Red and I began our next chapter Thursday at a veteran’s home in Vermont. We will be doing therapy work with younger and older veterans, we began at a veteran’s facility in Southern Vermont and the emotional connection between Red these men and women was, from the first, nearly overwhelming. We’ll be visiting there once a week and more frequently if there are special needs or therapy work that can help.

I wanted the first visit to be short, I am mindful that Red was never even in a house until a year ago and a large facility would be strange to him, but we were swamped with people wanting to see him, touch him. He put his head in the lap of one blind vet, an elderly woman and brought smiles and tears to others, they so loved and remembered their dogs. Red seemed to respond to need and attention and he moved from room to room for an hour – a little too much, he was drained at the end. It could not have gone better, been better or more meaningful to me, and I hope, to these veterans whose day seemed to be so brightened by Red’s appearance.

Red moved quietly, calmly, even into large rooms he had never seen before. I’ll write more about this, but I wanted to share an image or two, here and on Facebook. In this very powerful scene, a veteran outside the door of the dementia unit saw Red, and then dropped to his knees to touch and cradle him for nearly ten minutes. The nurses and I were speechless, Red connected to him quite visibly, and we will be seeing him again.

I am excited about this work, eager to bring Red to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, we are working on that. In the meantime we have found a focus for this remarkable dog beyond his great skills herding sheep. One of the nurses had been at our Open House recently and seen Red work, and she simply couldn’t believe he was coming to the veteran’s facility. Every week.