Webb City groups donate to provide service dogs to veterans
WEBB CITY, Mo. — Thanks to the cooperation of five groups in Webb City, another area veteran will be paired up with his own highly trained service dog in the coming year.
Jimmy Burgess and his service dog, Riley, were on hand at the building in Webb City that houses the American Legion Post 322 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 7630 on Friday morning to accept a check on behalf of Heartland Canines for Veterans for $25,000 from the Elks Lodge of Webb City, the American Legion post, the VFW post, the Women's Auxiliary for the American Legion post and the Dawson Heritage Foundation.
Burgess said the money will go to pay for the training of another service dog, which generally costs about $19,500, and to pay for Burgess to be trained as a master trainer of service dogs.
'We want to start training dogs internally instead of always having an outside trainer,' Burgess said. 'Right now, we outsource our service training, but that costs us quite a bit of money and it limits the number of dogs we can train in any certain timespan depending on the money we have to spend. 'We figured with it being our 10th year, it was time for us to get our own internal plan for training.'
Burgess said this is the second year these particular groups have raised money for Heartland Canines in one of their 'One of Us' campaigns. He said the goal at Heartland Canines is to have one master trainer so he can train others to train service dogs.
'So the idea behind having an internal trainer is that we can continue to train because I'm already on staff,' Burgess said. 'Also, we're going to start an actual veteran training program so I'll be able to train other veterans in the dog-training community'
Burgess said Heartland Canines will be celebrating the graduation of another service dog and the creation of a veteran-service dog team at the coming Veterans Outreach Night hosted by the Joplin Outlaws at Joe Becker Stadium on Saturday, June 14.
Gates open at 5 p.m., and before the game, Burgess and his staff will introduce the new team. The dog was trained thanks to a donation by Jack Henry and Associates.
More details about Heartland Canines for Veterans can be found at https://heartlandk9s.org.
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