Greyhound PTSD Service Dog has Marine's Back

Hero Project pairs greyhounds with wounded warriors
Trained to serve, the dogs help keep their new owners calm
Sun Sentinel
By Susannah Bryan
January 26, 2014

Leonardo A. Salas, plays with his children, three-year-old twins, Leonardo, Jr., and Emily, as his dogs, Scout, and Lilo stick close by at their Coral Springs home on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014. Salas, a father of three, suffers from PTSD and social anxiety after serving 11 years in the Marine Corps. Scout has been trained by Service Dogs 4 Service Men to keep him calm in crowds.
(Amy Beth Bennett, Sun Sentinel)

Marine Corps veteran Jesse Bergeron used to do his grocery shopping at 2 a.m. — just to avoid the crowds.

Family trips to Disney World put the former machine gunner on red alert, searching for escape routes. Baseball games were out of the question.

That's all changed thanks to Doc, a retired racing greyhound trained as a service dog specifically for Bergeron, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Instead of seeing a sea of people, they just focus on the dog and it almost makes the sea of people disappear," says Daniel De La Rosa, director of training for Service Dogs 4 Servicemen.

North Lauderdale resident Sara Donadei-Blood founded the local nonprofit in May 2011 in honor of her late grandfather, a World War II veteran. Late in life, he adopted two racing greyhounds that wound up being service dogs all on their own, she said.

So far, De La Rosa has trained 10 greyhounds for what he calls the Hero Project. The dogs are trained at Petropolis Park in Hollywood at no cost to the veteran.

De La Rosa meets with the veterans first, then trains the greyhounds — former race dogs at the Palm Beach Kennel Club — to meet their particular needs, from mobility issues to PTSD.
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