NEW PALESTINE — As the tears formed and her stress skyrocketed, Dawn Whalen thought she might have to get up and leave.
The New Palestine woman was sitting in a breakout session at a conference this past summer — learning about how service dogs can help military veterans — when the raw and detailed stories of veteran’s experiences become almost too much to bear.
That’s when a dog unexpectedly came up to her and gently laid its head in her lap.
The dog’s owner, a veteran, said “You’re stressed, aren’t you? He can tell.”
Whalen knew she was in the right place, as her anxiety began to melt away.
After all, providing therapy dogs for veterans is what brought her to the conference in the first place.
She first learned of the therapy dog concept the year before while attending a special session at a Realtor’s conference about how to better serve military veterans searching for homes.
“I heard a lot about the different hardships they faced both on deployment and after they came home from deployment,” recalled Whalen, who watched joyfully as a veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder was gifted with a service dog at the end of the session.
Whalen, a lifelong dog lover, had long thought about working to help connect veterans with service dogs, but she knew the cost was prohibitive.
Newly inspired after last year’s real estate conference, she enlisted the help of some friends to start Whalen’s Heroes, a local nonprofit whose sole mission is to raise funds to cover the high cost of training dogs to serve U.S. veterans who have served their country.
The cost is high, at $50,000 per dog, but Whalen has seen first-hand the impact these specially trained dogs can make for veterans, many of whom struggle to acclimate back to civilian life after living months or years in hostile, life-or-death situations.
Last year, Whalen’s Heroes connected its first dog with an Indiana veteran, Lois Schenk of Ft. Wayne. Since then, Schenk and her dog, Kento, have become fast friends.
The two go everywhere together — restaurants, movie theaters, and to the gym — whereas before Kento, Schenk was hesitant to go out anymore, afraid her post-military stress and anxiety would get the best of her.
“With Kento, she’s able to have a more active life. He can definitely sense (when she’s stressed) and help calm her and her anxiety,” said Whalen.
Seeing how Kento has impacted Schenk’s life has inspired Whalen and her fellow volunteers to continue raising money, in the hopes of connecting more dogs with veterans in the coming years.
They’ve already raised another $75,000, and will soon surprise another deserving veteran with a life-changing canine companion.
“We have enough now to cover the second dog, and are very close to being able to do a third dog,” said Whalen, who hopes an upcoming Family Day and 5K fundraiser in a New Palestine park can help raise the necessary funding.
The event takes place Sept. 24 in Southeastway Park, where admission is free but the cost to walk or run the 5K is $45 per person.
While the cost to train a therapy dog is high, Whalen has seen first-hand the invaluable difference it can make in a veteran’s life.
To train each dog, she turns to Ultimate Canine, an award-winning training academy in Westfield.
It takes two years to train each dog, since it needs to be equipped to detect their owner’s distress at a moment’s notice.
Being in loud, crowded places can be stressful for veterans, said Whalen, “but the dogs give them a calming effect so they can go out in situations where they wouldn’t have typically gone.”
The dogs serve as a buffer between the veterans and others who might come into their space unexpectedly while keeping the veterans calm, she said.
“The dogs give their owner a better quality of life because they’re able to actually enjoy life outside their home,” she said.
Whalen’s Heroes board member Greg Stevens knows just how stressful adjusting to civilian life can be.
“Being a combat veteran myself, I know the importance of how these dogs can help veterans through difficult situations,” said Stevens, who served as a corporal in the Marines from 2002 to 2006, which included four deployments to Iraq.
While he never had a service dog, Stevens said his own dog was a tremendous help in keeping him calm and regulating his emotions after his time in service.
“A trained service animal can help a veteran or first responder get through any type of anxiety they’re experiencing,” said Stevens, who was shot in the line of duty in 2015, working as a patrolman for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
Since retired, he now works as a veterans service officer, helping veterans file paperwork through the Veterans Benefits Administration.
Stevens knows how tough it can be for veterans returning to civilian life.
After his final deployment, he was back home within two to three weeks of fighting in the combat zones of Iraq. “I think it would have been a lot better had there been a three or four month transition period, a decompression period if you will,” he said.
“It was really hard to make the adjustment because everybody is used to constantly being in a life-or-death situation. When you have that much stress, your body adjusts to it. You’re operating at such a high level and no one else around you is,” he said.
That’s exactly why specially trained therapy dogs can be so essential for retired vets, said Stephens, who lives on the southeast side of Indianapolis.
“My ultimate goal for Whalen’s Heroes would be to raise enough funds to give away four (therapy) dogs a year,” he said.
As Whalen’s Heroes grows, Whalen continues to draw inspiration from her own interaction with the therapy dog that comforted her in that breakout session back in July, when an intuitive pup could sense from several feet away that she was in distress.
“The veterans’ stories we were hearing were so traumatic that I probably would have left the room, but the dog immediately calmed me down,” said Whalen, who knows her distress was nothing compared to what military veterans experience on a daily basis.
“Many of them have been trained to do things that the rest of us have not been trained to do, and you can’t just turn off that training,” she said. “They are trained to kill, and I’ve heard from a couple of veterans that there were times when they did their job and it affected families. There were children involved, and it haunts them to this day because that’s not what they set out to do. They did not set out to hurt children,” said Whalen.
Such deep regret takes its toll, she said, and many veterans feel ill-equipped to handle their emotions and the transition back to society.
Whalen, a lifelong dog lover, is determined to help as many veterans as possible through Whalens Heroes. Part of that is through fundraising while another part is spreading awareness so that veterans apply for a service dog.
“Part of what we hear is veterans don’t apply for these dogs because they feel like someone else is more deserving, which breaks my heart,” she said. “They have to know there’s no shame in asking for help.”
To learn more about Whalens Heroes or its Sept. 24 fundraiser, visit WhalensHeroes.com.
