Submitted by Janeen Baggette
K9's For Freedom And Independence was born out of a love for dogs and a passion to help American heroes.
As a combat veteran, nurse, law enforcement officer myself and LEO K9 Handler, I am familiar with some of the situations that can cause long term issues in a person's life. Because of my 25-plus years training dogs in detection, search and rescue, handicap service, obedience and behavior, I am well versed in the tasks needed to train successful working dogs.
We take rescued shelter dogs or donated purebreds, train them as Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) K9’s.
We evaluate dogs from shelters and rescue groups for their ability to take on this role. The screening process for picking a dog is very stringent. We will also consider using a dog that is already owned by the person in need if they meet a certain criteria and they have an MOU with their agency to use the dog under the agency.
As a Non Profit, our entire program is funded by donations and the agencies do donate enough to cover our costs to train and transport the dog to them. This also covers the four-day training at their location.
We train the agencies and Handlers on proper nutrition, behavior, handling, care and housing of their K9 partner.
We do this so that both are learning how to work with each other in new locations and situations. They learn to work together as a team. The dog in particular learns the stressors and the biological changes that happen in a person that is having difficulty dealing with the situations that they are in and how they can alert the Handler to the problem at hand.
The teams are used in a multitude of ways for example: Critical Incident Response, Victim Assistance/ Victim Interviews - Juvenile Interviews/Photos, PEER Support, K9 Demos, Community Policing/School Resource Officer, CISM Training, In Between Calls and After Action Debriefs.
These dogs are trained to be able to work in most any environment. We don’t call them Therapy Dogs, because First Responders see the word "therapy" in a bad light and take it to mean that they are broken.
In the era we are in, the hazards of the jobs are causing many First Responders to leave their career or worse commit suicide. We are finding the politics that are also involved is causing more of a problem than the traumatic calls they must respond to.
Reports show that 86% of agencies across the US are suffering from staffing issues. The suicide rate is going up, partially due to their administrations using line officers as pawns in their political careers.
Mental health is a must, knowing agencies don’t have a recruiting problem as much as they have a retention problem. We must take care of each other. In these professions, work life affects home life and vice versa. The way we treat each other is an example of how First Responders treat the public.
In general, administrations and supervisors forget where they came from and have no clue how to be “leaders."
We currently have 4.5 acres and are in the planning stages of putting in a kennel and training facility to train even more dogs to help even more people. As everyone knows, training does not come free and we rely on donations to help offset the costs to training the dog and the person both together and separately.
It costs a lot to evaluate both the behavioral and medical aspects per dog, as well as get the initial supplies needed for the dog. We take the dogs throughout the DFW area to train them in real world situations.
We are determined to help all who need it, so we try to always have a dog in training at any given time. The approval process through the agency is normally what takes the longest time to receiving a CIRT K9.
Because we train these dogs to the industry standard of any other kind of agency K9 Unit, we help eliminate the liabilities that the agency can face. This includes yearly certifications, monthly training requirements and documentation.
K9's For Freedom And Independence was born out of a love for dogs and a passion to help American heroes.
As a combat veteran, nurse, law enforcement officer myself and LEO K9 Handler, I am familiar with some of the situations that can cause long term issues in a person's life. Because of my 25-plus years training dogs in detection, search and rescue, handicap service, obedience and behavior, I am well versed in the tasks needed to train successful working dogs.
We take rescued shelter dogs or donated purebreds, train them as Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) K9’s.
We evaluate dogs from shelters and rescue groups for their ability to take on this role. The screening process for picking a dog is very stringent. We will also consider using a dog that is already owned by the person in need if they meet a certain criteria and they have an MOU with their agency to use the dog under the agency.
As a Non Profit, our entire program is funded by donations and the agencies do donate enough to cover our costs to train and transport the dog to them. This also covers the four-day training at their location.
We train the agencies and Handlers on proper nutrition, behavior, handling, care and housing of their K9 partner.
We do this so that both are learning how to work with each other in new locations and situations. They learn to work together as a team. The dog in particular learns the stressors and the biological changes that happen in a person that is having difficulty dealing with the situations that they are in and how they can alert the Handler to the problem at hand.
The teams are used in a multitude of ways for example: Critical Incident Response, Victim Assistance/ Victim Interviews - Juvenile Interviews/Photos, PEER Support, K9 Demos, Community Policing/School Resource Officer, CISM Training, In Between Calls and After Action Debriefs.
These dogs are trained to be able to work in most any environment. We don’t call them Therapy Dogs, because First Responders see the word "therapy" in a bad light and take it to mean that they are broken.
In the era we are in, the hazards of the jobs are causing many First Responders to leave their career or worse commit suicide. We are finding the politics that are also involved is causing more of a problem than the traumatic calls they must respond to.
Reports show that 86% of agencies across the US are suffering from staffing issues. The suicide rate is going up, partially due to their administrations using line officers as pawns in their political careers.
Mental health is a must, knowing agencies don’t have a recruiting problem as much as they have a retention problem. We must take care of each other. In these professions, work life affects home life and vice versa. The way we treat each other is an example of how First Responders treat the public.
In general, administrations and supervisors forget where they came from and have no clue how to be “leaders."
We currently have 4.5 acres and are in the planning stages of putting in a kennel and training facility to train even more dogs to help even more people. As everyone knows, training does not come free and we rely on donations to help offset the costs to training the dog and the person both together and separately.
It costs a lot to evaluate both the behavioral and medical aspects per dog, as well as get the initial supplies needed for the dog. We take the dogs throughout the DFW area to train them in real world situations.
We are determined to help all who need it, so we try to always have a dog in training at any given time. The approval process through the agency is normally what takes the longest time to receiving a CIRT K9.
Because we train these dogs to the industry standard of any other kind of agency K9 Unit, we help eliminate the liabilities that the agency can face. This includes yearly certifications, monthly training requirements and documentation.
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