Growing up in Iowa, he was surrounded by duck dogs. Labs and retrievers did blind work, retrieving ducks for friends and their fathers who hunted. Duck hunting was a popular pastime there, and although he was never fully part of it, he was always around it.
His fascination went deeper than that of most kids. He was awestruck by what the dogs could do. One memory stands out: walking the family's black lab in the middle of winter and watching the dog air-scent something, trail it for 15 or 20 feet, then snap its head down and dive six inches under the snow to find a half-eaten ketchup packet. He marveled at something so ordinary and yet so extraordinary.
He was equally drawn to the dogs' physical grit. They could break ice and get into cold water without panicking. They ran through thorn bushes and gnarly scrub brush that would stop a person from walking through. Their personalities captivated him too.
Then came Iraq. A bomb dog saved a group of Marines in one of the areas where he was operating. He calls it the light switch moment. His lifelong passion for dogs and his work suddenly connected, and he knew he needed to get into the field. He could not get enough of it.
For the first several years, it was all a hobby. He was not working with dogs in the military. Later, when he became an instructor, he found himself co-located with the kennel facility for the West Coast multi-purpose canine program, also known as the SEAL canine program. It was a serendipitous turn.
He introduced himself and began training with the team, hanging around and watching, asking questions and talking with the handlers. He was not involved in an official capacity at first. Eventually he went on a training trip with them through a decoy course and joined other training trips. That led to an offer of a position as a handler.
By then, however, he had already bought property in Texas. He had planned to get out of the military after contracting coccidioidomycosis, also known as valley fever, a lung disease that cost him 40 percent of his lung capacity. The military tried to medically retire him, and he maneuvered his way out of it long enough to earn a college degree and see both of his children born.
He stood at a crossroads: stay in and become a handler, or stick with his plan to get out and start his own training company. Two things weighed on him. He was not confident in his physical ability to keep doing the job given his lung condition, which still exists today. He did not want to be a liability to the men he served with.
He also tended to make big life decisions based on where he could get the most impact. Being a handler and deploying overseas with a dog would have been awesome, but he believed he could do more good owning a company that trained dozens, hundreds, or thousands of dogs and handlers. It was a tough call.
He would not call it a regret, but it is something he wishes he had done at least once. He notes that if he had become a handler, he probably would have stayed in for a full 20 years instead of 12, and he would not be where he is today. He does not dwell on it because he cannot change it.
He got out at the end of 2008 and started his company in the fall of 2009. He has been doing it ever since. Early on, the business was hyper-focused on government contracts, military working dogs, police dogs, and explosive detection dogs. For the first half-dozen years or so, it was almost exclusively geared toward that work.
The Warrior Dog Foundation started out of necessity. A couple of dogs needed to be retired, and they were going to be euthanized if he or others in his position would not take them. He took them in. It was not a plan. It was a need, and he simply acted on it.
Now the foundation has taken in hundreds of dogs and has been going for 15 years. The dogs do not have an official task, but that does not mean they lack stimulation. The key, he says, is the same as with people: good nutrition, lots of time outside, sunlight, exercise, physical stimulation, and some form of mental stimulation.
People often say their dog needs a job or gets bored. He sees it differently. Mental stimulation is mental stimulation. Humans can rationalize and put a title on having a job, but dogs simply need to be mentally satiated. As long as that is accomplished, the dogs are in a good place.
The work is still demanding. The dogs taken in are ones that have bitten people they were not supposed to bite. Their organizations reached a point where they chose euthanasia over continuing to work through the problems. That is where the foundation steps in.
He describes the intake as getting the Hannibal Lecters of the dog world right out of the gate. Nearly every staff member over the past 15 years, with only a few exceptions, has been bitten, most of them several times. These are not nips that break the skin. They are bites that can put a person in the hospital with 90 stitches.
The danger shapes how the facility is built and staffed. It is not a mom-and-pop doggy daycare with flimsy kennel panels. It is built like a supermax prison, with epoxy-coated concrete and rebar reinforcement. Staff are recruited from specific backgrounds suited to the work.
The kennel facility has 30 spaces, and they are always full. There is a waiting list of a dozen or so dogs at any given time. Walking a loop around the facility and seeing 30 sets of eyes looking back is deeply rewarding. Every one of those dogs would be dead if the foundation had not taken them in.
It is tough work, and it is dangerous, but it is rewarding. That is the trade-off he has accepted since the day he said he would take in the dogs no one else would.