Forty-seven veterans served by SMSD in its 1st decade+
“We have served 47 wounded veterans and their families with service dogs,” said Mike Kitchens, a U.S. Army Vietnam Conflict veteran, who along with his wife, Linda Kitchens, started SMSD — a non-profit organization providing these dogs to disabled veterans in Tennessee and portions of Alabama and Georgia and other Southern states— in their Lenoir City home in 2010.
With the impact of IED explosives and veterans returning home with brain injuries and limb loss, the couple realized how they could fill a huge need. Mike Kitchens shared the couple’s journey as featured speaker during a recent early afternoon Wednesday meeting of The Rotary Club of Farragut in Fox Den Country Club.
With SMSD now having 190 volunteers, “We didn’t have any dogs, but we had experience with service dogs — my wife and I and other folks,” Kitchens said. ”We sat down and decided we were going to do a service dog organization to serve wounded veterans.”
As for training, “It takes two years — 15 to 18 hours — to train a dog,” said Kitchens, whose canine training center still is located in Lenoir City. “We start with puppies.”
He added each dog is a $22,000 to $25,000 investment, using Golden Retrievers or Labrador Retrievers or Retriever mixes because of the character of those breeds.
Laurie Birt, SMSD board member at large who also serves as community events director and canine handler, demonstrated the dogs’ abilities with Hooligan, an SMSD ambassador.
“Hooligan was named by the parents who lost a son (John Hargraves) in combat,” Kitchens said.
While the parents now are deceased, they named the dog Hooligan “because in Afghanistan, (their son’s) platoon were the Hooligans, and they take great, great, great pride in that name.”
Birt said Hooligan can perform more than 40 tasks.
“Hooligan knows all of these tasks, as do all of the dogs that we train,” she said. “They learn tasks that help them make it safe for our veterans.
“(The veterans) all have some sort of mobility issue — perhaps a brain injury, spinal cord injury. They may have limb loss,” Birt said.
“A big part of what our dogs do is picking up dropped items,” she added.
Hooligan demonstrated how he picks up items, such as keys, shoes, caps and phones, which he can do, either on a carpet or tile floor.
The dogs are trained with the chosen veteran before he/she bring home a SMS Dog.
For more information about SMSD, visit www.smokymountainservicedogs.org
