When Joe Moreno, a Navy veteran, panicked and took cover between two cars in a mall parking lot, suddenly transported back to his deployment during the 2003 invasion into Iraq, he knew he had to seek help.
He’d gotten really good at hiding his severe anxiety from others, but inside, he was constantly on edge.
“I was in a civilian world that I didn’t understand and that didn’t understand me,” he said of life since leaving the service in 2016. “I was always looking over my shoulder and on high alert, and internally I was preparing for a fight.”
Instead of addressing what was plaguing him, life became a checklist of things to do. An avid surfer and athlete in his younger days, the Cypress resident turned to running Ironmans and mountain climbing, but his struggle continued. He quit his job and couldn’t function, he said. More than once, he found himself on the floor, sobbing and overwhelmed.
“I didn’t know how I’d live my next day,” he said.
Now, nearly a decade later and after finally taking the difficult step of asking for help from the Veterans Administration, he has a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And he has Eagle, a 4-year-old retriever-mix service dog.
He still has bad days, but the good ones outnumber them, Moreno, 48, said. “Before Eagle, PTSD had me in survival mode 24/7 just trying to get through another day.
“Eagle gave me my life back,” he said, his eyes shining. The pair was on an outing to 2nd & PCH, an outdoor mall in Long Beach, where he interacted with others, even giving Eagle the “make a friend” command to those who wanted to meet him.
“Eagle gives me purpose to ensure he is living his best life. He senses when my anxiety starts to rise and brings me back to the present,” Moreno said. “He nudges my leg if he senses I’m off and helps me feel safe again, not having to look over my shoulder for danger. It’s like that person that was standing on my chest has moved on, and I could finally breathe again.”
Of the 5.8 million veterans served in fiscal year 2024, about 14 out of every 100 men and 24 out of every 100 women were diagnosed with PTSD, according to data from the VA. With an average of 20 veterans a day taking their own lives, studies find that service dogs have a healing effect on veterans’ lives, significantly reducing suicidal ideation and medication.
Over the last few years, there has been a surge in nonprofit groups – thanks to federal grants — that train and pair dogs with veterans. In some programs, veterans are taught to train their own dog from day one.
But as interest grows, many groups are reporting long waitlists. And funding to raise the service animals, which can cost up to $25,000, is always an issue, especially because they want to keep the cost to veterans low or free.
In addition to psychiatric dogs such as Eagle, others are trained to assist with mobility issues, guide the blind, aid the deaf and to serve as medical alert dogs.
When Moreno first reached out for help, he was given medication to help with his PTSD, but the pills created side effects, he said, and he found himself taking pills to combat the side effects of other pills. Then, one day, when he couldn’t remember how he’d made a one-hour commute to work, he said he decided there must be another solution and discovered K9s For Warriors, the nation’s largest rescue-to-service program and an accredited nonprofit service dog provider.
Eagle had been surrendered when he was 9 months old, but was scooped up by dog trainers from K9s For Warriors and taken to their facility in Ponte Vedra, FL. He trained for eight months before he was ready to meet Moreno. Since opening in 2011, the group has saved 2,000 dogs from shelters and prides its on saving lives at both ends of a leash.
Meeting Eagle was super emotional, said Moreno, who flew to Florida to begin his training on the group’s campus.
“I was still questioning, ‘Is this the right choice for me?’” he said. “Do I even deserve to be here, or should somebody else with a visible physical injury be here instead of me. Once I met him and got that first lick and started to pet him, I could tell he started to bond with me. It was like I finally found what I was looking for that no medication could ever fill.”
The purpose of the group’s program, Moreno said, is to empower veterans to regain independence and find renewed purpose. Eagle bumping his head on the side of Moreno’s leg, the Warrior trainers told him, is the dog “recognizing you’re getting anxious before you even recognize it.”
The nonprofit, which has also fought for legislation in Congress to cover the cost of getting a service dog, partnered with Maggie O’Haire, a psychologist and the dean of research at the University of Arizona’s School of Veterinary Medicine, in her recently completed 2024 study of the role of therapy dogs that was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
O’Haire has been working with hundreds of veterans over the past decade to “put the science behind the stories.”
“We’re interested in how they’re feeling, what they’re doing and the impact dogs might have on their lives,” she said, adding that clinicians make assessments of PTSD severity, take biomarkers of stress hormone physiology and also take measures of the dogs to look at which are best with which veterans and how the best success can be created for the pairs.
The 2024 study was the first large-scale nationwide clinical trial comparing veterans with and without service dogs. The study included 156 veterans nationwide, half of whom received a service dog and half of whom remained on a waitlist.
“We could see the difference between three months of the service dog versus three months without the service dog,” O’Haire said, adding she found that veterans who had a service dog had 66% lower odds of having a clinical PTSD diagnosis. “We saw better outcomes in the service dog group in nearly every outcome we measured, including anxiety and depression, and less isolation. Especially given the short time frame of less than three months, it was certainly notable what impact the dog could make.”
O’Haire said the research results complemented previous findings in which they looked at more than 2,000 veterans and found that in those with service dogs, their stress hormone patterns were more like “healthy adults without PTSD compared to the group that didn’t have a service dog.”
“Our goal here was really to translate these lived experiences of veterans with PTSD into actionable data,” O’Haire said. “Doctors, policymakers and funders need science-based information to inform their recommendations and decisions, and we’re really excited to share the strongest evidence to date supporting service dog partership for veterans with PTSD.”
This month, O’Haire is starting a randomized study and will also follow up with another study that looks at how well veterans with a service dog do in completing clinical therapies — such as exposure therapy and cognitive restructuring — now offered at the VA.
“The goal is not to replace all of the other tools in the toolkit out there for veterans, but to enhance those other interventions and create the best possible outcomes for veterans,” O’Haire said. “So it’s important to take the required medicine and go to therapy, and that’s where we see the most positive impacts, when it’s a co-intervention.”
What makes dogs so effective, she said, is that they have co-evolved with humans over tens of thousands of years; they can interact with and read emotions and be a source of support. Service dogs are trained to do specific tasks that have to do with the disability of PTSD, such as interrupting a panic attack, retrieving medication or standing in a certain position to help the person when they’re in public.
Eddie Montoya, a councilman in Rialto, is a firm beleiver that his service dog, 6-year-old boxer Sly, is the reason that after years of silently fighting alchololism — and liver and kidney failure — he has found a new voice, not only daring to step into busy public places again, but also actively trying helping other veterans who have gone through or are experiencing the same anguish.
After a 17-year career in the Army as a staff sergeant, Montoya, 48, said he was derailed by PTSD after three overseas deployments.
“Getting sober, I thought, was my fix,” he said. “But it didn’t work the way I thought it would.”
After his wife, a therapist, suggested he get a service dog, Montoya found Working Dogs for Warriors in Rancho Cucamonga. Its founder, Michael Welsh, believes the most success comes when veterans train their own dogs.
In Welsh’s one-and-a-half-year program, which now has a waitlist of 75 veterans, participants start learning about dogs by volunteering in the kennels, where they walk and bathe the canines. They do it alongside other veterans, building a community of brotherhood.
Once paired with a dog, they train for 360 hours, which includes focusing on tasks related to PTSD and the six positions that dogs learn to help with PTSD symptoms. These include crisis intervention, blocking veterans from people getting too close and a position where the dog faces backward behind the veteran, like at a grocery store where a veteran is shopping, to make them feel more comfortable.
Even after they graduate, Welsh welcomes the veterans to return for weekly training, going on pack walks and social outings, including to places veterans struggling with PTSD might not have been comfortable visiting anymore.
“I’ve seen such a difference in veterans where dogs have changed their lives for the better,” Welsh said. “It’s unconditional love, it’s something they can talk to that won’t judge them and where they can step out and be vulnerable.”
And, that’s just what has happened with Montoya. As he became more involved with Welsh’s group, he grew more interested in reconnecting with people, he said. Even though he only had to be at the training center once a week, he went nearly daily.
“It used to be the only way I could go into public was being drunk,” Montoya said. “Little by little, I felt I was getting better.”
Now he has started his own nonprofit, Brotherhood Bridge Foundation, a peer group for veteran support that has expanded across Southern California and also has groups in Oregon and Minnesota.
“Now I was able to speak to people the way I’m supposed to,” Montoya said. With his newfound confidence, he landed a spot on the Rialto City Council and speaks to students at colleges and universities and other facilities.
His goal now is to lobby Congress for more effective legislation to provide veterans with financial support for their service dogs, he said. “Now that I’m in local government, I might be more effective.”
All his aspirations, he said, would be nothing without Sly.
“I give it all to my dog; it wouldn’t have happened without my dog giving me purpose,” he said. “Now that you have a dog, you have something bigger than yourself, that’s the key to keep going and to be in a good space. You’re out in public, in crowded spaces, and my dog is keeping me safe.”