Volunteering as a Puppy Raiser
- New Life K9s
- 11 hours ago
- 2 min read
Behind the Scenes: Our Volunteers
At New Like K9s, we have two kinds of volunteers - the Pawsitive Support Crew and Puppy Raisers. Both are important to the success of New Life K9s and our goal of providing service dogs at no cost to Veterans and First Responders living with PTSD.
The Pawsitive Support Crew
The Pawsitive Support Crew consists of eight volunteers who come in to help clean and organize the New Life K9s office. The volunteers also help with projects such as photo shoots and the holiday parade float. The SLO Holiday Parade, occurring early December, is an annual event that New Life K9s participates in. Along with our annual fundraiser, Giving Paws for Hope, our decked-out float is a great opportunity to bring awareness to PTSD and our service dog program. Whether it is building a float, providing office support or helping with other creative projects, the Pawsitive Support Crew is a big help that allows New Life K9s to focus on growing.
Puppy Raisers
This year we changed our Puppy Raiser Volunteer program. Previously volunteers took puppies home on the weekend and now, volunteers will be taking them home for a six-month period. Nikhita, the Puppy Raiser Coordinator, recently started the new training program with nine potential Puppy Raiser Volunteers.
Aside from Full-time Puppy Parent Volunteers, we also have Short-term Puppy Raiser Volunteers. They provide temporary care for dogs when their primary raisers are unavailable or when dogs being raised in our prison program leave the prison environment for a short term. Short-term Puppy Raisers complete the same training as Full-time Puppy Parents. If they are caring for a dog, like Full-time Puppy Parents, they also complete tasks such as updates, meetings, and outings.
Puppy Parent and Raiser Volunteers are essential to the training of service dogs. They help expose the puppies to everyday situations and different environments, soundscapes, and sensory experiences. This allows for socialization, confidence-building, training practice, and further evaluation opportunities. However, it’s not all work and no play. The puppies are also taken on fun outings.
Service dogs are the calm anchor for the Veterans or First Responders who get paired with them. Our service dogs are specifically trained to address the symptoms of PTSD such as night terrors and anxiety. Interrupt/alert, calm/comfort anxiety, and block tasks, for example, are designed to wake up their human partners from nightmares and for the dogs to act as a buffer in public, thereby reducing anxiety. Being a solid partner also builds the bonds that Veterans and First Responders live by.
According to the VA office, out of the 5.8 million Veterans who served in 2024 and use VA care, about 38% were diagnosed with PTSD. At this time, however, the VA does not provide service dogs for PTSD and continues to study the benefits. A Hill & Ponton’s 2024 poll found that 44% of Veteran respondents would like a PTSD service dog and 25% did not know much about these dogs. At New Life K9s, we are privileged to meet this need and in awareness building. |
With April being the National Volunteer Month, New Life K9s formally thanks all our volunteers, past and present.