HANANIA AUTOMOTIVE GROUP PARTNERS WITH FIRST COAST NEWS TO GIVE MILITARY VETERANS AND SHELTER DOGS A NEW LEASH ON LIFE

As part of a new partnership with First Coast News, Jack Hanania's Hanania Automotive Group's Jacksonville, Florida, dealerships will make a donation, for every new and used car sold, to Operation Orion, a community service project with a goal to save the lives of our veterans and, also, save rescue dogs. First Coast News, the NBC/ABC television affiliate, has teamed up with local nonprofit K9s For Warriors for a unique effort ‐ training rescue dogs to serve veterans diagnosed with traumatic injuries.

 K9s For Warriors assists and provides specially-trained service dogs, at no cost, to veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disability (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI) and/or military sexual trauma (MST) as a result of military service post 9/11. The nonprofit group carefully selects dogs for their program and professionally trains them for three months, before matching them with warriors with whom they live, learn and bond, both onsite at the facility and out in the community, for an additional three weeks. Prior to being paired with their service dog, some of the warriors were unable to do simple things like go shopping due to anxiety. However, with their dogs they find that they can go into a store or sit at a restaurant. At K9s for Warriors 95% of the dogs are rescued from animal shelters across the country, some just 24 to 48 hours before the time they were scheduled to be euthanized.

A cornerstone of the K9s For Warriors program is its STOP22 campaign, which was launched on Jan. 22. The goal is significant ‐ to stop the veteran suicide epidemic that, according to the Veterans Administration, leads an average of 22 veterans to take their own lives every day in the United States. That's more than 8,000 heroes lost every year. K9s For Warriors offers veterans a place where they can heal and readjust to civilian life with the support of a service dog. The program has trained more than 180 warriors so far and boasts a 100% success rate in preventing soldier suicide.

© 2018 Chumney & Associates

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