By George Kaminsky

Northwest Battle Buddies is marking 14 years of service as Veterans Day approaches, with 315 Veterans living with post-traumatic stress disorder now paired with professionally trained service dogs. The Battle Ground, Washington, nonprofit expects to add 14 more teams this fall, bringing its total to 329 and counting.

Every dog is provided at no cost to the Veteran. The next 14 Veterans are preparing to meet their dogs in late October and are set to graduate in early November. The milestone arrives ahead of Veterans Day on Nov. 11, a natural moment to look at what the organization has built since it was founded in 2012.

The organization began with one dog trainer’s desire to give back. Founder and CEO Shannon Walker is an award-winning dog trainer and the daughter of a Veteran, and she grew up understanding that the freedoms Americans enjoy come at a cost. She combined her professional expertise with a wish to serve those who had sacrificed for their country, and in 2012 she founded Northwest Battle Buddies.

“My dad was a Veteran, so I grew up with a deep respect for the men and women who serve and an understanding that freedom is never free,” Walker said. “When I realized I could use what I knew about dogs to help Veterans struggling with PTSD regain their independence and their lives, I knew this was what I was meant to do. Fourteen years and hundreds of teams later, that purpose has never changed.”

The dogs are trained to perform specific tasks that mitigate symptoms associated with PTSD. They can wake a Veteran from a nightmare, interrupt an anxiety attack, redirect a flashback and alert to adrenaline. In public, a dog can provide a social barrier that gives its handler more personal space, and it can also perform pressure therapy. Each of those tasks is aimed at helping a Veteran return to the routines of daily life.

Preparation is thorough. Each dog undergoes five months of intensive training, followed by five additional weeks of training with its Veteran handler. That final stretch brings the two together so the team graduates ready to work as a unit, with the dog’s skills matched to the needs of the person it will serve.

The results have drawn the attention of clinical researchers. A 2025 peer-reviewed study examining the role of psychiatric service dogs in managing PTSD found clinically significant reductions in PTSD symptoms. Participants also saw reductions in co-occurring depression and gains in resilience, life satisfaction and emotional well-being. Sixty percent of the service dog teams in the study were Northwest Battle Buddies pairings, which places the organization’s graduates at the center of the research.

Walker’s work now reaches beyond her own organization. She also serves as Executive Director of the Association of Service Dog Providers, which extends her leadership and expertise to the broader service dog community and connects the lessons learned in Battle Ground with providers across the field.

For Walker, the totals are measured in lives rather than numbers. “Every number represents a Veteran whose life has been changed through the partnership with their service dog,” she said. “We’ve seen Veterans begin sleeping through the night again, return to places they had stopped going and reconnect with their families and communities. As we prepare to welcome our next class, our mission remains the same: to help Veterans reclaim their freedom, independence and hope.”

The outcomes she describes are the kind that matter most to Veterans and the people around them: a full night of sleep, a trip to a store or a restaurant that had felt out of reach, and more time with family and friends. Each one begins when a Veteran and a dog meet for the first time, which is the moment the 14 members of this fall’s class are about to experience.

Veterans interested in the program can find an application page on the Northwest Battle Buddies website, along with a video series and a library of resources for Veterans. The organization’s site also lists ways for supporters to donate and to follow its work on social media, giving the community several ways to take part in the mission as the next class graduates.

Veterans Day gives communities a chance to say thank you, and the work in Battle Ground offers a concrete way to honor that spirit. Fourteen years in, the organization continues to grow by the same method it started with: one trained dog and one Veteran at a time, with each partnership giving a Veteran a steady companion for the days ahead.

As the new teams complete their training and graduate in early November, Northwest Battle Buddies will move closer to 329 partnerships. The program’s approach has stayed consistent from the start, with professionally trained dogs, no cost to the Veteran and a focus on freedom, independence and hope. Stories like this one, about service dogs and the Veterans they help, are the kind that make a newsroom want to tell them, and 14 years of steady, practical service is well worth celebrating. Veterans and supporters can learn more at northwestbattlebuddies.org.

Source: Northwest Battle Buddies. Image: Northwest Battle Buddies.