Meet our Founder, Matt Doughty

---

Matt is the founder of our organization and a retired 12 year officer and firefighter of Dassel Fire and Remer Fire Departments. He is also an author, find his book "A Revelation" in our store and a small business owner/operator of Bigfoot Powerwashing and Mobile Detailing in Remer, MN.

Matt started our organization in 2016 with hopes of helping firefighters like himself with service related PTSD. Those first years he focused on resources and advocating for volunteer fire departments like the one he served on and that grew to include all first responders as well as veterans. 

Matt realized that the connection between dogs and the broken human was a deep one. Animals heal us in so many ways and that is what brought him to the idea of growing our organization to help support service dogs for first responders and veterans with service related PTSD.

He started working with trainers to train a service dog to pair up with a first responder/veteran. This was an amazing start but expensive and we were only able to put out a dog every year or two. 

 As the nonprofits team grew so did ideas, skills, and opportunities. During the 2020 Covid pandemic the organization decided to start their own service dog program that walks the handler (the first responder/veteran with PTSD) through training their own service dog free of charge per the ADA guidelines. We moved fully to this program instead of placing a fully trained service dog every year or so to reach more people in need. The program was written and trialed by Vice President, Amanda Levitt and her dog Tank. By the end of 2021 our organization had their first team in training.