Dogs Help Veterans Cope with PTSD

Posted on January 9, 2014January 9, 2022 by Lynn Goya

What if you discovered a way to save two lives at the same time? That’s what Cathy King, a long-time animal rights activist found she was able to do when she paired animal rescue dogs with veterans who needed the love and guidance of a trained rescue dog. Dogs offer their owners unconditional love, along with tools to help veteran through the mind-bending experiences of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Service dogs help veterans with PTSD, panic disorders, anxiety disorders, depression and other conditions. Studies have found that service dogs trained specifically to be paired with veterans can reduce the severity of PTSD symptoms, suicidal behaviors as well as panic and anxiety disorders.

Formerly the Executive Director of Friends of Animals, King always had an interest in pet therapy. Animals, especially dogs, have been shown to improve the well-being of older people, hospitalized patients and heart attack victims. Simply petting a dog can lower blood pressure. Bringing a dog into a children’s cancer ward or an assisted living home has been shown to boost patients’ moods and their social interaction. A UCLA study found that dog owners need less medical care for stress-related aches and pains than people without pets. Some studies show that pet owners actually live longer than non-pet owners.

Armed with this knowledge, King decided to start a nonprofit, Canines with a Cause, in 2011 that would rescue dogs from shelters, then train the dogs to help veterans with PTSD who are returning from war to cope with their symptoms. One in four Iraq and Afghanistan veterans experiences PTSD, depression and/or anxiety, making it difficult to reintegrate into civilian life. A companion dog can help heal the invisible wounds of war.

There is a huge demand for dogs to be matched with different populations, says King but she decided to concentrate specifically on veterans. “Dogs for autistic children need to be trained very differently than a see-alert dog, for instance. It didn’t make sense to try to be everything; it wasn’t working as a model. That’s why we ended up focusing on veterans. Now we are not trying to train a number of different types of dogs.”

The nonprofit focuses on three programs. Pawsitive Partnership: Veterans, that takes rescued dogs and pairs them with veterans who work together through the Canines with a Cause training program to meet the veteran’s needs. These free training courses can last as long as the veteran likes, giving both the veteran and the dog time to learn and practice the Canine Life and Social Skills curriculum.

The Comfort Crew: Veterans goes one step further, training veterans to take their dogs out to aid other veterans in need. The therapy animals are trained to go to VA hospitals and assisted living programs to provide comfort and love to veterans unable to care for a dog on their own.

Most recently, Canines with a Cause partnered with the Utah State Prison Women’s Correctional Facility to teach female prisoners how to train service or assistance dogs for veterans. There are more than 2.4 million people in prison, more than half of whom suffer from mental illness. This program allows these inmates to feel as if they are contributing to society as well as garnering the benefits of caring for and working with service animals as they train them. The Pawsitive Healing Prison Program allows the animals to live with the inmates, providing the women with a much-needed opportunity to love and cherish another living being. Trained dogs are then matched with veterans based on personality traits, size, energy level and other characteristics. “Most of these women are there for life, so they have very little interaction or touching. They really do bond with the dogs,” King said.

On the rare occasions when a match doesn’t work out, the dog is never returned to the shelter, King emphasized. Instead, the dog is matched with another veteran or an outside family. To find out more or to donate to this Utah organization, go to www.canineswithacause.com.

By Lynn Goya

Lynn Goya is a regional best-selling author and Emmy-nominated writer who covers veterans, business, people, the environment, and families for regional, national and international publications including USA Today, Audubon and Outdoor Family. With many family members in the military, including an uncle who was a POW in WW II, she has long been an advocate for military men and women.

Published in Veteran Journal

5-24-2014

4 Top Tax Tips for VA Loan Borrowers

Posted on January 7, 2013January 17, 2022 by Lynn Goya

Many people dread it, but it comes like clockwork every year – TAX TIME! Tax Tips for VA Loan Borrowers can take advantage of many tax deductions that can result in paying less to the IRS, or getting a refund, when filing their taxes.

Veterans who obtained VA purchase loans in 2012 can write off these costs:

Mortgage Interest
Discount Points
Origination Fees

Tax Tips for VA Loan Borrowers

The “big 3” mortgage write-offs can put many veterans who use them well over the standard deduction on their 1040 tax returns for 2012. VA borrowers, like other homeowners, are allowed to write off ALL of the mortgage interest they pay every year. For the initial couple of years, almost all of your mortgage payments will go toward interest. Therefore, this deduction is pretty sizable for new homeowners.

Discount points and origination fees associated with your 2012 home purchase can also be deducted – even if you weren’t actually the one to fork over the dough. VA loans allow for up to all closing costs and up to 4% concessions to be seller-paid. Even if the seller or someone else pays discounts and origination for the buyer, the buyer can still itemize them on the tax return.

Deduct Interest through a VA Cash-out Refinance

A VA Cash-out Refinance Loan can enable veterans with credit card debt to turn their high-interest debt into a low-interest mortgage payment with a tax benefit to boot. Most credit cards carry an interest rate of around 21%. The going mortgage interest rate is currently around 3.5 percent. Veterans benefit twice when using the cash-out program, because they can reduce their monthly payments on their credit card debts and take the tax deduction on the mortgage interest paid. When the VA cash-out program is used, the mortgage balance increases to reflect the cash taken from the home’s equity.

No Capital Gains for Most Home Sellers

Married homeowners filing jointly can sell a home for up to $500,000 tax free. They must occupy the home for two years. Capital gains can be avoided even if a different home is sold every two years. Single filers are permitted to sell a home up to $250,000 with the same tax-free benefits. As long as the home is used as a primary residence, a requirement for VA borrowing anyway, many veterans avoid paying taxes after selling a home. For active duty military members frequently reassigned, this can be an especially handy tax deduction.

For more on VA loans, contact a specialized lender.

By Lynn Goya

Published in Veterans Journal

1-7-2013

Fishing Tales and Friendship

Posted on January 7, 2007January 30, 2022 by Lynn Goya

Fishing Tales and Friendship

The wind chimes were going mad Saturday morning, a clear signal for my husband, Alan, to stay in bed instead of rising before dawn to put on his waders to go fishing. Lake Mead’s proximity was one of the major reasons we moved to Boulder City fifteen years ago. Most weekend mornings will find Alan in his float tube on the lake. The shore fishermen (mostly men) get there when the sky is still full of stars, float in the water or stand in their armpit-high waders, casting their lines, letting their voices carry to each other across the pre-dawn blackness, waiting for the Great White striper to strike.

Food, Fish Tacos and Friends

Alan’s been fishing and feeding his friends since he was a boy growing up in Hawaii. Instead of organized sports, fishing absorbed their afternoons and summers. They’d fish, free dive, spearfish, and surf, bringing home enough seafood to fill their freezers, their friends’ freezers, their neighbors’ freezers until the pots of everyone they knew were overflowing. So, in the middle of a desert, Lake Mead casts an irresistible lure. Here the variety of fish is minimal, but Alan’s fish tacos, featuring hand-caught striper, are legendary, especially among BC kids.

Unbreakable Lines

Over the past decade the invisible shore fishers whose voices call out to each other over the darkness have become linked. In the predawn blackness their voices skim the water in a bawdy exchange of tall tales, daily fishing tips and updates on the figmentary notches on their fishing poles. The voices have also told of cancer, Alan’s open heart surgery, divorce, death and financial destruction.

Fishing Tales and Friendship

It’s light out and I take my binoculars to look for shore birds. While I look for heron, eagles, grebes and ibis, Alan seeks his friends, many ensconced in their trucks to keep warm as they watch their lines. “They’ll worry if I don’t check in,” he says, which is more than I can say about my birds.

By Lynn Goya

Lynn Goya favorite destination: Spirit Mountain

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