Living in southern Georgia with his wife, Veronica, and Service dog, Toby, Dez Cook was discharged from the USMC in 2008 and graduated from K9P4P in 2021.
Here’s his story:
Following discharge? It was rough. Before K9P4P, I swallowed my shotgun. I swallowed my pistol. I was up and down. I was in a lot of dark places. The things that I did… a lot of times it was like man, if I live, I live, and if I don’t, I don’t. You know, I had my good days and bad days. But I had more bad days than good.
Tried self-medicating a little bit. Eventually with the VA I accepted the whole therapy and medication process, I was on a ton of medication. Sometimes I would just get tired and I’d quit taking it.
My brother, James, was concerned about me. He’s a mental health tech in the Air Force. He saw how I was on a roller coaster and he was worried. He saw K9P4P on the news and looked them up because he was concerned. I had said something to the effect of …
‘One day I may not be able to take it any more.’
He said “I don’t think it’s ‘if’, I think it’s more of a ‘when’. It’s when you will do something to yourself… Not if.”
I was afraid. And to me also it was not if, it was more of a when. Of course, that kind of hit hard. Now someone else is saying this too. So he was the one who pointed K9P4P out to me. “Why don’t you just reach out to these folks?’
He retired and went back to work at Patrick AFB as a mental health tech. He was doing the exact same job as a civilian in the military. He did this with the VA and he was talking about service animals.
He said, ‘Listen, I think it’ll help. I don’t know what else to do for you. I’m worried about you.’ He gave me the website. I looked it up and from there, the stories that I saw from Ron… That story basically was me. I went to K9 and I wanted to meet the man (Ron Flaville) telling the story. The man who said this was what was going on in his life too.
Even if you guys don’t accept me, I wasn’t real sure what to expect, I still want to meet him. I felt like he gave me the drive, or whatever you want to call it, to go one more day.
I couldn’t remember what his name was, I just remembered what he looked like. When I got there first thing Mary did –I didn’t even know her– she came up to me and gave me this big hug and said ‘Are you OK?’
‘Uh, yeah… why?’
And she said ‘I was getting something from you. You needed a hug, some help.’
I’m thinking ‘Man, who is this lady? What’s her deal? What is this all about?’
So we sat down and we talked. Man, there was something about her. Next thing you know, I start crying, she started crying… It almost scared me off. Is this place going to make me too vulnerable? Vulnerability around people I don’t know? She almost scared me off because I felt too vulnerable. She’s just a great person. And I was telling her about Ron. I didn’t know his name… and she was telling me who he was. He wasn’t there but she told me he’d be back later. Of course, I stuck around.
I saw him outside smoking a cigarette. I told him ‘you’re the guy… I just want to tell you ‘Thank you!’. I grabbed him and gave him a big bearhug. He’s looking at me like ‘what the hell is going on?’ I started crying.
I told him ‘Thank you, thank you! You saved my life.’
He’s says ‘What?’
I said ‘You saved my life.’ I told him’ you’re the guy from the video… and he’s like yeah, OK, but he didn’t want to talk about that. And that didn’t matter to me. So I gave him a big hug and he’s like ‘Who the hell are you and what are you doing?
I explained to him that a lot of stuff he was saying was me. I wanted to come here and get in the program. I told him ‘if I didn’t get I the program, I at least wanted to meet you. Because of you I’m here today.’
So after that, he and I, we’re tight. Whenever we see each we don’t shake hands it’s just a big hug. His wife, Kellie, I think she was outside with him when I was telling him about it. So she was looking at me and I love her to death, and I told her I’m sorry, I gave her a big hug. I always tell them I love them because Ron and the organization literally saved my life. So it’s like family. I don’t know if anybody has ever told him that, or if he’s ever done that but he literally saved a life.
I had Sadie for a few years before K9P4P. We already had a special bond because I had rescued her and brought her to the house with my wife, my son and myself. When we first got Sadie she was skinny; she was scared of her shadow but she came out of her cocoon. She and I already had a special relationship. Sometimes when I was home sitting there and no one was around and I’d start crying she used to come up and get in my chair with me, lick my face… so she kind of already had some of that training. And then when I got Toby I already knew how it would go. With Toby I had to have a little more patience.
That was the thing that frustrated me about Toby, is that he wasn’t Sadie! I got Toby about 5 years ago after I had to put Sadie to sleep. I was at the vet, sitting out in the parking lot and I was losing it. I called Mary. I needed someone to talk to. I couldn’t reach my brother so she talked to me. She said ‘We need to get you another dog right now, like ASAP because I’m worried about you.’
She reached out to some other K9 organizations and said ‘Look I got a vet and I need a dog like yesterday!’
We set up an appointment for me to meet three dogs and I wasn’t real enthused about any of them. And then someone said, ‘Wait, wait, we got this dog (Toby) we want you to see’, and they brought Toby over and it was like he chose me. He came up to me, sat down, started leaning up against me and he’s looking at me like ‘Are we going home? What are we doing here?’
Sadie was an American bulldog, 67 pounds and Toby is a lot bigger. He’s a Yellow Lab/Great Pyrenees mix. My challenge with him was that I had to remember he wasn’t Sadie.
With Sadie, I got so used to having her because at that time my wife and I had split up, so it was just me. I used to fly back and forth to Ohio and obviously I took Sadie with me everywhere. When I first got Toby my wife and I still weren’t together. I needed Toby because I didn’t have Sadie and I didn’t have anybody.
And I was always afraid, if I’m by myself and I have too much time to think and get inside my head that’s when it gets dangerous.
I put Sadie to sleep before I got Toby and there was really no need to get out of bed. And if I did get out of bed, I’d get out of bed and lay on the couch. And watch TV. Didn’t go anywhere. Didn’t go outside. I started isolating. So with Toby that changed because he started pulling me out of it. I was depressed about the whole thing with Sadie and everything else… that kind of opened the gates and let all the other stuff in.
So when I got Toby I had to get out in the mornings, and at the time I was living in an apartment so I couldn’t just let him out the door. I had to get up and go outside. And the apartment complex had a little dog park but I had to walk him to it to get him some exercise… So with him it helped out before the training was completed. He did a lot because he forced me to start living again.
Even if we lived in a house and I had a backyard, I still had to feed him. He gave me a reason to get up every morning. He gave me something to do.
I wasn’t working. I’m 100% (VA rated-disabled) and retired. So I could afford to do nothing. He gave me something to do and even before training he was already working for me. It dawned on me just now that he was working for me before he was actually trained. He changed my life before training was over.
He got employee of the month! At my job, they say ‘Where’s Toby?’
What I do now, I’m a Certified Peer Specialist for Aspire. I go out on 911 calls with the police if they think someone’s in a mental health crisis. Maybe it needs to be de-escalated or brought to an in-patient place or something like that. Keep people from going to jail, and getting them help with the police. We’re a recovery provider, for mental health & substance abuse. They paid for me to get my CPS so I’m in a CPS role which is funny because years ago, when the VA first started using CPS’s I remember my brother saying ‘Man, you should put in for that. You go to class and take the state exam but for mental health you have to be in recovery’ and I’d say ‘I don’t think it’s something I want to do…’ But now it’s exactly what I do!
…Which is cool because when I’m talking to people I’m able to relate to them. I’ll tell them the story of the first military doctor I went to. Talking about PTSD and all this other stuff, I went to this military doctor and first thing he said was ‘I understand…’
I thought about it and said ‘Doc, you ever been in combat?’
He said, ‘No.’
I flipped out. How can you tell me you understand? I felt like he was just handling me. So I tell people that story and I say ‘Listen, when I tell you I understand mental health and the struggles of it, I really understand it. And I give them a brief background about what I’ve been through.
It makes it a little bit easier for them to talk to me. I’m not a therapist but I do a lot of stuff that a therapist does. And I tell them ‘Listen, I’m just a paid friend. My job is to be friends with people and they pay me to do it. I’m talking to you as a friend.’ So I enjoy this job.
We’ve been here (in Georgia) about three years. I left FL about five years ago and I moved back to Ohio. I wanted to see if Veronica (my wife) and I could get back together. We’d been separated for a few years.
I wanted to go somewhere where it was just her and I. No family. No friends. No anything. I wanted just the two of us. It’s us against the world. We only have each other. No one else, just each other. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do but it worked out for us. And it made me stronger. The love that we share now is deeper than anything we’ve ever had before.
It was definitely scary, I didn’t even have a specific place in Georgia. We looked up houses and we found one that we wanted to buy and that’s it. That was the whole thing. We didn’t know anybody here… Didn’t have friends or family, just us!
That’s the reason why anybody from K9P4P asks me for something, I can’t say no… If I wanted to I couldn’t! You all gave me a gift. A gift of life. You gave my family a gift which was me. Because, man, I didn’t want to be here any longer. I sing your praises every opportunity I get. I honestly feel like I could never repay what you’ve done for me.
