When former U.S. Marine Master Sgt. William Pieczarka entered the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Pendleton for injuries sustained in previous combat tours, his psychologist suggested the Freedom Dogs program.
That’s how he met his best friend Ethan, a now 7-year-old Labrador.
His service dog helps him with his social anxiety and guides him through the day, he said.
“He brings back the joy,” said Pieczarka, 44, who lives in Massachusetts. “There’s a lot of dark places we’ve gone in our lives and experiences we’ve been through, and this is what starts bringing us back into normality and enjoyment of life.”
Since its founding in 2009, the Oceanside-based nonprofit Freedom Dogs has been helping service members who are being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and other physical impairments, with trained service dogs.
On Sunday, the organization hosted what it called a “family reunion” at the Lakehouse Resort in San Marcos ahead of its annual sold-out fundraising golf tournament to be held Monday at Fairbanks Ranch Country Club in Rancho Santa Fe.
“Once you come into Freedom Dogs, you become part of our family,” said Executive Director Peggy Poore. Former service members and their families flew in from all over the country to attend both events. “So it’s a way for them to reconnect and to build those relationships and encouragement, support, and camaraderie.”
The dogs are trained for two years to be part of the program. Once they’re paired with a service member, they receive additional training with specific, individualized tasks that will help the participant, Poore said. The organization’s training center is located outside of Camp Pendleton.
“They can wake up a person from a nightmare, turn on the lights, wake the person up and when the person goes back to sleep, they can turn the lights back off,” she said. “They can remind a person when it’s time to take medications, they can alert them if their alert is going off and they’re not waking up.
“And in public, a lot of the things are alerting them if someone is coming behind them,” she said. “They can detect the scent of when the person is becoming anxious, and they take their nose and they bump it against the leg, and if the person doesn’t respond, then they start climbing in the lap to say, ‘hey, you know what? I’m right here. It’s okay, let’s calm down’.”
Retired Marine Corps Sgt. Richard Gonzalez, 43, said his late service dog, Charles, who he met through the program, helped him deal with PTSD after being wounded in Iraq.
“Getting introduced to the program allowed me to recover, and to learn how to be able to utilize my service dog in everyday life, so that I could be able to do tasks that were needed, such as going and getting my medications, being able to attend my medical appointments, which I had at least about five to six throughout the week.”
With the program’s help, he overcame his fear of dogs, which he said came from being in combat where enemies used dogs against them. He now runs a behavior and education center for dogs in Newport, Wash.
Gonzalez recalled how Charles supported him through his retirement process.
“It was a period of my life that was harder than any combat tour that I ever went on,” he said. “And with it, I had my best friend going with me everywhere I needed to go. I felt safe. Just like in combat, we have what we call ‘battle buddies’, and so, Charles was my ‘battle buddy’ through probably one of the most critical times in my life.”
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