I guess you could say it all started when I was only 5 years old and decided to leave my sister’s baseball game without notice. The ensuing panic and search finally came to and when my mom found me a couple miles away at my Grandma’s house.

While playing with my favorite GI Joe that came with a military dog, and in a manner as if all was good in the world, my reply to my mom when asked how I got there was “An army truck brought me here”.

Fast forward 30 years. I’m in Afghanistan with my Mine Detection Dog (MDD) Homer. Because of our success, the Taliban placed a bounty on Homer and called him the Black and White Devil. We were nearing the end of our year-long deployment when we barely escaped a complex ambush .

We both survived that ambush as well as 160+ combat missions. But we came back with invisible wounds that forced medical retirement for both of us.

My next chapter of life included working at the nation’s leading provider of service dogs for veterans. About a year later, I ventured off on my own to privately train companion dogs, therapy dogs, and service dogs. The primary focus and most of my time was service dog training.