JIM MONAGHAN – Brian Reyngoudt is the co-founder and vice president of Operation K9 Beethoven. Brian, for WDHA and WMTR listeners who are new to this, tell them what your program does.
BRIAN REYNGOUDT – Operation K9 Beethoven is that we help our veterans one paw at a time like we like to say. We rescue dogs from euthanasia off the streets, kill shelters, we bring them back to health.
Our goal is to train them to become psychiatric service dogs. And we give them away for free to our veterans at no cost to them. So no money comes out of their pocket. And these dogs get trained to become their psychiatric service animal.
JM – How do you vet the dogs that you that you come into to make sure that they’re right for this program?
BR – We work with several trainers who will evaluate them to make sure that their temperament is good. You have to have a calm, cool, collective animal to be trained as a psychiatric service dog so that that dog can go out in public with the veteran, the human being.
JM – And what kind of a financial investment does that require for each dog?
BR – Each dog giver take is about $6,000. That is the cost for the training, getting the dog, going through the vet, getting it, you know, it’s shots and whatever it needs, food, transportation. So the veteran, like I said, doesn’t pay no money to us. So from all the sales that we do with our merchandise, as well as donations, that’s how we were able to get that dog to that veteran.
JM – We have dogs come up to the radio station all the time with Terrie Carr in the Rock N Ruff program and to watch the mood in the building changed no matter how stressful a day may be, Brian, you get a dog or two coming in and it’s just, it’s incredible have a dog or a pet just in general can change the mood of a workplace, a home, any kind of environment.
BR – Absolutely. I get to see it also all the time. I mean, we also along with our program, we have another program, which is our pet therapy program, where Beethoven and all of his friends, they go to schools, they go to rehabs, they go to veterans homes, they go to hospitals and being able to see when those dogs walk in, the staff, the patients, everybody their faces just light up.
JM – Tell us about Beethoven.
BR – Beethoven is a German Shepherd. He’s the real boss, as we like to say, he’s the CEO and he travels all throughout the state of New Jersey along with all of his friends and Parker and Duffy and all of them. And we’re really getting really big with our therapy program. It’s really taken off within the last several months, which is great. I mean, everybody wants us to come.
JM – I know you have an event coming up in early April on Sunday, 7th. Tell our WDHA and WMTR listeners about that, Brian.
BR – We’re going to do this thing for the first time. We’re going to have an informative experience speakers who will discuss and answer questions regarding the GI Bill, PTSD, veteran benefits claims, substance abuse, and family support, and the benefits of having a psychiatric service dog.
We’re also going to have our therapy dog team there where they can come down and hang out with Duffy, Shadow, Luna, Sophie, Blaze, Chase, Zola. And we’re going to be serving and refreshments, light refreshments.
If your listeners want to take part in it, you can email us at k9beethoven@yahoo.com or you can shoot us a text for an RSVP because we want to make sure we have enough food for everybody.
That phone number is 201-587-9338. The place is located in Saddlebrook, New Jersey, VFW Post, 3484, 44 Market Street in Saddlebrook, New Jersey, Jim.
JM – And what time will that be, Brian?
BR – That’s going to be starting at 3 PM.
JM – So that is on Sunday, April 7th. We encourage our WDHA and WMTR listeners to attend if they are at all able for listeners, Brian, who want to make a donation. Maybe they can’t come that day, but they want to make a donation to the Operation K9 Beethoven program. How do they go about doing that?
They can go right over our website at operationk9beethoven.com and you can smash the donate button. Every little bit helps.
