Captain Thomas’s Last Hope
This was my last hope. My only hope. For two years I’d battled the nightmares, the panic attacks, the crushing fear that kept me hostage in my own home. I’d tried everything to get my life back. Meds. Therapy. Prayer. Nothing helped.
When I came across the website for Tom Tackett, a Vietnam veteran who trained service dogs for people with PTSD, and he turned out to have a potential match for me, it seemed like an answer from God at long last, an answer I’d desperately prayed for. That’s why I’d white-knuckled it all the way from Louisiana to Tom’s place in California. I was here to meet a service dog in training—Beaux, an almost-two-year-old 70-pound German Rottweiler. If he and I clicked, Tom would spend the next four weeks fine-tuning Beaux’s training to my particular needs.
On that September day we were out in Tom’s yard getting acquainted. Or trying to. Physically, Beaux and I were a good match—both of us big and tall and barrel-chested. But
