogs with their disabled veteran partner and all have worked out perfectly. The dogs afford such an independent lifestyle for their partner. The veteran no longer has to rely on others to aid in his getting around or doing simple tasks. Now his canine partner can do this for him. Our dog’s open and close doors, pick items up off the floor, turn lights on and off, open refrigerator doors and place items from the refrigerator in the veterans lap, pull wheelchairs, and many more tasks. There is so much more to our program, with the best feature of all being,
"No out-of -pocket expense." We will pay for the dog, pay airfare both ways to bring our veteran to NEADS campus to learn how to work with the dog, and room and board is paid for with the Blue Star Mother of Chapter 1 in Leominster, MA supplying the food with the help from the VFW of Leominster.
The picture shown here is "Aubie" a Golden Retriever trained to serve as a demonstration dog for our veterans.
Please go to www.neads.org and click on the box,, "Canines for Combat Veterans." There is a picture in that site of me and Aubie, a Golden Retriever along with Cpl. Nathan Potts USMC in the upper left corner.
If I can be of any help to our wounded Marines, please contact me at
DocFregeauMCL@verizon.net
Semper-Fi
George "Doc" Fregeau