(WGHP) — As Sam Kauffman works her dog through drill after drill in the rain, she likes the progress she sees.
“He’s basically following my body movement .. so I’m using that to my advantage,” Said Kauffman, who is an experienced trainer. “If I want him to sit, I’m going to place my hand over him and guide him and put my body on him. If I want him to walk to the side of me, I’ll guide him to the side of me.”
The dog she’s working with was named Charlie when she and her organization Charlie Mike got him from the Guilford County Animal Services.
Charlie Mike is an organization founded by Dustin Gladwell and Sarima Graci. Gladwell is a veteran and saw the need for providing dogs to veterans for their mental health. He saw a gap between simple companion animals that don’t have much training and the highly-trained service animals that are often trained for one or just a few, specific tasks and are expensive.
Charlie Mike takes dogs for about six to eight weeks, depending on the animal, and trains them to be therapy dogs for vets. Gladwell says they fill a huge gap in a veteran’s state of mind that traditional therapy often doesn’t.