OUR LOCATIONS
WARRIORS HELPING WARRIORS
SERVICE REGIONS
Please remember that you can apply for a Service Dog or Facility Dog anywhere in the USA, regardless of where you live or work. Organizing by region helps us administer our programs better.
We offer therapy at our sites as depicted in the map and listed below, and also at VA, DOD, and certain partner organization facilities within reasonable travel distance of our sites.
You do not have to be a Purple Heart recipient to qualify for our services.
Northwest Region
Serves Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.
Headquarters: Tacoma, Washington
1722 Tacoma Ave S, Tacoma, WA 98402
(360) 764-5362
Satellite Site: Anchorage, Alaska
7049 Arctic Blvd, Anchorage, AK 99518
(907) 782-4473
South Central Region
Serves Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas.
Headquarters: San Antonio, Texas.
Suite 106, 5119 Beckwith Blvd, San Antonio TX, 78249
(210) 526-0100
Southwest Region
Serves California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.
Headquarters: San Diego, California.
5550 Oberlin Drive, Ste B, San Diego, CA 92121-1738
(858) 779-2404
Bay Area Location at the VA facility in Menlo Park, CA.
795 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025
(650) 684-7244
10201 Old Redwood Hwy, Penngrove, CA 94951
844-700-PAWS (7297)
Southeast Region
Serves Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.
Headquarters: Ruther Glen, Virginia.
7404 Commerce Way, Unit D, Ruther Glen, Virginia 22546
(804) 589-0077
ELIGIBILITY
Service Dogs
We place service dogs with Service Members and Veterans facing challenges such as:
– Mobility issues. Our dogs can help with tasks such as: retrieving items, pushing buttons for elevators and doors, turning lights on/off, plus many more.
– Diagnosed trauma-related conditions (PTSD or TBI). Our dogs help by performing a variety of tasks specifically designed to reduce symptom severity.
Through our thorough application process, our qualified staff determines if a PPH service dog will be a fit for your specific needs.
Facility Dogs
Facility dogs are placed with managers who work in care facilities that serve Service Members, Veterans, and/or military families. They are also placed with counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, occupational therapists (and other specialists) who serve military-connected individuals and wish to integrate a dog into their clients’ treatment plans. Facility dogs provide invaluable benefits to the populations they serve, but they do not meet the legal definition of a service dog and do not have public access rights outside of their assigned facility. Facilities must serve at least 50% of military-connected individuals to qualify.
DONATIONS HEP WITH:
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Food And Dietary Supplements
To learn nearly 100 service dog commands, each Paws for Purple Hearts dog needs proper nourishment. This includes premium food, supplements, and of course, treats to motivate learning. In the two-year service dog training period, nourishing each pup costs about $1,400.
In addition, high quality nourishment is essential to helping PPH pups thrive. After all, thriving puppies today become tomorrow’s top tier service dogs for Veterans and active duty Service Members. And just as importantly, it helps them live long, healthy, and productive lives.
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Medicine, Vaccines, And Veterinary Care
At PPH, we aim to to raise the healthiest and happiest service dogs for our Warriors. Puppies are vulnerable to illness, parasites, and many medical issues, so routine vet checkups and preventive treatments are critical. Paws for Purple Hearts spends an average cost of $2,925 on vet visits, exams, vaccines, and preventative care to ensure each our of dogs are in great health.
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Training Equipment & Simulation Materials
It’s a marvel to see our amazing PPH service dogs perform tasks. Paws for Purple Hearts dogs can open and retrieve items from the refrigerator. They can pull a wheelchair bound Warrior up a ramp. They nose light switches and elevator buttons. Teaching service dogs for Veterans and active duty Service Members to help means training them where people do these tasks.
This could be in a home-like environments created in our centers. For other tasks, we go to the right kind of location to work with them. On average, we spend about $2,500 per dog on training equipment for service dogs for Veterans and active duty Service Members.
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Operating PPH Training Centers
A PPH center is busy place! At any given time, we may have dogs at various levels of training, volunteers making treats or cleaning kennels, puppy parents doing pick-ups and drop-offs, or members of the community touring the facility.
Paws for Purple Hearts centers also hold therapeutic intervention sessions. Each week, Warriors take part in Canine Assisted Warrior Therapy at our PPH centers where they work with our highly-skilled trainers to learn to train our dogs.
Our centers are the hub for our important work – training service dogs for Veterans and active duty Service Members. While we try hard to control costs, each center costs around $300,000 to open and an addition $200,000 to operate per year.
Our History
Paws for Purple Hearts is the first program of its kind to offer therapeutic intervention for Veterans and Active-Duty Military.
Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy®
Under the guidance of PPH instructors, service members engage with specially bred Golden Retriever and Labrador puppies.
How the Program Works
Read more about how Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy® helps ease a Warrior’s symptom severity through assisting PPH trainers with soothing, light-hearted contact with PPH puppies and dogs.
We need your support.
Donations to Paws for Purple Hearts can change a Warrior’s life from hopelessness to optimism.
Your generous, tax-deductible donation helps thousands of Warriors facing the visible and invisible wounds of war. Our Canine Assisted Warrior Therapy helps them heal as they help others – all with the goal of raising top tier service dogs for Veterans and active duty Service Members with mobility and trauma challenges.