Hero Labradors: Charity providing service dogs to veterans

ATLANTA - Service dogs provide a vital service to those who need assistance, particularly veterans. 

Chuck Ziegenfuss is a wounded Iraq War veteran who travels the country donating Labrador puppies to be trained for veterans, first responders or their families. His charity is called Hero Labradors. 

"I retired from the Army, and I said to my wife, I want to do this. I want to breed dogs specifically for service dogs. And she said that’s a great idea, which was a surprise to me," said Chuck Ziegenfuss, president of Hero Labradors. 

Ziegenfuss lives in Decatur, Texas, and drove a litter of puppies to Atlanta, where he dropped off two pups to a service dog training organization. Hero Labradors donates the pups; the trainers then volunteer two years of their time and then a veteran gets the dog for free. 

Ziegenfuss knows the importance of service dogs. He has benefited from two service dogs since being wounded in Iraq in 2005. 

"These dogs have helped in so many ways, it's hard to think of a way they would not improve life for the veteran," he said. 

Hero Labradors is a charity, staffed by volunteers. Ziegenfuss says out of the 183 AKC registered puppies he’s donated for training; they have had a 96% graduation rate. 

"I think it has everything to do with the dogs and very little to do with me," he said. 

Ziegenfuss calls Labradors the Swiss Army knife of dogs, capable of any task required of them, from helping to cope with PTSD to the alerting of diabetic seizures. 

He was delivering that litter of labs to training programs across the Southeast on his bus. 

Learn more about Hero Labradors on Instagram and Facebook.