Today’s episode of The Mugly Truth Podcast is an extra special one. We talk about our favorite foundations and encourage all our readers and listeners to check them out. Kym highlights the Second Harvest Food Bank and Kris talks about Patriotic Service Dog Foundation.
The Second Harvest Food Bank is a member of Feeding America, which was started as St. Mary’s Food Bank by John van Hengel in Phoenix, AZ in the 1960’s. By the 1970s, 18 cities across the country soon had food banks. In 1979 Hengel created a national food bank which he called America’s Second Harvest the Nation’s Food Bank Network. In 2008 the name changed to Feeding America. The Second Harvest Food Bank Orange County is the chapter local to us personally, located in Irvine, CA. Their website, feedoc.org, is a wealth of information about the hunger statistics not only locally, but nationwide, as well as how to donate both money and time. For more information about a food bank in your hometown, please visit feedingamerica.org
Patriotic Service Dog Foundation is a group out of Murrieta, CA, dedicated to the training of service dogs for men and women suffering from PTSD after serving in the military, emergency response, and public safety. Recently they participated in a documentary, called To Be of Service (on Netflix), about how service dogs have helped improve the lives of these men and women. Currently Veteran’s Affairs does not pay for service dogs to be provided to veteran’s. Therefore all training costs are funded by private donations. We highly recommend viewing the documentary, and then visiting Patriotic Service Dog Foundation’s website and Facebook page.
We also encourage you to watch the short video about Kris’ co-worker, Chris Thomas, and his wife Jenn, and how their lives have been changed by Emmy, Chris’ service dog from Patriotic Service Dog Foundation. In the podcast episode, Kris couldn’t remember the details of Chris’ service, or the battalion he served with, how it tied in with the Naval Base Guam’s war dog memorial, and Emmy’s name origin. Jenn was kind enough to text the details:
It was 23 years active duty with 18 months of active combat time, that time was split between Iraq and Afghanistan deployments, multiple times for each country. Chris served with the Magnificent Bastards which is an infantry battalion. That is also the same battalion that 25 war dogs gave their lives serving and protecting marines in WWII. The memorial is in Guam and that is where the dog’s names are listed, Emmy being one of them.
– Jenn Thomas
When we say the Universe likes to show off sometimes, this is a pretty good example of exactly what we mean.
For more links, please check out the following:
- Tackett Service Dogs Tom Tackett started Patriotic Service Dog Foundations, and is renowned for training dogs for competition, service, and obedience.
- Jon Bon Jovi became involved with the documentary To Be of Service, writing the score and a single, called Unbroken, which you can view on YouTube.
- For more information about the history of the dogs who served alongside Marines in the Pacific during WWII, check out k9history.org
- For more details about the Naval Base Guam memorial, Always Faithful, by sculptor Susan Bahary, and the efforts of William Putney to create the memorial, please read more about the National War Dog Cemetery.
Check out “Second Harvest Food Bank and Patriotic Service Dog Foundation“ episode on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Libsyn, Pocket Cast, Stitcher or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Then all you need to do is 1) subscribe 2) download and 3) listen! AND!!! 4) If you enjoy what you hear, please leave a rating and a review (pretty please?). The more subscribers and reviews we get, the more opportunities we get to grow this podcast and bring you richer content.
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© The Mugly Truth 2019 and © The Mugly Truth Podcast 2019. All rights reserved.
Intro and outro music, “Clever as a Fox” by Espresso Music through premiumbeats.com.
Featured Photo of Chris and Emmy courtesy of Kristen Core. All rights reserved.
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