Las Cruces Dog Wins Hero Dog Award

Las Cruces dog wins Hero Dog Award

By Damien Willis / Las Cruces Sun-News, N.M. (TNS)

Wednesday, October 26th, 2016 at 8:20am

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LAS CRUCES – Mango, a 5-year-old Cairn terrier, is using her disability to make a difference. Three years ago, Mango was hit by a car and paralyzed. She was scheduled to be euthanized, but was saved by a rescue program. Since then, she has been making an impression on everyone she meets.

“The year I found her, I had been in an automobile accident,” said Judy Walter of Las Cruces, Mango’s owner. Walter lived in Ohio at the time. “I broke my back in three places and lost part of my leg.”

Walter was recovering at home, eager to get back to her job as a medical technologist at a hospital she had worked at for 32 years.

“I found that I could never go back,” she said. “So I was kind of laying there, feeling sorry for myself and recovering, and I found this dog rescue on the internet. I started following them, and they had this little dog named Mango in Fort Worth, Texas.”

After about a year of nursing Mango back to health, the rescue put her up for adoption. As part of a pilot program, the rescue sought to match Mango with a veteran. Walter had served six years in the Army Reserves. She applied for her and was approved, and Mango flew to Ohio.

While living in Toledo, Mango became a therapy dog certified by Therapy Dogs International.

“We started going to the VA clinics in our town, and she was just an immediate hit,” Walter said. “She would just go rolling right up to them in the room where they were doing therapy. I saw service members who had lost their limbs in the war, and you could just tell they had little hope. And they’d see this little dog and say, ‘If a dog in a wheelchair can be this happy, then I can, too.'”

When Mango arrived in Ohio, she had a little plastic wheelchair. Walter thought it should be upgraded, so she contacted Ruff Rollin’ Wheelchairs for Dogs in Bozeman, Montana — a company that manufactures custom-made wheelchairs.

“It’s a husband and wife, and they build them out of aircraft aluminum in their garage,” Walter said. “It’s their full-time job.”

While in Ohio, Mango frequently visited the Veterans Affairs clinic to encourage wounded veterans. Walter recalls one soldier named Alex who bonded with Mango.

“He had lost both legs in Afghanistan,” she said. “He was badly injured, and he didn’t talk much after that. She rolled up to him, and he tried to ignore her, but she wasn’t going to have it. She wanted in his lap. So I took her out of her chair and put her in Alex’s lap. She just looked up at him, as if to say, ‘I know you have a story and I know you want to tell it.'”

Walter said he just opened up and talked about the war, and how he lost his legs, for more than 30 minutes.

“His whole soul just poured out of him,” she said. “He would ask for her to come back frequently. And we went to visit him often.”

Before they moved to Las Cruces, Alex contracted pneumonia and died.

About 16 months ago, Walter created Mango’s Freedom Wheels — a project to provide wheelchairs to other paralyzed animals in need. Thanks to donations from across the country, Walter has provided 235 wheelchairs through Mango’s Freedom Wheels — and not just to dogs.

“We’ve donated wheelchairs for horses, goats, pigs and cats, as well,” Walter said. “Last year alone, we did $100,000 in donated wheelchairs.”

The website, MangosFreedomWheels.com, also has a store with various Mango merchandise. The proceeds from sales also go toward the purchase of wheelchairs.

A Facebook page set up for Mango, called Mango on a Mission, has more than 28,000 fans.

This week, Mango is getting the star treatment. On Thursday morning, Mango will appear on NBC’s “Today Show.” On Friday evening at 6 p.m., Mango can be seen on the Hallmark Channel’s Hero Dog Awards. Mango is this year’s recipient of this year’s Therapy Dog Award in recognition for her work with veterans.

Walter said the red-carpet event was taped last month at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.

Therapy dogs and service dogs have been used for decades to help veterans deal with the lingering effects of war. Organizations like America’s VetDogs, established in 2003, provides service dogs to veterans for free.

Las Cruces veteran Josh Dunne, a graduate student at New Mexico State University, suffers from PTSD. In August, he received a service dog — a black Labrador named Sawyer — from America’s VetDogs. The organization also provided Dunne with a two-week training at their New York headquarters.

“I waited nearly two years to get him,” Dunne said. “And it has changed my life so much. He wakes me up from having nightmares. He goes and gets my wife, and he’ll put his head in my lap when I need comforting.”

Dunne used to go to the grocery store in the middle of the night to avoid the crowds. Now he is able to shop with his family at regular hours, he said.

“It used to cause me so much anxiety,” he said. “But today, we stopped by Wal-Mart after I picked my son up from school just to get him what he wanted for dinner. I never would have done that before Sawyer.”

Sawyer has also reduced Dunne’s reliance on prescription anxiety medication, he said.

“Having Sawyer has brought some semblance of normalcy back to my life,” Dunne said.

Damien Willis may be reached at 575-541-5468, or @damienwillis on Twitter.