Speaker 1: This is Pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: Welcome to this week's episode of Loving Animals. But doctor
Robin Ganser, I'm your host, and I'm so thrilled that
you've tuned into this week's podcast featuring our favorite subject,
Loving Animals. Well, today we're not only going to talk
about our love for animals, but we're going to talk
about how animals can be one end of a healing leash. Yes,
we're talking about our service dog and a shelter program
which is quite stunning, and how it is able to
impact the lives of veterans, those who serve on the
front lines of the war in Terror. And today I
am so thrilled and really truly honored to interduce to
you our guest. Our guest is Chris Ford. He serves
as the CEO of the National Association of Veterans Serving
Organizations in AVSO. His leadership, his passion, really his entrepreneurship
has moved in a VSO from really a concept to
a public launch just in twenty fourteen, and this group
is now really answering the long demanded call for a
national collaborative for the nation's forty thousand plus military and
Veterans serving organizations. Chris has developed and implemented a strategic
direction of this organization in response to really the complex
needs of veterans and military families. Chris is an amazing veteran,
a twenty year Air Force veteran, retiring in twenty fourteen
from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he's served in
the Chairman's Office of Warrior and Family Support. Chris has
leveraged his incredible expertise and perspectives on veteran reintegration to
assist and help communities across eighteen states seeking to improve
their support from military families. He himself has served in
nearly a dozen countries around the globe, supporting operations Southern Watch,
Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Chris holds a bachelor's degree
from the United States Air Force Academy and Academy grad
two master's degree, one from the University of South Carolina
which I love USC and one from the Naval Postgraduate School.
And additionally, his incredible pedigree includes being a graduate of
the Air Force Squadron Office for School, the FBI's National Academy,
Air Command and Staff College, on and on. This gentleman
is an incredible and incredible patriot, incredible hero, and I'm
so delighted to introduce you to Chris Ford. Chris, Welcome
to our show.
Speaker 3: Thanks, doctor Ganzer. I'm really honored to be with you
today and I'm really honored to share with you some
of the things we're doing together to help veterans and
military families.
Speaker 2: Wow. Please do call me Robin and Chris. It is
amazing to meet you. And again I have to congratulate
you on the incredibly successful launch of in AVSO, the
National Association of Veterans Serving Organizations, the Veterans Serving Community.
I did not realize it was forty thousand plus organizations
serving veterans and military families. That's remarkable. Just goes to
show how America really does support those who are serving
in our country. It's remarkable. But to have a national
collaborative for this broad and complex group of entities is
truly needed, and I congratulate you on this effort.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Can you explain a little bit about the work you
do it in a VSO and the mission certainly so.
Speaker 3: At NAVSO, as we like to call it for short,
we're squarely focused on transforming the veteran service marketplace into
a much more effective mechanism where veterans and military families
can find quality supports to live productive lives. We do
this in a couple of ways, but primarily we like
to scan the marketplace for leading challenges that plague these
families from thrive being looking for opportunities where we might
be able to help, and then when we find certain opportunities,
we focus on those by delivering innovations that might act
as accelerators for impact for veterans and military families. As
you described, it's a really broad marketplace with thousands of
private organizations plus government agencies at the local, state, and
federal level, and so it's a very complex web that
we try to help scan through and make things a
little bit easier for those families to find the supports
they need when they fall into crisis, so that those
crises are rare, short and non reoccurring.
Speaker 2: So very important because it is so complex. I think
if I was sitting at home as a military spouse
wondering how to get my partner at service doll that
would be challenging as well, and so having an incredible
entity such as yours really helping veterans find their support
has to make such a big difference. It's such a
noble cause. Chris, with such a broad focus, what are
some some of the challenges that veterans face after serving
our country?
Speaker 3: Well, great question, Robin. I mean, there are many, ranging
from unemployment to homelessness or financial crises to mental health
concerns such as depression. But the majority of these issues
at their core really relate to the psychology of their
transition from leaving the military to becoming a veteran. And
it's not just a veteran, it's their whole family that's
been with them on this military service journey. Let me
explain that a little bit more clearly. Most veterans undergoing
separation from the military are taught to view this military
to civilian transition really as a basket of economic choices.
One has to secure a job, pursue perhaps additional education
or vocational training, maybe relocate, secure housing, access new healthcare
and benefits, all with the intent of assuming some new
role as a satisfied, productive and purposeful civilian. But recent leaders,
myself included, have been proposing a different concept that this
seria to civilian transition is less about a basket of
economic choices. It's more about a psychology and cultural evolution
in which the veteran needs to find a path of
re orientation and self redefinition, sometimes while acclimatizing to new
definitions of wellness. But it's really about them moving quite
abruptly from a collectivist community to an individualist one. And
life transitions are some of the most challenging and most
impactful and often misunderstood experiences in the human condition. And
the key difference is that transition at its core is
a psychological process. These families and the veterans themselves lose
a lot of their identity by taking that military uniform off,
where they were part of a bigger team around one mission,
all wearing the same jersey, if you will, week after
weekday after day, working for a higher purpose. And when
they take that off, it's really hard sometimes to deal
with that psychological and cultural change.
Speaker 2: That has to be an unbelievable feeling. You know, I
think about our first responders at American You may as well,
when they have spent that time serving after Hurricane Irma
and Harvey. I know that it was tough when they
went back home and again you take off that uniform.
It makes such sense. Why you put it? Assuming that
you know, some of our veterans really struggle to overcome
these psychological challenges which have to be so significant. What
are the causes and the symptoms?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, not all veterans are created equal, and
not all veterans go through the same transition challenges. So
while most veterans successfully navigate their transition, some in a
matter of weeks, some in a matter of months with
little or no supports required, there are some veterans, especially
those suffering from trauma or post traumatic stress or traumatic
brain injury, that need additional helps such as therapy, medication,
or even service dogs. And so it's the causes from
their military experiences that lead to some of these mental
health challenges and those symptoms. Like anyone else who's experienced
non combat related trauma or exposure to certain incidents has
those same types of symptoms, which may include, you know,
as I mentioned, depression, or traumatic stress, or even a
brain injury. So they vary. And one thing I want
to caution here is that while the circumstances leading to
those symptoms may be different than non US military veterans,
the modalities of treatment for those are almost universally the same.
So whether your post traumatic stress comes from a car
accident or from combat exposure, the modalities of treatment are
usually the same, and it's really important that we recognize that.
So we don't do a disservice to the veteran community
to think that the causes of our challenges means that
their treatments have to be so unique. We can all
do this together by applying a lot of the same
methodologies we use for any person suffering from a mental
health disorder.
Speaker 2: That's impactful. That's so impactful. Thanks for tuning into this
week's episode of Loving Animals, We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Loving Animals with your host Robin ganzart Well,
let's switch gears a little bit because I know one
of the ways that you and I have have shared
a passionate interest for is the alternative therapy, such as
working with service dogs. Can you share with our listeners
about American Humane and your incredible organization's joint effort relating
to veterans and service dogs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're excited about this too. It's been a great
partnership for us, as you know, but the audience may
not know that. Dating back all the way to a
summit we helped American Humane facilitate in September of te sixteen.
We've been walking alongside of you and your staff find
opportunities to improve veteran access to quality service dogs so
at NAVSO as part of our innovations model, we use
a human centered design methodology where we help partners develop
a roadmap of ways that organizations can really make positive change.
I think many of us who are trying to solve
complex social issues go to the same convenience and meetings
and talking around the same issue, but really not making
much progress. Whereas our methodology, using this human centered design,
we handed back to American Humane and roadmap based on
stakeholder and thought leader feedback from that summit to say, here,
American Humane, if you want to improve veteran access to
quality service dogs supports, here are a few things that
you could do. And one of those recommendations and one
of those challenges that we're excited to partner with you
on is what we've called Together Operations Service Dog Access
and this free service for veterans who suffer for mental
health issues that already have a service dog, we walk
them through an application process that leads to a third
party assessment and if they pass that assessment, they receive
a credential for the veteran and his or her dog
to reflect that they are an ADA compliant team, and
once credentialed, this team is then added to our national
registry and as we expect, they will be able to
move around the nation in public spaces such as restaurants
and hotels, and even on airlines more confidently with this
new gold standard ID that we expect industry to be
looking for to say, this is a legitimate service animal,
even if you don't see a physical disability in its owner,
you should know that it is ADA compliant and should
be afforded the access offered by the ADA or even
the ACAA if they're on an airline.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that's absolutely such a brilliant, brilliant
program operations service dog access. You know, you and I
both have seen and heard this arsonal stories of veterans
with service dogs being denied access to flights, denied access
to restaurants, embarrassed, you know, in public through various conversations
with the service workers, not letting them have access, not
letting them be able to go about a more normal life,
which was the whole purpose of a service dog to
begin with. So this program is going to be so exciting.
I was reading over the weekend where Delta, one of
the airlines, just really start to tighten their policies around
service dogs. And a group like Delta, and a company
like Delta is going to so welcome operation service dog access.
I believe that so many people get service dogs emotional
support animals all confused, and I think something like this
is going to help clear the confusion. Chris, I don't
know if he'd recalled, but there was even an emotional
support turkey on a plane on a Delta flight last year.
So some people have taken these and call them service
animals when you and I both know that turkeys not
gone through the rigorous training that a service dogs has
to go through. And gosh, there was a turkey, there
was a duck, And of course it's funny on social
media to see those photos, but you and I both
know it's not funny when the reaction to such incidences
causes a knee jerk reaction which denies a service dog
with a legitimate service dog with a legitimate wounded warrior
access to public services. And that does sometimes become the
knee jerk reaction. But I appaud Delta for putting more
rigor and saying it's only their systems only apply to
service dog because I'm sure everyone's going to look forward
to Operations Service Dog Access. Where can veterans and service
dog providers learn more about Operation Service Dog Access in
this exciting new partnership.
Speaker 3: Well great, We're actually just this month launched our official
website for this initiative, and it is wwwservicedogaccess dot org
and anyone who's interested in this innovative program can go
there to learn more about it. Veterans who've served their
country who have a service dog as one of their
modalities for treatment can apply to go through our pilot
phase of this project. Anyone who works around the country
in various industries from hotels or restaurants or even the
airlines as we've discussed, can also go here to learn
more about the program and sign up for updates if
they want to keep abreast of our progress. We're running
a pilot program between now and summer of twenty eighteen
to test our theories for this system and how it's
going to work and support veterans with their service dogs,
and we anticipate learning quite a bit through that pilot
phase and once we're done with that, going into a
full beta phase starting this summer, where we'll accept more
applicants to go through the process and try and get
more and more veterans through this just to make their
lives easier and similarly the lives of those frontline employees easier,
so that they don't feel that they need to challenge
people and they get that uncomfortable conversation over and over again.
They can look for this new credential and feel more
confident that that's a legitimate service animal with their owner.
Speaker 2: Bravo and Bravo. Well, Chris, you know, helping veterans with
this assessment and credentialing makes so much sense. But how
effective it'll be that people don't really know about it.
Our research has found that sixty nine percent almost seventy
percent of retail employees so they've never received any training
from their employer on the questions they are legally allowed
to ask customers to verify in animal as a service dog.
Speaker 3: You're right, Robin, this this effort is really most helpful
if we do two things in concert with this program.
One is Educate America, and we're really lucky that, as
you know, we've secured a support from Mars PetCare, who
helped sponsor our initial summit along with the Chultz Family Foundation.
While Mars Pretcare has decided to help us going forward
with by creating two short public service announcement videos that
we plan to use to educate employees about the dues
and don'ts as it relates to service dog So that's
going to be a very helpful tool set for us
to share widely with industry employees so they learn more
about how to be a service dog friendly business. And secondarily,
we believe that adopting and enforcing a national standard around
the training and certification of service dogs for persons with
these disorders is a key step as well, and we've
been excited that we've been working alongside with your team
on a change dot org petition will actually go live
this week where we're asking Congress, who's already introduced those
national standards that American Humane Scientific Advisory Committee helped create
into one bill on the Hill, So we're applauding Congress
for doing that, but we're also asking them to make
sure that that same national standard applies to all the
bills that are currently in Congress. I believe to date
there are five separate bills relating to service dogs and veterans,
and you know, as organizations were kind of agnostic about
which one of those gets across the finish line and
the next congressional session. We just hope that whichever one
does take into account the Scientific Advisory Committee recommendations for
a national standard. So again, that petition will go live
this week. I'm changed at org. If people search for
the National Association of Veterans Serving Organizations, they should sign
that petition later this week and they can sign it
and tell Congress that they support veterans getting access to
high quality service dogs.
Speaker 2: Bramo, that's wonderful. I know the back to the website
that's going to launch www dot service Dogaccess dot org,
and of course also search for NABSO on change dot
org to find that petition. Is that right, Chris? That's right, wonderful.
Any final words or thoughts for our listeners. Chris has
been such an informative time together. Learned so much about
what your organization does and certainly the commitment for for
service dogs. Any other thoughts for our listeners.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this has been great. We're just so grateful for
the opportunity to share the exciting work we've been doing
with the American Humane around the cause that we're very
passionate about, and that's vetter and mental health. You know,
the caution I would have or listeners is don't fall
to a lot of the media or film or movie
or television portrayal that every veteran is broken or a hero.
Far too often these media portrayals make it look like
either we're all Metal of Honor recipients or we're all
suffering from PTSD and we're unstable. Well, the reality is
the bell curve of veterans are job ready citizens who
are actively serving in their communities, living very productive lives.
But we know that some still struggle with some barriers
as a result of their military experience. This is where
service dogs can help them and other treatments can help them.
But I think it's just a little unfair to cast
everybody is either broken or a hero. We certainly have
people who suffer in those who have done amazing things,
but all in all, give veterans a chance to be
individuals and meet them where they're at because they're all
at different phases of their life, and we hope by
this particular project we're doing with you as American Humane
and we can move more people who been exposed to
combat traumas to more productive lives. So we're just really
excited about this initiative going into twenty eighteen and grateful
for our time today to be able to share that
with your listeners.
Speaker 2: Well, listeners, you've been sharing this time today with the
most impressive Chris Ford, the CEO of NAVSO, which is
the National Association of Veteran Serving Organizations, an incredible opportunity
to engage and this cause by visiting the change dot
org petition later this week and also visiting Service Dogaccess
dot org to learn more. Chris, thanks so much for
being with us and being Unloving Animals.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Robin, It's been my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you well.
Speaker 2: Friends, what an amazing week learning about this national training
standard for service dogs, learning about operations service Dog access,
so much that we can do in terms of the
healing power of the human animal bond. Thanks so much
for joining us for this week's episode of Loving Animals
with Robin Ganzard. I'm your host and I want to
Thank you again for what you do in your hometown
to build a more humane world. Remember this week and
every week, we're loving animals and I know you do too.
Speaker 7: Let's Talk pets every week on demand only on petlifradio
dot com.