Nov 23, 2024 By Kristin Emery 4 min read

It’s fitting that Vet Pets of SWPA is this month’s recipient of the Driven By Hope Award, sponsored by Washington Auto Mall because the organization is in the market for a vehicle to drive.

Vet Pets’ current “Drive for Heroes Campaign” is an initiative dedicated to supporting disabled veterans and first responders through the power of assistance dogs and animal-assisted activities. Their current mission: raise money for a dedicated van that will enhance Vet Pets of SWPA’s ability to provide therapy dog visits and on-location training for service dogs.

“I was never really a big dog person,” says Omar Brooks, Executive Director of Vet Pets of SWPA. His wife, Nicole, had a dog when they met, and he realized the pup helped him cope with stress and anxiety.

The idea behind Vet Pets began at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when the Army veteran started helping an animal rescue find homes for dogs needing placement.

“We decided to form this nonprofit and raise money to help three veterans a year adopt a rescue dog, and that’s why the name is Vet Pets,” Brooks said. Along with his wife and two daughters, his family has fostered more than a dozen dogs to help local veterans struggling with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“In our first year, I tried to help a few veterans adopt dogs,” Brooks recalled. “We had a veteran that we were desperately trying to connect with a dog kill himself in our first year. I said the community can do more. We can do more. So I said I will always have a dog for a veteran whether it’s through partnerships with rescues or with other nonprofit organizations that are training puppies so that we will do everything to build this bridge between a veteran needing a dog for support to the place that has a dog.”

Vet Pets of SWPA needs the community’s help to ensure more veterans and first responders have access to the companionship and support that assistance dogs provide. Their goal is to provide increased access to service dogs along with comprehensive training for both the animals and veterans.

“We originally just wanted to help three veterans a year adopt a rescue dog and maybe train with it so they would be bonded, so that we could reduce the rate of dogs being returned to animal rescues and we could also help out a veteran,” Brooks said. “That was the original mission. Then we kept getting calls for, ‘I’m a veteran with PTSD looking for a service dog, and some organizations won’t help me because of this reason or because of that reason.’ We started finding out that there was a disconnect between the stigma of PTSD and the community.”

That led to the organization holding awareness events to educate the public about PTSD.

“We would raise money, but we would really just raise awareness that PTSD doesn’t have to be a bad stigma,” Brooks said. “Whether it’s from workplace trauma, combat or something that happened, you’re not broken because you have PTSD.”

Vet Pets of SWPA is based in a facility at Quail Acres off Route 19 in Washington. Brooks hopes to eventually move into a larger space to help accommodate more dogs and training, but for now the first goal is to obtain a vehicle.

“We need funding. We require a van, because we use our own personnel to house these dogs, and we use our own vehicles to move these dogs to disabled veterans’ homes,” Brooks said. “We have calls weekly to get our dogs placed, and we don’t have the capacity to get them there.”

The group is fundraising by selling raffle tickets, and the winning ticket will be drawn at Vet Pets’ annual gala fundraiser on March 8h at the Doubletree Hotel in Washington.

“Our original mission was to help three veterans adopt dogs, and now our mission is to change and shift and save lives of local veterans, of first responders,” Brooks said.

While he acknowledges every nonprofit requires money to do good deeds, he said manpower is an even greater need.

“We need people. We can always use money. Days like today, we could have used three or four extra people that are decent with dogs just to help us train dogs. It’d be nice if we had a few more volunteers. I believe that would work better if we had a facility to really do this the right way. But that will come with time.”

For more information on Vet Pets of SWPA or to donate, buy a raffle ticket or volunteer, visit www.pavetpets.org.