How Robin’s Service Dog Helped Her Reconnect with Her Daughter.
Robin joined the Army Reserves to follow in the footsteps of her father, a Vietnam War Veteran. She wanted to use her nursing skills to care for those who were fighting on her behalf.
Shortly after enlisting, Robin was deployed as a nurse in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit during the first Gulf War. Nothing could have prepared her for what she’d experience or the devastating casualties she’d come to witness. Robin struggled with feelings of inadequacy and lack of control, and she carried those feelings home when she returned to civilian life.
Robin didn’t understand it at the time, but she had developed PTSD, which left her emotionally distant, rigid and exhaustingly busy. She worked 60-hour weeks and enrolled in college for her doctoral degree. That didn’t leave her with much time for her daughter, Adair, or to process her emotions.
“My daughter and I grew up not talking,” Robin says. “I was just this disciplinarian, and she was raised restricted because of my fear that something would happen to her and I wouldn’t be there to protect her.”
By age 19, Adair had moved out. It was only when Robin had back surgery that she was forced to confront her trauma.
“I felt like I was slogging around in a cloud,” Robin says. “I felt flat and like I was in some sort of dark hole, asking myself ‘Who cares? What’s life all about?’”
She started therapy and learned about K9s For Warriors through a VA newsletter. She talked with her doctor, who believed a Service Dog would help her. So, with Adair’s support, Robin filled out an application — and that’s when you helped change both of their lives forever.
Robin’s bond with her Service Dog, Lady Rider, helped her to open up emotionally, accept help and repair her relationship with her daughter.
Today, Robin, Lady Rider and Adair go on hikes, camp in national parks and (most importantly) have deeper conversations, which have helped Robin to mend her relationship with her daughter.
“Lady Rider has returned a smile to my face and given me another purpose for getting up in the morning,” Robin says. “Now at this point in mine and my daughter's lives, we are working out our new chapter together with Lady Rider at my side.”
Robin is proud to use the skills she gained through the K9s For Warriors program. Thank you for making happy outcomes like this possible. Your compassionate support of K9s For Warriors saves more than lives – you also restore families.
