Letter From Santa’s Animals

Click here to get the form, or read on to learn more about V.E.T.S.

Letters from Santa’s Animals was an idea I came up with while sitting at a coffee shop, working with my husband and grant writer on fundraising ideas for our non-profit V.E.T.S. A Letter from Santa was a fundraiser I did several years ago through the Lions Club, for childhood Cancer. I had a lot of fun with it, and I thought now that I have my own non-profit, it would be fun to bring it back. 

So, wait, what is V.E.T.S.?  
V.E.T.S. is short for Veteran’s Evolution, Technical School. We’re technically a school. Our Mission statement:  Here for those who came home, but haven’t made it back. Providing a guiding paw through the storm. 

Have you put it together yet? It’s ok if you haven’t. We’re new; our concept is still relatively new, and the way we do it isn’t common. So what do we do, you ask? We specialize in training psychiatric service dogs for Veterans who struggle with mental health, but want to try to get back to something that resembles normal. 

With a client, we can take one of two paths. We have to obtain and train the dog up to public access, and then we work with the client to train the dog for the specific tasks they wish the dog to perform (This is the transfer process). We take them out in public and teach them how to utilize the dog. If the client already has a suitable candidate, we teach them how to train basic obedience, public access, and tasks. Again, taking them out in public, teaching them how to utilize the dog. All at the client’s own pace. We are pushing our clients out of their normal comfort zone. So, if a planned training session gets too rough or the client is having a bad day, we change gears or reschedule. 

Working with a client to teach them how to train and utilize their own service dog can cost upwards of $20,000. Obtaining, training, and transferring a dog to a client can cost closer to $50,000.  With those costs in mind, we strive to do this with little to no cost to the client themselves. 

With all that said, Letters From Santa’s Animals is a fundraiser sponsored by V.E.T.S. to raise money to support a service dog team (dog and handler). The link below will take you to the form to fill out to get a letter sent to a child (or children) in your life (yes, this could include adults) from one of Santa’s animals. 

V.E.T.S. letters from Santa’s Animals 

You can follow V.E.T.S. on LinkedIn

Like the Mission, and don’t want to mess around with letters. V.E.T.S. does have a GoFundMe page, where you can go and make a donation.