National service dog program adds third site in Grand Strand

Big Paws Canine Academy & Foundation Inc., a nonprofit providing service dogs to veterans and former first responders with disabilities, will celebrate its grand opening with a chili cook-off Saturday in Aynor. Like similar charities pairing up vets and service dogs, this foundation operates solely with volunteers, and all costs for veterinary care and equipment for the dogs comes from donations, grants and fundraisers.

This location will become the foundation’s third site, joining its corporate headquarters, founded in Mira Loma, east of Los Angeles; and Midwest center in Sioux Falls, S.D. Big Paws operates solely with volunteers. It’s free to enter a dish in the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. cook-off at 1379 Horry Road in Aynor. Admission for tasting for the public is $5.

Mary Slavik, the chief operating officer and president of Big Paws, voiced her excitement last week at expanding the charity’s reach across the country, and thanked a host of local businesses for help and supplies in getting the Aynor site ready.

How did Big Paws get its initial footing off the ground, and spread coast to coast?

We started in southern California about five years ago, and three years ago in Sioux Falls, then my husband and family moved here in December, and my mother is in Conway. This will be our East Coast location. ...

My husband was a police officer at the time we started this nonprofit, and we had a dear friend who ... ended up in an intensive care unit for 11 months. After numerous surgeries, he physically and mentally gave up; that’s when, with Nitro, our 10-year-old yellow Lab – at the time, he was 3-4 years old and nicknamed Big Paws – we were able to bring him for visits into the facility where our friend was moved, and with help and encouragement from doctors and nurses, we began to see a turnaround in him. And then other patients knew on days when Nitro was coming into the hospital. One of the nurses stopped me to say, “I see more smiles when you walk in with him than I have seen in months.” ...

A couple of years later, my husband. Steven, got injured, and Diesel, our mixed-yellow Labrador retriever, who was 5 at the time, had tuned into my husband’s injury. ... So we realized we were on to something.

How many dogs have you trained and paired up to date?

At last count, we had 32 in South Dakota, 24 in southern California, and five here in Aynor. ... What we like to do is (have) our recipients within a one-two-hour drive. ... We have developed a community of veterans and first responders who have gone through the same thing.

Where do your miracle-making dogs come from, and just how much work, time and devotion goes into specially training a dog to be paired for life with a person?

We do prefer the dogs come in as puppies, as young as eight weeks old. Normally, we will get them donated from breeders or shelters, but we are not a rescue agency. We put in a minimum of 2,500 hours per dog, and normally it takes six-12 months to get them to pass what we consider to be public access. There are no government regulations as to what these service dogs need to do, or any kind of certification process. ... Big Paws has created minimum standards to pass our certifications, such as taking our dogs into Lowe’s or a Wal-Mart. We get them used to large noises such as forklifts, and people coming up to them. They need to alert you to a situation that might be going on behind you, but they never, never, never need to react in a vicious or aggressive way. ... And in restaurants, they cannot be distracted by food, drinks, or things being dropped.

What other reminders go with highlighting one of these dog’s special skills?

It’s a service dog; it’s not a pet. ... We will actually go out to businesses and explain to them what the rights of a service dog and handler are, and what the rights of a business are. ... A service dog has to be trained to do tasks that assists the handler with their daily life. We also will go in (and) assist businesses for dealing with people using dogs that are fake service dogs.

With three outlets now to connect with veterans and former first responders, how will this teamwork branch out even more, thanks to this addition in western Horry County?

We consider Aynor to be the “Red Team,” and the White Team is in South Dakota, and the Blue Team’s in California.

Information: Mary Slavik, toll free, at 844-244-7297 (BIG-PAWS), ext. 701, bigpawscanine.com www.Facebook.com/BigPawsCanineAcademy

This story was originally published April 10, 2015 at 8:43 PM with the headline "National service dog program adds third site in Grand Strand."