Welcome, readers! Thank you for visiting The Village Visionary. Today I will be sharing my conversation with Tim LeBlanc, the CEO and Founder of 4Paws4Patriots, an organization which helps disabled veterans and first responders train their own service dogs. Read below as Tim tells us all about it!

Hi, Tim! Welcome to The Village Visionary. Tell us about 4Paws4Patriots.

We’re a service dog organization that provides free service dog training for disabled veterans and first responders.

What’s your background in dog training?

I’ve been training dogs since I was ten years old. I went to the American Institute for Dog Trainers, where I was certified as a Master Trainer in 1977, and I’ve been running 4Paws4Patriots since 1977.

Do you have a military background?

I was in the U.S. Army.

How was 4Paws born?

Well, 4Paws was born out of necessity, basically. I was struggling when I came home from the military and started training a dog to help myself and met some other disabled veterans at that time. We started training a dog to help them, and we just never stopped. We’re still training after all these years.

What sorts of things do you train dogs to be able to do?

Oh, it’s an amazing thing. There are thousands of different behaviors that dogs can do to help disabled people. Anything from retrieving items, (like the telephone when it rings), to getting somebody else in a medical emergency, reminding people to take their medicine, letting people know they’re about to have a seizure…even diabetic alert type work.

The reason I do this is not just to help the disabled person; it’s really the greater society as a whole that benefits. For example, we have a gentleman [who] came through our program [who] has massive seizures. He was an Olympic-hopeful runner [who] was training for the Olympics, and he joined the Marine Corps because he thought it was the right thing to do. He received a traumatic brain injury and would have massive seizures - he still does - but we trained a dog [who] helps with his seizures and lets him know when he’s going to have a seizure, lets him know in advance. His wife had quit her job as a second grade school teacher to take care of him. And he came home and pretty much just stayed in the house because he didn’t want to go out in public and have a seizure and be embarrassed, and not have any control or any way to get medical help. So, we trained a dog to help him, and it’s been about two years. He’s now a coach at one of the local high schools [and] he works with the Special Olympics kids on one of the running events as a coach. And his wife’s back out teaching school again. For me, that’s the ultimate reward. There [are], I don’t know, 25 or 30 children that benefit every day from having their teacher back. There [are] the high school students [who] he’s helping get ahead in life. Chances are, none of them will ever be Olympic runners or something, but they’ll learn to work hard and achieve their goals through athletics with him. And of course, the kids in Special Olympics - it’s so important to help [them], too. For me, that’s the ultimate. How can you have more reward than changing that many lives by training a service dog?

What specific challenges do you face, not only as a dog trainer but as someone trying to run such a program?

There [are] a lot of challenges. The number one challenge is funding. It costs money to do what we do. It’s very hard to raise the money, and raising money is not really my forte. My thing is helping people, so I always find that [to be] the biggest challenge for me. Locations to do it at; getting through to people that there [are] people who climb Mt. Everest [who] have no legs. So, whatever we have to overcome, we can overcome. Sometimes it’s hard to convince the disabled person of that. But the truth is, with a little bit of help and the right motivation, it’s amazing what we can accomplish. So, those are the challenges. And awareness, bringing awareness to people as to what we do. I think most people are good people, most people want to help, but they don’t understand what we do, often. And they don’t realize that a dollar makes a difference, or just one day volunteering to help somebody makes a difference. Whether it’s us or any other charitable organization.

Are there any misconceptions about service dogs that you would like to address?

There [are] a lot of misconceptions about service dogs. Some people think that service dogs are only for blind people, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Only a small percentage of service animals actually work for blind people. Or, people see people [who] don’t have an outward disability, and they think, “Oh, that’s just a phone service dog.” Well, often it’s a psychiatric service dog. Maybe that person is struggling with post-traumatic stress. And post-traumatic stress is this big, mysterious term for most people. Other people have it, not just military [personnel]. Rape victims, or people that are victims of violent assault, first responders…there’s a lot of people with post-traumatic stress. And we’ve all dealt with it in some form or fashion in our lifetimes, right? The stress you feel when one of your parents died, or a really bad car crash. So, if you can kind of take that stress that you felt at that moment, and for some reason, there’s a malfunction and it doesn’t process quite properly and you keep that stress for an extended period of time, that’s when it becomes a problem. It’s natural to have that stress; it’s not natural for that stress to not start to go away. And that’s kind of what post-traumatic stress is; it’s that stress level, but it doesn’t diminish, it stays with you. And we use service dogs very often to help with that, and get those people back to where they can become a productive part of society.

How does a dog actually help with that?

A lot of it is distraction. We’ll teach the dog that, when the person starts to stress, before they even realize they’re starting to stress, the dog will remove them from the situation. Rather, the dog gives them the signal that they have to go to the bathroom, or the dog just kind of pulls them away. We teach the dog to create bubbles, and what we mean by that is they get between the person, and the person closest to them to create a buffer zone, if you would. One of my favorite things I teach dogs for people who have had sexual assault, typically women, is that when you scratch the dog’s side, the dog will growl. The dog’s not growling because it’s angry, it’s growling because it’s a trained behavior. But if you can imagine being at the ATM machine, [and] somebody’s a little too close…there’s no bad intention, they’re a little closer, and you’re nervous…you can reach down and scratch the dog, the dog growls, and the person backs up. Nobody’s affected, nobody’s injured, your comfort zone’s much better.

How can the dog tell before the person can that they’re stressed?

Dogs are like great poker players. Dogs kind of live through scent and body language, and that’s how they communicate primarily. If you’ve ever played poker, you know everybody has a tell. Well, the dog lives by your body language, so they learn you so intricately that, without you even knowing it, you might get a finger twitch. Whatever your tell happens to be, the dog knows as soon as you start to stress. They also sense it through their sense of smell. Your body chemistry changes when you get upset or stressed.

Regarding nonprofits in general, do you have any cautionary tales or misconceptions you want to address about the nonprofit world?

You know, when I talk to people, I talk to a lot of people who say, “Oh, I want to start a nonprofit,” and it’s the wrong thing to do. It really is. Think of a pizza. There’s only so many slices of pizza out there to go around, right? If you find a nonprofit that does the kind of work that you’re interested in, go out and support them. Become an effective part of their team. If I had a hundred people that had skills, we would just be a better nonprofit. But if we’re all competing for a slice of that pizza…the tragic part Is that there [are] so many that are underfunded and undermanned. There [are] nonprofits out there that do just about anything you can imagine, and they could certainly use the help, and it would make things better and make that stronger. Whereas, if you go out and start another one, it weakens each one.

To you, what does it mean to be a visionary?

To me, a visionary is somebody who can see the big picture as what it can be and see a path to get there.

I never thought of myself as a visionary. I started this thing by accident, and I paid for it myself for many years. And then, one day, I had some health problems and decided I’d change the vision, change what it was going to be. And I guess that’s kind of when I became a visionary, I suppose. Because I saw that we could change the world. The whole thing is bigger than just me. So, we grew into multiple locations in California, we have a couple of locations in Utah, one in Texas. We can keep doing what we do, and making life better for people. We want to add children. We’re working on a training center right now to where we can start [training] some dogs to help children. I want to get into [training] some service dogs that serve terminally ill children. When you’re little and you only have so much time on earth, certainly society should try to do everything they can to make that short time the best that it can be. And that’s my dream, to be able to help kids that have a limited time here.

How can people get involved?

They can go on our Facebook page, 4Paws4Patriots, they can go to 4paws4patriots.com, or they can call us. We always need volunteers in fundraising; skilled animal trainers are always a big plus, although we have people that come in and they volunteer just to help out with different things, and they stay and become animal trainers. That’s one of my big things, is we train a lot of animal trainers. Every person [who] goes through our program, we train them to train their dog. [It’s] not, one size fits all, we train it and hand it to you…that never works out as well as it could.

You can donate on the website, the Facebook page also. If you’re a veteran or a disabled first responder, you can get a hold of us. We provide all the training for free. We adopt somewhere northward of 150 dogs a year. I love using dogs out of shelters because, then, not only are you helping people but you’re [also] saving a dog. It’s a total win-win for everybody.

There you have it, readers! If you having experience training animals, or just an interest in that, or in helping veterans and first responders, reach out to 4Paws4Patriots and see how you can get involved! If you have some money to give, consider sending it their way. If you know someone who needs to know about this great organization, please share this post!

As always, If you like the images accompanying this story and would like to explore how visual storytelling could help your organization share the heart of its mission, please visit my website, www.soulvoyagerstudios.com, or send me an email at soulvoyagerstudios@gmail.com. To receive each blog post in your inbox when it is posted, as well as regular content regarding visual storytelling and inspiring ways to make a difference in this world, subscribe to my newsletter below!

Connecting Vets with Canine Companions - 4Paws4Patriots