It has often been said that if you do something you like for a living, you will never work a day in your life. Vicki Limbaugh, who co-founded Arkansas Service Paws in Beebe with her husband, Travis, knows well the wisdom of that adage, having performed a labor of love by training service dogs for veterans and first responders dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.
As for her deep understanding of the lives and challenges of her clients and their families, those are insights she has gained in the most personal way possible.
“I’m a veteran. I was U.S. Air Force for 16 1/2 years, medically retired in 2007,” she said. “I do have PTSD.”
Vicki dealt with her condition through use of a service dog, which she trained with the help of another training organization. When that group announced it was disbanding a few years ago, she knew the void that it would leave in the continuum of services for people looking to cope with PTSD as she had. In 2022, Arkansas Service Paws was born.
“When the previous organization announced that it was going away, I knew the mission was too important to just end,” she said. “That mission is we mentor veterans and first responders and their qualifying dependents to train their own service dog, and we do it at no cost.”
The idea for Arkansas Service Paws to offer training to dependents grew out of the knowledge that merely helping one member of the family was not as effective as helping the entire household. It also grew out of the fact that children of veterans and first responders often develop PTSD right alongside of their parents and thereby could benefit from a service animal of their own.
“You can’t just help one person. You have to help the family. Otherwise you’re just deflecting the situation; you’re not really trying to improve it,” said Vicki, whose teenage daughter suffers from the condition. “PTSD affects the veteran living in the home but also children. When the child gets a service dog, it eases some of that burden off of the veteran or first responder.”
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental health condition triggered by a traumatic event either lived or witnessed, the Mayo Clinic states. Symptoms of the condition commonly include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event.
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, about 5 percent of the U.S. adult population experiences PTSD symptoms in any given year, which shows the vast majority of people who experience traumatic events do not develop the condition. Among those who do, however, women are twice as likely than men to struggle with the condition. Military personnel suffer from PTSD at significantly higher rates than the civilian population, the VA noted, and unsurprisingly, personnel who serve in war zones are at substantially higher risk of PTSD than those who are not deployed.
A properly trained service dog assists a person dealing with PTSD in a number of ways, said Travis, himself a 23-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force.
“The dogs are trained to mitigate the PTSD through a variety of different tasks that they perform,” he said. “It can be as simple as tugging them to lead them out of a room or applying pressure in certain spots to interrupt a panic attack. They do that by either pawing the person, licking them in the face, whatever they need to do to get that person’s attention.”
Founded in 2022, Arkansas Service Paws helps veterans and first responders, along with qualified dependents, train service dogs to assist with PTSD.
The dogs can sense their owners’ changing state of mind via smell. Not unlike dogs trained to assist patients who have cancer or diabetes, Arkansas Service Paws graduates can sense chemical changes in their handlers that suggest an attack is imminent.
“Dogs can smell the pheromones that we put off,” Vicki said. “When they start to ramp up, we train the dogs to recognize the change in those pheromones like a warning device. They know that when those pheromones start going, they need to go to work.”
In addition to the training sessions themselves, Arkansas Service Paws provides other services to clients, starting with getting them set up with the right service dog.
“If a veteran or first responder comes to our class and they need a dog, we’ll help them find a dog most of which come from animal shelters around central Arkansas,” Travis said. “The dogs have to pass a temperament test, which includes going out to a pet-friendly location and trying to startle them in a store.”
Travis said the couple is less concerned with breed categories, saying desirable qualities that contribute to the animal’s suitability can present in many different types of dogs. That said, there are some breeds that are not as practical for service work as others.
“There are some breeds that we choose to avoid training for our program, but that’s because of the training method we use, not because the dog can’t do it,” he said. “If it’s a dog that requires a really strong, experienced handler, like your protection dogs, we won’t do that. We also don’t do pit bulls because there’s a lot of bans on them in cities, which would limit where it could go with its owner.”
Training classes occur year-round and take the form of group instruction and field trips to apply concepts in real-world crowds and settings. The training curriculum takes about 13 months to complete, on average, but just like the code of the battlefield, Vicki said Arkansas Service Paws does not leave any comrades behind.
“It varies because it’s client centered,” she said. “We don’t graduate them until they are ready. Once they’re in our program, they’re in our program, you know? We’re not going to drop them just because they’re having some issues. Now, we’ll disqualify a dog occasionally due to reactivity or some other events, but the handler is allowed to come back with a new dog if they choose. If our clients need the extra time, we take it.”
To learn more or to make a donation, find Arkansas Service Paws on Facebook.
AY’s 2024 Pet Pages Sponsored by Doggone Good Pet Stain & Odor Remover — Blaine Freeman, owner
doggonegoodcleaners.com • 501-912-9336
Scan to purchase!
READ ALSO: Arkansas’ Hendrix Yancey Wins Best Supporting Young Actress
