By Howard Altman | Tampa Tribune
Everywhere Mike Jernigan goes, Brittani, his 51/2-year-old goldador, is sure to follow.
Around his St. Petersburg house. To classes at the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus. On airplanes.
Jernigan, 32, is blind. He’s had reconstructive surgery on his right hand and his left knee. He relies on the golden retriever/Labrador mix to help him live independently.
His life changed in a flash on Aug. 22, 2004. The then-25-year-old Marine lance corporal was riding in a Humvee’s machine gun turret in the Iraqi town of Mahmudiyah when the vehicle hit an improvised explosive device. His forehead was crushed inward. In addition to losing both eyes, he had traumatic brain injury.
The next 16 months of his life were spent in and out of hospitals, with 30 surgeries in the first year alone.
Even after the hospitalizations and the surgeries, Jernigan was forced to rely on others to get around.
Enter Southeastern Guide Dogs, a Palmetto company providing assistance and companion animals for the blind and others.
Some of Jernigan’s friends contacted Bobby Newman, a Southeastern Guide Dogs board member, to tell him about a wounded Marine who needed a dog.
That was in 2006. And thanks to Newman and Southeastern Guide Dogs, a program called Paws for Patriots was born.
The program provides dogs to vets like Jernigan who need one to get around and for companionship. So far, the program has placed more than 100 dogs.
The program provides professionally trained guide dogs to visually impaired veterans and companion therapy dogs to veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
Southeastern Guide Dogs has also placed facility therapy dogs at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to spread encouragement to soldiers as they recover.
The dogs are not cheap.
It costs about $60,000 to breed, raise and train the animals, according to Southeastern Guide Dogs spokeswoman Jennifer Bement. The recipients pay nothing, she said, and the program receives no government funding, relying completely on donors and volunteers.
Bement said the dogs are Labradors, golden retrievers, a mix of the two called a goldador, and smooth coat collies, “which are like Lassie with short hair.”
They all come from Southeastern Guide Dogs’ breeding colonies and are chosen because “they are all working breeds and are hard-wired already to serve us.”
The animals are trained from birth, Bement said.”They are handled immediately and socialized aggressively, so when they are acting as someone’s eyes, they are completely unflappable.”
Half the dogs wash out of the program, Bement said. Even the first dog in the Paws for Patriots program.
In 2006, Jernigan received a dog named Kera, but she couldn’t correct a flaw in Jernigan’s gait that resulted from his surgeries — one that he didn’t even know about until he had a guide dog.
“Before, I had to lean on people and didn’t know,” he said.
In April 2007, he got Brittani. The two have been tight since.
“Even more than just being a guide dog, and a mechanism for safe movement, she is a companion as well,” Jernigan said. “When I am feeling down or low, she is right there with me. Petting the dog helps quite a bit.”
To help defray the cost of the dogs, the Old Town Hog Chapter, motorcycle enthusiasts associated with Harley-Davidson of Brandon, has been staging an annual poker run. Today will be the group’s fifth.
So far, they have raised more than $50,000, according to event coordinator Rick Vincent.
Registration for the poker run starts at 8 a.m. today at Harley-Davidson of Brandon, 9841 Adamo Drive. The first bike leaves at 9 a.m. and the last bike comes back at 2 p.m.
In addition to the poker run, there will be raffles, a silent auction, food, a swap meet and other events. For more information, contact Vincent at (813) 625-1969 or Cal Reimann, event director, at (813) 760-4757.
The poker run is not the only fundraising effort on behalf of the program.
Retired Lt. Col. Kathy Champion, who received one of the dogs, has gotten together a team of at least 90 women to run the Women’s Half Marathon of St. Petersburg with her on Sunday. This group includes three other visually impaired women, a number of staff and volunteers from Southeastern Guide Dogs, women from the military’s intelligence community, U.S. Special Operations Command and even an Olympian, according to Bement.
At the end of the race, Champion will be reunited with her guide, Angel, and greeted at the finish by a number of guide dogs-in-training.
Champion is trying to raise $2 million for Paws for Patriots, Bement said.
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