Captain Louis Belluomini came home from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD.
Night terrors, flashbacks, and something else that just about ripped apart his marriage forever.
"My sleepwalking got so dangerous that I was grabbing weapons in the middle of the night," he says.
He wouldn't even realize he was walking in the kitchen and opening drawers.
"I was self-mutilating, waking up with blood on me," he says. There would be blood on the sheets, too, a scary thing for his wife, of course.
His PTSD and other issues caused major problems at home. He was in a dark place.
Then this veteran found out about K9s for Warriors, a non-profit in Ponte Vedra, Florida. The group custom trains rescue dogs to help veterans diagnosed with PTSD to manage anxiety and get their lives back.
So far, more than 600 graduates of the program have found solid success at retrieving a more normal life. There was one suicide out of the graduates, making the success rate at K9s for Warriors 99%, according to Executive Director, Rory Diamond.
Belluomini got matched with a dog named Star. "There have been times I've gotten up and she actually knocked me down," he says. Star seems to know even before Belluomini when a sleepwalking incident or a nightmare is about to happen.
She will paw at him to wake him up, he says.
Belluomini now has his family to enjoy, his career as a paramedic, and, in his eyes, the perfect Battle Buddy to deal with PTSD. Star even wears full doggie PPE to go on calls in the ambulance.
Without Star, Belluomini says, "I would be dead."
If you'd like to donate to K9s for Warriors, click here.
First Coast News held a telethon for K9s for Warriors on Veterans Day 2020. So far more than a half-million dollars has been donated. The funds go towards building a new "mega kennel," so the program can expand.