The Florida-based nonprofit that has partnered highly trained service dogs with 21 local military veterans will break ground in October on a multimillion-dollar dog breeding and training facility in Robinson, Washington County. One of Pittsburgh’s highest profile military veterans has been hired as general contractor. RBVetCo is owned and operated by Rocky Bleier, a veteran of the Vietnam War and Super Bowl-winning Pittsburgh Steelers teams. When the facility opens at the en

Army veteran Sami Erbecker stopped her car on a bridge last month and got out of the vehicle because, she said, “I was going to jump.” Her dog, named Angel, “blocked” her, she said, preventing the Mount Pleasant resident from walking to the bridge rail. “I got back in the car and went home because I could not leave Angel behind.” “If it was not for Angel, I would not be standing here,” Ms. Erbecker told more than 100 people, many of them military veterans, on Tuesday at Duque

Soon after Tim Kellermann returned from a 13-month deployment in Afghanistan, he realized he wouldn’t be able to brush off what he had experienced while stationed in the Korengal Valley – a place dubbed the “Valley of Death” for being one of the most dangerous stretches of terrain in the world for U.S. forces. “I was just having these moments, like thinking about people with their legs blown off and watching people getting taken out in a helicopter,” said Kellermann, who turn

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — We all know dogs are known as “man’s best friend,” but for one organization hundreds of miles away, they’re becoming life savers. They look like typical German Shepherds, playful and loyal. But these dogs are anything but ordinary. They’re highly trained at a facility called, “Guardian Angels Medical Service Dogs” in Williston, Florida. They’re taught to help people struggling with a wide range of mental and physical disabilities. Bill Fennel, a Vietnam ve