How Service Dogs Transform Veterans’ Lives

Author Frank Cohen, ambassador for K9 Partners for Patriots and author of Service Dogs for Mental Health, explains how trained service dogs provide life-changing support for veterans struggling with PTSD and other invisible wounds. He shares inspiring stories of healing, connection, and purpose — and how these loyal companions help veterans reclaim their independence and peace of mind.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Back now here on the Ryan Gorman Show, and as
part of our Veterans' Day special today, I want to
bring in a very special guest, Frank Cohen, author of
Service Dogs for Mental Health and he's also a Canine
Partners for Patriots ambassador. You can check out his book
at Service Dogsfromntalhealth dot com, and of course you can
support our friends over at Canine Partners for Patriots at

(00:22):
Knine Partners for Patriots dot com. Frank, thanks so much
for taking a few minutes to come on the show,
and let's start with your book.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Tell us what inspired you to write this?

Speaker 3 (00:33):
I think so. I mean, it's a longer story than
I'll get into. But when I went into Canine Partners
for Patriots, got accepted into the program at my service
dog Gracie, and we went to the traditional training that
you go through with that, and when I graduated, the
good news this is a canine provides a lot of

(00:54):
support afterward too, so once you're in, you're always in
with them. But there were things and I read a
lot of books actually of almost thirty books on service
dogs and all that before I even got into this
and studies. But what I didn't find was the information
about what is it like to own a service dog

(01:15):
rather than everything about training and behavior and the laws
and everything else. So what inspired me was there was
this huge portion missing, which is about what's the realities
of living with the dog twenty four to seven That
is different than what I had found anywhere else. So
I wrote the book to help other not just veterans,

(01:37):
but other people who are considering getting service dogs, particularly
psychiatric service dogs, to really get a bigger picture on
what they're in for.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
What was the biggest thing that you discovered as you're
putting this book together, the biggest thing that you didn't
realize ahead of this partnership.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
There were two actually, I mean, besides the fact that
owning a dog, any kind of a pet, requires an
enormous amount of commitment, got that, But there were two
primary things. The first was public access. When you walk
into a place where normally there are not dogs and
you have a dog, you immediately become the center of attention.

(02:18):
And for many people who suffer from things like PTSD
or have symptoms of TBI, the last thing we want
is attention, right, We just mostly want to be left alone,
And so that is one of the big issues. Now
I'll tell you that Canine dealt with that right. And
we went through these sort of mock scenarios or people

(02:39):
we get up in your face and want to pet
your dog and all that, and we learned how to
deal with that, which was really nice. But nothing else
I've read No other books really deal with the problems
of this public access. The second biggest issue was you're
no longer anonymous that you have mental health issues because
I used to go walk into publics, let's say, and

(03:01):
do my shopping, and nobody had a clue if there
was any problems with me at all. If I was okay,
you're not okay. You know. Now you walk in with
a service dog, you don't have any obvious physical disabilities.
People automatically assume that you have some kind of a
psychiatric disability, otherwise why would you have a service dog.
And if you're a veteran, if you wear a hat

(03:22):
or something that identifies you as a veteran, everybody automatically
assumes it's PTSD, and so you lose the anonymity of
your mental health issues.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
It's interesting I never even thought about those two issues,
and that's why this book is so important. Again, we're
joined by Frank Cohen, author of Service Dogs for Mental Health,
which you can learn more about at service Dogs Formontalhealth
dot com. Let's talk about your work with K nine
Partners for Patriots. Give us an overview of that organization
and how you were helped by the team there.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
Well, So they started some ten or eleven years ago,
and quite a while ago, I was driving actually just
down I think it was spring Hill Drive and they
had their location was different then, and then they had
a sign out front that they're having an open house.
And I've always been a huge advocate for veterans, anything
for veterans, I'm a supporter and an advocate. So I

(04:19):
saw the open house sign and I went in there,
and I was mostly overwhelmed by what I saw, and
that was the veterans in there that I talked to
whose lives had been so dramatically changed for the better
by getting a service dog. And since then, they I
think they've put just a five hundred service dog veteran

(04:42):
teams together have graduated from the program. And if you
think about the impact that that's had, you know, it's
not just I know everybody talked about the twenty two
suicides a day for veterans, and I'm not in any
way trying to detegrate the importance of that, but there's
a lot more to that too. Veterans there are four
times as likely to be homeless, twice as likely, or

(05:03):
one and a half to two times as likely to
experience other mental health issues, particularly PTSD and whatnot. And
I was just overwhelmed by it. So I started supporting them,
and then I thought about getting my home service dog,
and I thought, for the most part, I didn't deserve one.

(05:24):
There were too many veterans out there who probably needed
it more than I did. And I found out this
is something called imposter syndrome. And I didn't know about
it until I actually addressed that in the book quite
a bit. But I didn't know about it until after
I had experienced it. And when I met with the
folks at Canine, they convinced me that that just wasn't
the case, that each every veteran was just as entitled

(05:47):
as any other veteran to it. So, and I had
also met another veteran who became a friend of mine,
and he went to the program got a service dog,
and I saw tremendous changes in him. So Canine is
a commune unity based organization, which means we train the
veterans and service dogs together. There's another type of program

(06:10):
where the dogs are pre trained and then at about
two years old, they match them up with a veteran.
They bring the veteran in, they work with them for
two or three weeks and to get them accustomed to
the dog and the commands, and then they go on.
They go on their way. But I like this idea
what Canaon does better because they actually taught me how

(06:31):
to train my dog because training never stops, never stops.
I mean Gracie and I are working on a new
task right now. During nightmare interruption, she wakes me up,
but now I'm teaching her how to turn on the lights.
So they taught me how to train my dog. They
also helped me to understand all the different scenarios that

(06:52):
we might have to go through. Oh, I mean, that's
that's kind of the program. Most people don't know this,
but it costs ZAM around eighteen to twenty thousand dollars
to train.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
One very expensive.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, it's a big undertaking and that's why the community
support is so important to keep that going. And again
everyone on this Veterans Day, there's no better way to
help our veterans than by checking out Knine Partners for
Patriots dot com. Do what you can to help keep
that organization going, and of course check out Frank's book

(07:25):
as well, Service Dogs for Mental Health, which you can
find at Service Dogs for Mentalhealth dot com.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
Frank Cohen with us this morning.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Frank, I want to thank you for your service, of course,
and for doing all the tremendous work that you're doing.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
We really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Thank you, my friend, and God bless you, and I
hope you have a great day on vettern Thing