Stephen Nelson was sitting outside Panera Bread a year and a half ago and saw this dog sitting at the table next to him. He looked into the dog’s eyes and the dog looked back.
“There was something in this animal’s eyes that really attracted me,” Nelson said.
It was something he needed.
Nelson joined the military as an 18-year-old and within less than a month, he was ordered to go to Vietnam.
In June 1969, he stepped foot on the ground of South Vietnam and was convinced he wouldn’t make it out of there alive.
“Being that close to death, you get that sense of death that’s almost a suffocating feeling,” he said. “I get times that I feel like I’m suffocating and I get triggered with the emotions from the past. The replay starts happening and I get feelings; the smells, the senses are so heightened.”
The Silver Star recipient suffered a lot from PTSD and those emotions were affecting his entire life.
Although Nelson didn’t know much about service dogs, he was aware that people used dogs to help them with emotional things.
“When I started looking into information on a service dog, I started getting very discouraged because I couldn’t find any way of actually being able to practically get one because I wasn’t financially able to do that,” he said.
One day, he came across America’s VetDogs. Soon after he found himself filling out an application knowing that through the organization, there would be no financial burden on him being able to get a service dog.
America’s VetDogs was created in 2003 to answer the need for specially trained assistance dogs for combat-wounded service members who have served honorably, regardless of when or where they served.
The program was created to give veterans easy access to the best service possible to improve veterans’ lives.
Some time later, America’s VetDogs called him and told him they had a match for him and after 10 days of training, he would be able to take his dog home.
“I’m not ashamed to say I’d actually break down and cry just thinking about meeting the dog,” Nelson said. “Not only had I been waiting over a year for her, basically I felt like I had been waiting 46 years, ever since I’d been through the combat trauma.”
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The night before he met his new service dog, Nelson said he felt like a kid at Christmas and had so much anticipation of the gift he was about to receive.
“That’s what I see her as an amazing gift,” he said. “So much work has gone into getting this dog.”
His dog was something that had been missing in the healing process for Nelson.
He said he appreciates America’s VetDogs because they continually check in on him and are constantly available to give input when needed.
“It wasn’t like ‘here’s the dog, good luck, glad you came.’ It was a connection, being part of a family and knowing you have the support behind you and that means everything,” he said.
When Nelson goes to sleep, he said he wakes up three or four times a night from the dreams, and every time he does, his service dog wakes up and is aware of him and rests her head on his mattress to let him know she is there.
“We are a team now,” he said. “She is going to really help me but I’m also going to really help her too, you know, to fulfill her purpose.”
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