Emotional Support Animal Program (Veterans & Rescue Dogs)

Shelter to Soldier is able to provide highly trained emotional support animals (ESAs) to qualifying and vetted veteran and active duty applicants who do not require a psychiatric service dog, but instead have been recommended an emotional support animal by their mental health care provider. Emotional Support Animals are trained companions that provide love, comfort and support to their handler, but are not task trained and do not have the same public access rights as psychiatric service dogs. They do, however, have more supportive housing allowances compared to a pet dog. We receive many applications from veterans seeking an emotional support animal through our program, and these dogs are provided at no cost to the veteran. Veterans and emotional support animals are required to complete ten (10) handler lessons before graduating our program, which is a much shorter program than our extensive psychiatric service dog program.

While we do not adopt dogs for the primary purpose of the emotional support animal program, there are dogs who, after learning about them and training them over the timespan of a few months, demonstrate that they would not thrive in all public settings for one of a variety of reasons - comfort and confidence in public, worry with loud noises, uneasiness with flooring or other environmental stimuli, etc. These dogs are career changed from our psychiatric service dog program to our ESA training program.

Though Red Star Sponsors cover the cost of the prospective service dog, at times, the housing of these dogs exceeds what has been sponsored. To support these emotional support animal placements, we have an ESA Fund for earmarked ESA gifts of $5000 and more to support this program as a whole.