When he got out of the Marines in 2013, Alex Maus carried mental scars that are all too common among American servicemen and women. The Afghanistan veteran said that he was more withdrawn and irritable when he came home to Massachusetts, and nervous around crowds. Then, in April of that year, he was at the Boston Marathon bombing, compounding the post-traumatic stress disorder he was struggling to control.
Doctors with the local Home Base program eventually suggested he get a therapy dog to help him. He applied to several providers and in March — after 18 months — he was matched with a dog at Arapahoe County’s Freedom Service Dogs.
After a meeting her twice in Colorado, Maus flew home with a rescued cattle dog-husky mix named Pastel in June and the two have gone everywhere together since.
“We look out for each other is one of the main things,” Maus said. “It’s like being back overseas and having someone watch your back and having someone to be responsible for. You really miss that camaraderie, and she does that for me.”
Freedom Service Dogs moved last month from its longtime home in Englewood to a building more than twice its size at 7193 S. Dillon Court, just east of the Centennial Airport. The 22,000-square-foot facility offers numerous benefits including climate-controlled kennels, five times as much indoor training space and an outdoor play area with artificial turf for the service and therapy dogs in training to frolic on a few times each day, as opposed to the pea gravel at Freedom’s old digs, said Erin Conley, the nonprofit’s spokeswoman.
The building has an elevator and is more Americans with Disabilities Act accessible than its predecessor, an important improvement when matching clients with multiple sclerosis, serious spinal cord injuries or other disabilities with service dogs, Conley said.
More than anything, the building provides room to grow, expand programming and serve more clients, including more veterans like Maus, staff members say. Conley said more than 50 people are currently on the wait list.
“Our ultimate goal is to take in more dogs so we can help more people,” Freedom’s president and CEO Michele Ostrander said. “Our wait list is 18 months to more than 2 years and that is just too long to wait for a service dog when you really need one.”
Gregg Brand has been a volunteer trainer with the nonprofit for five years. He said the Englewood space, located along a heavily trafficked stretch of Union Avenue, was not an ideal place to take the dogs for walks or otherwise socialize and prepare them for life as a service or therapy animal.
“This is a less stressful environment for the dogs to learn in, and I think we’re going to see a higher success rate of dogs getting to that level that they can be placed because of this facility,” Brand said.
Freedom connected 29 people with dogs in 2015, including eight veterans. Ostrander hopes the nonprofit will be able to ramp up to 70 annual client-service dog matches five or six years from now. She credited a generous network of supporters for contributing to a six-year, $5.9 million capital campaign that made the move possible.
Freedom is unique, staff members say, because all of its dogs come from shelters or rescue networks instead of being bred. One in three graduate to become a service or therapy animal, and the rest are adopted out, Conley said. Freedom provides lifetime follow-up and support service to clients, even if a trainer has to fly to another state to teach a client’s dog a new skill. It also bumps existing clients to the front of its wait list when it comes time for their dog to retire from daily service and a “successor dog” is needed.
Maus said he hopes more veterans like him can be connected with service dogs and other alternative therapies, as opposed to be treated with medications or, worse, resorting to alcohol, like one of his friends did before he died.
“Whenever anyone asks me what I want for birthdays, Christmas, I just say, ‘Donate to Freedom,’ ” he said. “A service dog makes an absolutely tangible impact on people’s lives.”
For more information visit freedomservicedogs.org or call 303-922-6231.