Excerpt from this The Pilot article.
“Lutz serves as executive director of Continuing the Mission, a local nonprofit begun last year to train service dogs and then pair them with local veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The concept behind Continuing the Mission (CTM) rose out of Lutz’s desire to give back to the military community after her own 30 years of being a military spouse. With just the traces of an idea in mind for a new organization, she reached out to family, friends and community members to turn it into a reality.
“When I told them that I had this dream and asked them if they could help me make it happen, they said absolutely,” Lutz said. “We have five board members. None of us are paid; they’re all veterans themselves. The other people that have helped us — many of them are veterans’ spouses. All of us come with a love of dogs and a love of veterans, so that’s what brought us together.”
The organization is rooted in Aberdeen but doesn’t yet have a physical facility. Veterans from North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia can visit Continuing the Mission’s website to receive information about applying for a service dog through the organization.
“We’ve limited ourselves to what we’re calling a four-hour drive because we don’t want to just place a dog with a veteran,” she said. “We want to build a veteran community and be able to provide ongoing training and support.
“Just like people, dogs evolve, and once they’re trained, it doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way. We need to be able to be there in support of our veterans to make sure that the team is working well, and that the dog is providing what the veteran needs. Even beyond that, we want to provide a community for our veterans where those veteran teams will come back and help new veteran teams and provide a sense of community for them in our organization – our CTM family is what we really are.””
Read the rest of the article in The Pilot (Staff Writer Brittany Jenkins) https://www.thepilot.com/news/the-therapist-has-a-fuzzy-face/article_dc0c0078-6316-11e7-8e5b-8fefdfdddea5.html