A Shelter Dog Who Nearly Died Is Training to Be a Veteran's Service Dog

When Marine veteran Brandon Quinnelly saw a photo of a shelter dog named Ares on the Best Friends Animal Society website, he stopped. The dog looked like Achilles, the service dog who had been beside him for 14 years and had recently died.

"The similarities between Ares and Achilles are uncanny," Quinnelly told Best Friends. He called the rescue center, drove to meet the dog, and adopted him the same day.

Quinnelly served in the Marines from 2001 until he was medically retired in 2010 for chronic PTSD, across six deployments. Achilles had helped him navigate life with the condition for 14 years, and Quinnelly has said the dog saved his life more times than he can count. Losing him was devastating.

Ares needed saving first. He had arrived at Shawnee Animal Services in Oklahoma unresponsive, with a dangerously high temperature, cuts and abrasions on his face, a badly swollen front leg, and a coat covered in fleas. The shelter's lone animal services officer took a day off to drive him seven hours round-trip to the Best Friends Pet Resource Center in Bentonville, Arkansas, where he could get the care he needed.

He recovered completely. Along the way he became known for his signature handshake, his constant chatter, and his firm belief, at 68 pounds, that he is a lap dog.

The save was a chain, and every link in it was a person deciding to do the unrequired thing. Shawnee Animal Services reached out beyond its own resources. Its lone officer spent a day off on a seven-hour round trip. The Best Friends team in Bentonville, where south-central regional director Sophia Proler is the named staffer on the case, took in a dog whose outcome was genuinely in doubt and nursed him back to the dog who offers handshakes. None of that guarantees an ending like this one. It just makes one possible.

Now he has a job to learn. Quinnelly began training Ares as his PTSD service dog the day after the adoption, the same work Achilles did for 14 years. Part of that training, Quinnelly says, is that Ares has to learn his scent and learn to tell when he's feeling off, so the dog can respond before a bad moment builds.

Best Friends published the story on November 11, Veterans Day in the United States. It ends with a dog who arrived at a shelter closer to death than adoption, sleeping in a home, offering his paw, and starting a second career.