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Rick Kaplan was flying with his service dog, King, when the dog got close to him and signaled that he sensed something wrong. Kaplan has a seizure disorder caused by an accident, and the dog is able to sense when Kaplan is about to have a seizure. In this case, the dog backed away and shook his head. “What he was saying to me was that there’s a seizure going on here, but it’s not you. I told the flight attendant. We marched King down the aisle. He came to a lady and put his foot on her seat and his nose close to her face.” When asked if she had seizures, she answered “yes.” While the flight attendant located a doctor among the passengers, the woman took her medication. “Within ten minutes, she had a big seizure,” Kaplan said, “but because she had taken her medication, it wasn’t the end of the world.” King is the leader of the pack at Kaplan’s house which doubles as his kennel and primary training facility for 12 to 20 service dogs at any given time. The founder of Canine Angels, Kaplan has been training dogs since he was a child. It was a gift he had by the age of six, he said. A retired New York City jeweler, Kaplan said he views this effort as his way of giving back. Health issues kept him from serving with his friends in Vietnam, so he focuses on veterans now. “I had a series of injuries and allergies, and nobody would take me. I had a lot of friends who served in Vietnam. I always said that when I was able, I would serve as an old man. It’s a total give back.” Since moving south and establishing Canine Angels as a 501 (c) 3, he’s rescued and trained hundreds of dogs. All of the dogs are from Brunswick and Horry Counties, and almost all were on death row, some minutes from being euthanized. Those that make it through service training are generally paired with military veterans. Those that can’t quite make it as service dogs go into the therapy dog division where they’re paired with a forever home and an individual who donates time and energy to visit hospitals, hospice, nursing homes, and the children’s reading program. (More on that in a bit). Most recently, Kaplan has been training dogs to assist autistic children. The fourth dog is in training now. As service dogs for veterans, the animals may be called upon to do a myriad of tasks. Part of Kaplan’s challenge is to evaluate exactly what the veteran needs and match those needs to the perfect dog. Sometimes the matches don’t work because the chemistry isn’t there, he said. The dog and veteran spend 24 hours a day together. It’s not like a marriage where there are hours apart. It’s total togetherness. “The chemistry has to be right. I had a marine who came, and I thought I had the perfect dog for him. The dog wasn’t interested in him. He started to tell me about the loss of his mother, and he welled up in tears. A new dog who wasn’t trained ran to him and put his head in his lap.” The dog was at the beginning of his basic training and was going through heart worm treatment. Nonetheless, the veteran felt the connection and asked to have the dog. The only way to make it work was for Kaplan to train the veteran to train the dog. That’s exactly what they did, and the two have been together for four years. The veteran and his wife and children have reunited (they had separated because of his PTSD), and he holds down a job. PTSD training for dogs is only one of the specialties in the dogs may excel in. Veterans with physical limitations need dogs that can pick up things, turn on lights, pull food from the refrigerator, or simply be strong enough to allow the person to hold onto them in order to move from a wheelchair to a stationary chair. In the children’s reading program where therapy dogs are used, second-grade children in Brunswick County schools read to dogs. “First graders are too young and third graders know the dog doesn’t know what they’re saying. Second graders are right there. I have the dogs trained to pop their head up on an imperceptible signal. If a child misses a word, I’ll give the signal and say ‘I don’t think the dog understood that word,’ so the child tries again. It’s great fun. That’s a total community give back.” All of the therapy dogs went through the service training program but proved better for living with a family. “They found a great home and a better life.”
The above story was written by the Brunswick Town Public Relations Chair and appeared in the November 2022 Newsletter. Click on the website below to view the November 2022 Newsletter
Go to: file:///C:/Users/Phyllis%20Wilson/Downloads/n-Nov2022final.pdf
The dogs showed the DAR members at their November meeting how they are trained to accept donations and place the donation in the bucket. Very tricky.
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