Paws 4 Life Needs a New Home

Paws 4 Life, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has to move. Right now, they have nowhere to go.

This one is personal for me. My mother has volunteered for Paws 4 Life for at least ten years, and the joy it brings her — helping veterans, retirees, and everyone in between — is touching to see. She takes great pride in training the dogs. She says sometimes the owners are more difficult to train than the dogs. 😄

The volunteers have trained service dogs at the Apache Greyhound Park for more than fifteen years. That ground is going away. They need open ground in or near Apache Junction, big enough for training rings and an agility course. If you have land, or you know who does, they need to hear from you.

The group started in 2007. Nobody there draws a paycheck. The trainers take dogs from the very beginning — puppies, total beginners — and work with them for 18 months, until they are full service dogs. The dogs go to veterans, to elderly folks, to anyone who needs one. Inmates at the Pinal County detention center train some of them. The group runs a youth program that turns at-risk kids into certified trainers. It visits local schools. It keeps a pet food bank for neighbors having a hard year. And to be clear: they train service dogs. They are not the adoption rescue with a similar name. Different group.

Classes are five dollars apiece, pay what you can. A group that works that way cannot rent commercial ground. They need a neighbor with a field.

At the greyhound park, the volunteers built the place up themselves. Training rings with real wood fencing. An agility arena. Years of work.

Here is what they need:

• Open ground in or near Apache Junction, big enough for training rings and an agility course
• Fencing, or permission to put fencing up
• Room for volunteers to park
• Access several days a week, every week
• Water and a restroom would help. Ground is the thing

A church lot. A ranch corner. A business with land it is not using. A boarding facility with an extra yard. An empty school building. Any of it could work. If the ground is smaller than what they have now, they will pare the setup down to fit. They run on donations, so the rent has to be what a volunteer group can carry.

If you have the ground, or you know who does, get in touch. Reach Paws 4 Life through their website, paws4life.net, or their Facebook group. Or email us at tips@apachejunction411.com, and we will pass it straight to them.

These dogs guide, steady, and look out for people all over this valley — veterans, grandparents, anyone whose life gets bigger with a trained dog beside them. The trainers are our neighbors. The clock is short. AJ needs to find them a field.

To see the love and the connection between the dogs and the veterans, the retirees, and all in between is quite stunning. I hope beyond hope they find a new home for their operation.