Welcome to the Good Stuff. I'm Jacob Shick and I'm joined by my co host and wife, Ashley Shik.
Welcome everyone, and thank you so much for joining us on this journey as we get to tell stories of inspiration and perseverance. Everyone's got a story and we're excited to share them with you.
We believe that everybody's got a story. We're telling from the valleys to the peaks, and we're really interested in what fed their soul to get them through their trying times to be able to come and tell these inspirational stories to provide a little bit of light in a world that seems to be full of a lot of darkness.
Again, Welcome to the Good Stuff. Our guest today is bj Gannham, who is the founder of Sierra Delta, which is a national nonprofit that works to help all veterans with various types of dog training to help guide veterans to better overall wellness and health through the love of dogs.
Bj is a fellow Marine. He's also a fellow amputee.
Yeah, y'all are both blessed by fire.
But he only has the one amputation, so really it wasn't that bad bad, No, we're comparing in comparison.
I feel like y'all are brothers separated at birth.
The two of you, quite possible. We have a lot in common. Really, it's strange. We knew that the day we met. We have all these things in common. I was immediately drawn to Bj. It's just the type of human that he is. We both played for the Wounded Warrior ampute football team, just a bunch of veterans, some wounded, some not to play against NFL alumni, and we have those games one or two times a year. We both have gotten DUIs, so you know, not something that we like to brag about.
Right.
We both have dealt with some really dark time, right. We both have dealt with suicidal idiation, and we've battled a lot of the same demons post war. And he has one up on me being also a cancer survivor. And he is just the he epitomizes the word warrior. That's who BJ is. And as you well know, I couldn't possibly love him anymore.
He's definitely a warrior, he's definitely a survivor. And we are so excited to share this conversation with you. We are so thrilled today to be joined by one of our dear friends, Marine Sergent, veteran founder and CEO of Sierra Delta, which is a national nonprofit working to help all veterans with various types of dog training to help guide veterans to better overall wellness through the love of dogs. BJ.
Thank you so much for joining us here on the good stuff.
Thanks for having me. Absolutely proud of you guys.
You two have known each other for a long time, and you earned your spot on the amputee flag football team because you also have lost a leg.
Absolutely, we didn't. Just for the record, we didn't lose them like I know where mine went.
That's true.
Yeah, that's anything like it just makes it sound irresponsible, it really does. I just didn't have the ability to reta.
That bomb tried to take way more than just my leg, and all it got was a few toes.
There you go. Fact, I love it.
But yeah, y'all established such an incredible friendship and brotherhood.
Yeah, being blessed by fire is only a few of us, right, There's a lot of people that served. There's only a few of us, and it's always a lottery. People can always say that they were in whatever unit, but who gets called and who gets the action is that's something you can't really predict.
No, that's a fact, like it's luck of the draw. It is so.
Are y'all any good at football?
Yeah, we're undefeated against NFL legends for a decade now. I don't know. I've scored a lot of touchdowns. I don't really keep track. I've seen Jake do some pretty amazing things with the Ninja turtle hand, and.
It's amazing what some athletics tape can do.
You know what's really amazing is I think they filmed this in slow motion because I swear I'm going way faster, and now watch it on video, I'm not as fast as I feel, which is it's physics. It is physics.
Y'all aren't as young as y'all once were.
I do remember picking offense younget go in the same.
Game, the greatest of all time. I'm a Texas long horner, a diehard Texas longhorned football fan. National Championships. Yeah, any highlights for you, BJ that you can think of.
One of the greatest things is we did an off Super Bowl game in Dallas. Here in Dallas, and Roger Stablach was there and his Achilles was bothering him.
And you took full advantage of that.
So he's a nat Academy graduate, so he's definitely on our team. But a couple of times you have me wide open and it went high and he got picked off.
And I remember, dude, he was down. He was he is still a straight up competitor.
Yeah, and so he was. He was mad at himself. It was a year and a half later that I saw him at the San Francisco super Bowl at the Hall of Fame breakfast and he comes up to me. He goes, I want you to know, like, my Achilles is better. If you guys need me, just call me. I want to play again. And I was like, sir, you're Roger freaking Stall Like, if you want to go have a catch in the street right now, let's go,
Like you can, don't You're all time quarterback. I don't care if you threw four hundred picks, Like that's it, right.
So those are one of the it's the relationships with those guys and the similarities between the NFL and the military, because once you're done at the NFL, you drop off to the Players Association, and once you're done with the military, you drop off to the VA and they're both woefully underprepared and under There's not enough leadership to care for these things, and that's a huge void to fill being either in the military or a pro athlete, especially at
the NFL, Like we have to think about two. Often people criticize pro athletes for saying that they're warriors and stuff, and I don't agree. The hardest thing you've ever been doing in your life is the hardest thing. If you're fighting cancer, you're a warrior. If you're agreed fighting against dyslexia, you're a warrior. Like if you're fighting to be the best at something, you are warring with yourself and you
are a warrior. Nobody owns warrior, and I encourage everybody to find a war to fight within your own life so that you can come out the other side better. Or it is technology, it just acknowledge it that there's effort in life. No matter the creature comforts we have, this is still a jungle. So it's it's the relationships of how these men use the termmine. Even though we have Jen Welter on the team, the first female coach in the NFL, by the way.
One of those picks. I tossed it to Jen. There you go, and she took it for six.
There you go.
Yeah, she can fly.
She can fly, you can play and a lot of the And that's what we're learning. I mean through this flag football team. We've made a partnership with Snoop Doggs Special Stars, which is a flag football league created for kids with special needs. Right, so many other people can play football and get something. Alyssa Milano and Jen Welter have a day in the life where they're trying to help women understand all the different opportunities within the sporting world.
That doesn't really necessarily mean that you're playing on the field. But hey, you're a longtime Texas Longhorns fan, right, you have bad taste in football teams, but you probably have really great taste in clothes. And you want Texas los shots fired, just kicking.
Find shots received. We're Texas, we're at the.
University and Nate boy is a good friend and plays on the team too, and then he's a big Texas guy. So but hey, I love all these is a small Texas.
It's all for the love of the game, and I love to hear what you said about warriors, and it is so true the similarities between the field and the battlefield depending on which one you fought on. You're there next to your brothers and that you're willing to sacrifice your body, your pain, your everything to make sure that person next to you on either side is protected. And what a great thing y'all created in this Flag Football League and just bigger and better things coming up.
That trends Bowl one this year and it's going to be aired on Fox. So it be Thursday night before the Super Bowl in prime time. You guys get to see me and Jake. We got to get in shape of a we can't.
Keep working on.
I'm in the process.
I'm in the process too. I haven't lifted anything heavy or ran accelerated my heart beat in three years. We're about to change that.
Awesome. Let's do it well, Bja. It is an honor to have you on our show. We are so privileged to hear your story and have you open up about how a wrinkly English bulldog from a trailer park in Wisconsin with zero special training actually saved your life.
I had joined the Marines in nineteen ninety six, served on active duty for four years, got off the State and ready reserves, took a job in Corporate America because you know, I was going to climb that corporate ladder and be a bad marine on the side. So it life was good, that's right. So I got out December of two thousand and obviously nine months later the whole
world changed, but nine to eleven. We got activated in two thousand and four, and I had been operating in country as an infantry unit that I was assigned to as a platoon sergeant, third Platoon, Golf Company, second Battalion, twenty fourth Marines Baby and been operating for three months. We lived underneath the bridge. We always had a squad on rest, a squad on patrol, and a squad on security. I drove every single patrol. It helped to keep continuity.
The terrorists were good at what they did. They would pattern us, and it's easy to fall into patterns, and so by maintaining the lead vehicle, I was able to keep us from falling into those patterns, and it helped me to stay productive. On Thanksgiving night of two thousand and four, our regular patrol and lo and behold, the terrorists got one in on me. They killed my gunner
Ryan Catafia. With that attack. It was three one five five Russian made artillery shells tied to a tripwire, so as soon as my vehicle went through, it went off right on my door. So I had three shards of glass in my left eye, a huge piece of shrapnel in the sappy plate, which is the metal plate within your flack jacket, a bunch of other shrapnel, and the right leg and my left foot was just demolished by the shrapnel that came in, so I knew it wasn't good.
There was a small ambush, small arms fire that came in the guys on the patrol and the Quick Reaction Force got there. The QRF Quick Reaction Force showed up
quelled it. I remember listening to the black Hawk flying above, but they weren't going to land the helicopter in a hot LZ, so they trucked me out And it was at Saint Michael and Mama that it started to dawn on me that I ain't coming back to the bridge and that everything that I just spent nine years working for and training for and being ready for is over, and that was a hard pill to swallow. I remember being on the helicopter and I was bandaged up. My
one eye was still open. It was a clear night with a full moon. It's almost like it's daylight. How bright it was when with the stars are out and the moon's out, And so I remember watching the moon through those blades as they're rotating and just thinking, damn, I wish I was dead to say that now, after all the growth that they're all the work that we've put into, it's still embarrassing, but it's no less true. It's the worst feeling in the world. Anxiety, panic, fear, failure.
It's the fifty guys that were under that bridge. I mean, we were closer than most families, no matter where you're from. That was a hard thing to get pulled from. And it made me feel like this isn't the way it's supposed to happen.
Right, Because what's supposed to happen is you protect your fellow marines, you complete your mission, and you get yourself back alive in one piece.
And you have to be convicted in that mindset.
In order to take on this role as a United States Marine, you have to assume an arrogance. I am the Arnold Schwarzenegger of this movie, and yes, the other people are the extress right. This is why I think people have this negative connotation about military people, especially if you're a fighter, pilot, infantry or ranger, your whatever. You have to adopt this arrogance or else that environment is going to eat you alive.
I can obviously, yeah, absolutely, And I know what three one, five us feel like. I mean the same same size mom. I guarantee you even beginning to tell this, you haven't even thought about the physical pain.
No, and I still don't even remember the physical pain. What PTSD for me has nothing to do with nightmares or having trouble with fireworks or I miss being there. I was in my place as a platoon's argent. Like, unless you're there and you've done that job, when other people, once you dead, want the people that you're there to care for dead. When you have to meet with people's families, mothers, wives, grandparents a lot of times and know that these people
are in your care, it's all consuming. It's really hard to explain to people that haven't been there and haven't experienced the First time we got shot at, I thought we ran over a bunch of rocks. And then when I get to the bridge. My vehicle is leaking from everywhere, and I realized, oh, that's what it sounds like to get shot at. Before that, I was just thinking about movies.
Right when it pans back to the bad guys and you hear the report and the guy I always know what to duck because there goes that it doesn't work that all of a sudden, shit just starts blowing up around you, or like dust starts flying, or things start getting knocked over, and you realize, oh, craps, or you hear like snaps happening around you.
And that's the distinct sound that they make is way different than.
The higher Yeah, one hundred percent. So it's really hard to explain why you would want to be in that.
So you're there, You're on the helicopter. You're the Schwarzenegger of your own movie. This isn't like any movie you've ever seen before. Talk to me about when the pain's set in.
The pain I remember most and the pain that I still carry with me is the pain from I only have a half a combat deployment. But there was other pains. Right My first amputation is at the ankle, only took the foot. I remember the doctor's asking me on the table should we take it at the ankle or the knee? And I'm looking at them, going, are you serious? Like you guys went to medical school. I don't know.
I'm whip a coin.
I don't know. Doctor. I'm like, save as much as you can. That's all I really understood.
Yeah, could you just clip the tonehels exactly?
Can you patch it up and send me back out? Is that an option? And I remember what sold me on keeping it at the ankle was a guy one of the teams of doctors at Bethesda, because that's where they finalized the surgery. He was like, Hey, if you have to get up in the middle night to pee, you kind of have a human peg leg to bounce off of and you don't have to put on a prosthetic. That made enough sense to me, so I kept it there.
How did you do in the hospital?
I only was in Walter Reed and Bethesda for about ten months. Most people with an amputation were there.
Yeah, I mean to put it in perspective, I was eighteen months. Yeah, ten months is crazy fast.
So you were on a fast track to get out of that hospital and figure out what does life look like now?
But as a twenty eight year old man with an amputation at the ankle where prosthetics have to build underneath, I was constantly off balance. I was gaining weight. I couldn't really be as active as I wanted to be, and you can't be the person that you want to be at this time. Dylan and Mackenzie are my only two kids, but they're nine and seven. I'm not able to play with them in that way, so that forces me to dive into work more. I'm working for craft Foods.
I'm driving myself up that corporate ladder. I'm going to school at the same time, like I am diving full force in to find a different identity. I had already gotten a convalescent leave to be home around Christmas in New Year's and you feel like an alien in your own community. In your own community, I got a wound back on. I don't even have, like my stuff's not even all the way sewn up, which is fine because they have to do that. And I was the one forcing to be home, Like How'm I gonna get my
whole family? Both Jake, you and I would come from big families, right, and they would come and crash well to read them, but does.
The absolutely I mean, my family descended upon Bethesda with vengeance from Louisiana and Texas, and we're like, hey, we're here, still supporting. We're not real sure it looks the same, and we don't know how to behave or act or what we're supposed to do. And you know, our only biggest complaints could we get some better food. I mean, I wasn't. I never ate because I was just high all the time and I just wanted cappuccinos and gatorades. But it was an adjustment for everybody because how do
we support in this new support role? How do we behave? Is it the same as before or is it different now? What does our new normal look like? And it was just a constant pivot on the fly, trying to establish what our new normal looks like. And then a big frustration was they were treating me like this delicate little flower who was also this hero, right, and it's like no, no, no, no no, I just had a bad day. I mean
this is I was just doing my job. And that's a very frustrating thing because you expect them to understand when they don't have the ability to understand, right, And.
Where I was even more angry is at Walter Reed. This is two thousand and four, so this is the height of it. But this is when I first meet President bush Is in Bethesda, and that was okay, but I had a real problem with it. There's all these people want to come in and take pictures for me, and they're all saying and all the letters, and I appreciate all the support. The reason I tell the story and the struggles with it is that was part of the problem. We were all of a sudden being treated
as celebrities. A lot of these guys are really young guys, and you've got a lot of support systems that are really young, like a lot of people that got married just before he goes away. You're seeing a lot of that stuff unravel. It unsettled me because I wasn't ready. I was already displaced, and I already had anger issues. That's why I needed to get out, because I was going to lash out, and I knew that wasn't a
smart thing to do. But you were seeing it. You were seeing the men trying to stay there longer because they were a celebrity and they knew when they went home it was going to be quiet. That's what it is. So I go back to what I know. I'm coming home and I'm trying to find a new purpose in life because the one I had, the one I put all my chips on, gone gone, and I didn't have
the mindset to be prepared for that. So that first convalescent leave, it's surreal being home because you still don't feel right being there, but you're also at the same time happy to be there.
I remember with me, I was consistently uncomfortable, but content all the time.
All the same time. It's hard to put into words. This is around Christmas time and all that stuff. Right, I'm a kid from Georgia. I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, a huge Georgia Bulldogs fan, like the National Championship Georgia Bulldogs, not like Texas Longhorns. It you did, didn't you?
Dang it?
She got it back.
If I remember correctly, Bevo almost killed the dog.
Yeah, exactly so. And I was also the United States Marines and the English bulldog is the mascot, so of course I want an English bulldog. Now you look for true English bulldo and they are very expensive. Right, that's not happening I didn't know of the shelters and stuff that I know of. Now you know, I'm in the industry. So I go onto Craigslist and I find this guy is selling old English bulldog puppies for like eight hundred bucks something like that. Still super cheap, is still expensive.
But I go to this trailer park in Wisconsin that has like a pole shed in the back where these puppies are, and I'm not using a wheelchair, but I'm using crutches. I've got my pants leg tied off and all that kind of stuff. There is only three left, and the one that ends up being Dozer has this white stripe down his face and he just speaks to me.
Nothing special, a bottom. So I pay the guy. I come back in two weeks and pick him up, and he literally just sleeps on my neck, you know, just a good dog, but no special training, no special talent or breeding or anything like that. In the beginning, the phantom pains were the worst.
Yeah, phantom pins sucks.
What's a pantom pain? Explain it to that.
So when you have phantom pains, it's when you lose a limb. Your nerves are basically firing off and trying to communicate with the nerves that used to be there in your limbs. They're not getting a response and so they're signaling pain. So like pain isn't something that actually exists, your mind creates it in order to gets your attention. So for me, it was always like I just stubbed my toe. My bottom of my foot was itching. It
felt like I was standing in fire. I'm standing on a nail foot cramp and there's no foot there, And.
You have to literally retrain your brain right that your leg stops before that point. Every time you feel them tap on your thigh, tap on your thigh, what you're doing, you just train in your brain, Okay, wherever you fill that tap end, that's where it stops. So you don't have to acknowledge that below there anymore. And it takes forever, it does.
But Dozer picked up really quick when I was having these pains, and a lot of times I'd be on the couch or in a chair with the recliner chair, or even on the bed, and literally as the pain is happening, he jumped wherever he's at. He comes from wherever he's at and lays on my leg. And him doing that redirecting my attention helped more so than anything else. But he did it on his own, and it was amazing. Right, anybody has owned a dog, no matter what, that's your
spirit animal. You got that connection, You got that connection.
How much deeper was your connection with Dozer when he immediately went to your pain point?
Oh it's huge, right, because you're like, how do you even know that this is happening? For this right? Literally, the dog's talents where that he could get slobbery in places he thought was physically impossible to get slobber into. He could clear a room with his farts and literally he ate a whole pizza, piping hot pizza fresh out of the oven one time and one bite literally turned around to grab like my cup and came back and there was the pizza was gone. He was licking his lips.
It was like drool coming out. I'm like, I hope you burned your mouth. That was my dinner. And I was like, but I'm also amazed because it's not a crumb anywhere. Wow On and other people were afraid of him. He could be a little gruff, but he was my gruff slobbery dog, and that was the dog version of you. He really was right.
So you're rushing headfirst into this transition from the core. You pushed for the convalescence leave around Christmas after having just been hit by the bomb on Thanksgiving. You've got a good job lined up, You've got this new puppy. How's the rest of your life at this point?
To say that my marriage was rocky, my first marriage, and it's an understatement. Somebody that got pregnant, and I didn't have my biological dad growing up, so I didn't want to have my kids out there without their biological dad. It's not a good foundation to base a forever relationship one. But you don't know what you don't But you don't know what you don't know, and you're young and dumb
and you can fix it on the fly. So now I have this near death exp experience, and now you want to double down on it, and you're going to buy the big house for the family because everybody's throwing all this money at you. You're getting the new cars, and I just dove into it and just really trying to do what I thought was the right thing, based off of what everybody else's feedback was, based off the American dream like that prototype, the stereotypes, they are out there,
and just I need to climb that corporate ladder. I need to get the bigger house, to cars all that stuff. But the whole was just getting bigger and bigger, and there's only so much that you can fake before everything rises to the top. You know, when I went through divorce, I remember saying, you can have all the stuff. I just want the kids to dog and my jeep, and I've got a file bankruptcy. I'm short selling the house
that was it. I moved into that dank apartment with Dozer, and I had my kids like every other night and every other weekend and all that stuff. When I don't have the kids, I am out tearing it up like we're about to go to combat again, and drinking too much but still performing right, still doing my work, still turning in stuff for school, but doing too much, and I get fi functioning mess, high functioning mess, one hundred percent.
And when do things completely unravel.
I want to say, it's like a Wednesday, if I remember correctly, it was in the middle of the week, and there's a bar in downtown Dell's. It's a sports bar, nothing major. There was a guy who's an acquaintance. It was like, Hey, I'm in town having a drink. Why don't you come meet me out? And so it was yeah, all right, let me finish this up. I don't have the kids tonight. Those probably back a couple hours. Quick drink, slap, some fives, all that stuff. It ends up being far time,
definitely too drunk. I knew I shouldn't have been driving. You close the bar down, close the bar down, not stumbling, not bumbling, And I kept it like it was no erratic driving. What got me was I was doing about fourteen miles over. It's one of the rural road. They have it at thirty five. It can be forty five, so I'm doing like forty nine. But again it's probably jamming out the sound garden, pearl jam something, so you're going a little faster there. It's a good night. Things
are good there. You got a good buzz going. And then I see the lights and literally I'm pulling in and I stopped just short of the parking lot, and I'm just going to talk to law enforcement like we always do. Hopefully it's a bro, it's a military guy, and we can work this out, and you know, they asked me to do the walk the line stuff, and I'm like, I got a prosthetic leg. And I remember the officer she's I don't care that you lost your leg in Irack, and I was like, then you should
just go ahead and arrest me. I remember all the officers telling me that if I didn't blow, like you're definitely going to jail, and I was like, I'll take my chances. So when she tells me like, I don't care that you were hurting the war and all this other stuff, I think you've been drinking. I think you've had too much, and so I unders and I'm in a losing thing. So I just basically surrender and I went and got processed and they actually took my leg. I don't know if they did it.
To you that way, but no, yeah, because you just no.
And I think they were mostly mad that I wouldn't blow or wouldn't give blood or any of that stuff. So they took my leg, made me sleep in the cell until I was deemed sober enough the next morning, and didn't let me go, and so I walked home. I didn't call a cab, I didn't do anything. I just walked to seven miles. I had a company car.
I worked for craft Foods. So that means if I get charged with a DUI, job is over, healthcare is over for the kids, because at this point in time, I'm not one hundred percent the whole time walking going through scenarios in your head. But what we would call immediate action drills in the military, Right, what are my options? What am I going to do? You know, when you get into serious trouble, life altering trouble, not only for you, I mean my kids. This is going to change their
lives drastically. That anxiety that can run away, those negative thoughts that you haven't really addressed. You just put somewhere else for the time being while you focused on something else. That's when all that comes back in full force. And I was all the way down into that muck, right into that quicksand that is the harder you fight, the
faster it's bringing you down. And that's all the things that I just said earlier, like you should have died that night, that thought of death before dishonor just ended just be done with it. You should have died that night Thanksgiving night in two thousand and four. It shouldn't have been cantaphia. It should have been you. All that stuff plays in your head, guilt, shame, and you screwed up everything since being back. Don't deserve to be here, all this other stuff.
I'm a burden.
I'm a burden. I suck. Yeah, I'm not the rams fortune nigger. I thought it was all that stuff. And then you start rationalizing everything away. The kids will be fine. They got their mother, they got all the family, They'll find other people. I didn't. I grew up without a dad, never knew. So that you'll be fine. There's a big family, they'll memorialize me. Everybody will be fine. That'll be fine, That'll be fine. And so I'm rationalizing everything away. I understand.
Go get the pistol under the chin, the whole thing, soldier's death, if you will. Instead of putting the sword through the spine, it's the bullet under the chin, right through the brain. Blow it out. But the one thing I couldn't rationalize away was the fact that if I'm gone, nobody's going to want that gruff old bulldog, that slobbery, stinky, kind of a pain in the butt bulldog. It'll end up in the shelter and because of the breed is
most likely will get euthanized very quickly. That was enough for me to find some footing, find something that I couldn't rationalize away. Wasn't going to be any better with me being gone. And it's a dog. And that's when I'm looking at this dog. It's looking at me, and I realized that I'm the team leader of me and him, and I've got to figure out the plan because if I go, he goes, and he ain't choosing this way as far as he knows, there's another pizza coming eventually.
So it was there with that dog that you just break down and you start putting together a plan. Start looking into what resources do I have? The IA drills are different. Now what can I do? I have a huge network. I have a lot of people that believe in me and we've done a lot of good together. Start by being open and honest with them. Writing letters. I need help, writing letters to the judge, to the Chief of police, taking full responsibility for what I did.
And it's not saying that I did anything, and I wasn't using the PTSD as an excuse. What I said was I was in a bad place. This has been a help, and I guarantee you I'm going to put this together and you guys will never see me again if I get this chance. They heard me. They read the letters of all the other things that I accomplished, and I kept it to my accomplishments, not to my disabilities or anything, and then asked for forgiveness and received it.
It got knocked down to a reckless driving. I had to do a ton of community service, which I was fine with, pay a bunch of fines and all that other stuff. But it did and they never saw me again, like, never got in trouble with the law again after that, because that was your tipping point. That was the tipping point. And it was in those moments that I realized I was having trouble with the amount of charity being given
to us. And know me and you have talked about this, Jake, but it was in that moment in time that I realized that was in charity, that was an investment, and I had a responsibility to show a return on that investment. And then that's when I started looking at the job I was doing. What am I chasing? Why am I chasing the corporate letter? Do I believe in selling cookies and crackers, or am I just trying to put food on the table. It was one of those I'm just
trying to put food on the table. I was three semesters away from graduating with a bachelor's in business and going I switched and got a bachelor's in psychology and then got a master's in social work with emphasis on military life, so that I could focus on figuring out not only how to fix me or how to get me right with not being a marine anymore, not being a platoon sergeant, but how I was going to do this for the other vests. I knew they were struggling too,
because that's all we had was each other. A lot of times it was in these bars, and it was around campfires and drinking and stuff, so that was all we had. But I had to figure out a new way.
So at what point in your relationship with those or did you realize this is a service animal to me? And then at what point did you have the epiphany of Sierra Delta.
I think everybody else realized Dozer was a service animal to me before I did, because everybody would always ask how Dozer was, and everybody knew it was a special relationship. Right. He went a lot of places with me, not to like restaurants and stuff like that, but people's houses and other things. So he always had a special relationship. And Dozer dies a month before I get the diagnosis for cancer, which part of me is relieved. I did six months
of chemo and six months of radiation. I remember being in my room because at this time, when you go through chemo, your white blood cell count almost gets obliterated, so you have to isolate yourself from your family and everybody else because if you catch the common cold, you're having a hard time recovering from it. And I remember sitting in that room missing Dozer like crazy. He had just died before I got this diagnosis. And like I said,
he was he's thirteen years old as a bulldog. That's a hundred years old.
Yeah, that's a lot longer than the average ten eleven years for those guys.
And so the one solaces I got was I was grateful to God that he took them before I got the diagnosis, because if I would have known, he would have known, and then I think he would have hung on more because I was hurting, and that would have just not been a good thing, but.
A weird way. I think that's beautifully rad.
Even if it's just to help me not cry about them. Right, it was in this moment, like in my room by myself. Luckily it was lymphoma stage two, very treatable. There's no fear of death. It's almost kind of like being in the hospital again with the amputation, like you know you're
not going to die, but life's going to suck. It was a lot like in the military, right we call it embracing the suck, or whether it's twenty nine palms, whether it's combat, there's moments some times when it couldn't suck any worse, and yet we all find a way to laugh and nobody says anything. It's just the chuckle starts and then it just gets contagious.
Right.
Dozer had that same power. It's a bulldog. I mean, I've got a picture of him right here and you can see when he's really old, but he just has that way. It could have drool just hanging and you would laugh like all, I just ain't so bad after all. And so it was in those moments that I realized how important Dozer was to me, what I was missing from Dozer wasn't any service that he provides, it was
just being there. It was in Chemo that all that came full circle and I understood what I needed to do with Shia Delta and I called it the Life Buddy Program because everybody was getting confused with service dogs and still are. There's service dogs, there's emotional support dogs, there's companion dogs, there's there dogs, there's facility dogs, there's working dogs.
But there's so many vets that don't need a highly specialized.
They just need a do Ninety eight percent of us don't, right, Like even the dog I have now is Loki okay, and so he's a mutt out of the shelter. I mean, we kill in this country eight hundred thousand healthy, trainable and adubtable dogs every year. So there's plenty of resources out there. There's thousands and thousands of dog trainers. And we have a partnership with a Department of Labor and
it's called the Sierra Delta Life Buddy Apprenticeship Program. And it only takes two years to become a proficient dog trainer. That's it, So we can create more of these dog trainers. Is what do you think half the veterans want to do when they go through our program becomes we call them dog trainers, right, So this is a great way to get them there and they can do it as a side hustle or go on as a career because
we're giving out grants for that. Absolutely how humans and dogs have been working together for thirty five thousand years. This is a relationship set in stone. We've got scientific data coming out the Wazoo showing that if a person is highly stressed and is in the dogs and pets of dogs, their stress levels go down. And the great things by empowering the veterans to tell us what kind of dog do you want in your life and what
do you want it to do for you? Most of them are just like, I want this type of dog, and I just don't want it to run away. I wanted to be able to go camping with the family. I want it to walk nice on lead, all that kind of stuff. Have a good teammate, have the good left and right ladder limit know what you're going to do. And the most common thing I hear from veterans is that I knew you were going to train my dog.
I didn't know you're going to train me too, but I like it, and so we have a YouTube channel out there sunder Sierra Delta. We've got these veteran vignettes and they're one to three minutes long. You can see all the diverse types of vets and what they say their dogs do for them and how Sierra Delta helped them get there.
Beach tell us about a few of these vets and their dogs.
So if you watched the Drew Barrymore interview that I did on her show back in December, I brought Stephanie Marvin Miller with me and she works for US now. But she was raped in the army by your NCO. He was charged, sent to jail, and she was turned down by thirteen service dog providers saying that they don't deal with military sexual trauma. I just I don't even.
I can't even.
So the last one that was turning her down, I had a friend that worked there. He called me. He's like, listen, we're gonna have to turn her down. Can you help her? I was like absolutely, And so I talked to her. She's in a place that she would think that she would be in, very dark, unsure. She can't understand why no one's willing to help her and that these dogs have been proven, and I was like, don't worry about that. We got her tied end with Southeastern Guy Dogs down
in Florida. She had a dog within six month, Leland. That was back. That's three years ago now, and like I said, she's working for us, she's working on a book talking about her experience. She's married, she's got and she talks about Leeland and having this process is what helped her get through that. And it's very simple, right. We've got le Otto, he's one of our best ambassadors right now and his dog Sage, and they've been together
for three years. He's got four purple hearts. This guy you're talking about overachiever, but he's not missing any limbs or anything. But he's got you still believably bad luck.
So he.
Was a typical angry event and we were just an event with his parents and they talk about how Sage, his dog, totally changed him and this whole process that he's in has made him a different person. And he talks about the purpose, the empowerment having a job again, having a role to play in the community is just asking them to utilize their network utilize that relationship with your dog in a way that achieves wellness for you and the dog. However, you guys define that and it's simple.
It's walking your dog, which is good for you, your dog, playing with your dog, teaching it new tricks, getting a new routine. All that stuff is all beneficial. Aaron Hale is one of the vets. He's both deaf and blind human right, awesome human being. We worked with Foot Delco Guide Dogs to get that because he also wanted a German shepherd, right, So we take those things into consideration too. Is what's in their mind's eye is what do they want their spirit animal to be.
It's clear what an impact does are made on your life at a time where you needed him the most, and your passion to do this for other veterans is just incredible, and we can't say enough to say thank you for what you've done.
The service.
After the service, that's the important part. That's actually how you're going to get better, and that's what we try to tell people. You don't have to wear a uniform and grab a weapon to serve your country.
So we have a couple of questions that we ask all of our guests and we'll start with what do you do to relax and recharge?
Wow, it seems for the past couple of years I have not relaxed and recharged as much as I should. One of the things that I do love to do is just to get out into nature and hike, either with the kids and the dog or just the dog. That's my jam. Like we live in Wisconsin, so we have wilderness around us, so I'll just sneak away with the dog and just get back into nature for a
little bit. But my youngest boys, Knocks and Roads, are nine and seven, and so this year we did an RV trip through Utah and I'll hit five national parks and we've done some other trips. So we do this thing on social media called Daddy School. We started it during the pandemic when the kids had to stay home, and it started outill teach them how to poop in the woods and all that other stuff. And what we've done is really just try to capture life lessons right
and share them. And it's so fun to watch the kids like, oh, Dad, this will be good for Daddy School. All this stuff right, get into it. So like I love my family, like my wife Sarah. She's just a fan, a huge fan. She works for Meta. She's doing great things too. And I love the life that we're building and I do love the work I'm in.
Is there a specific person or organization or entity that you can think of that has had a major impact on you.
That's a long list too. People My godfather, ed Linton, who passed just recently last year, huge impact. Like you talking about a person that didn't have a father. He grew up in an orphanage too. So family is the
keystone of everything about me. Brine Corps obviously, like that brotherhood, the Boston Marathon survivors, we flew out there to help when all that happened and just be there and just be like, hey, your life isn't over, even though you're missing pieces, and the relationships that are built through them, and seeing how it would be different if I wasn't in the military. Like to have insurance companies look at a human being and say, oh, you want a running leg.
That's a privilege, right, You're gonna you only get like the basic and it's well, running a privilege, and it's just it opened my eyes to a lot more and their relationship that's endured. So that happened in twenty thirteen and we're still fast friends. We keep track and we keep up. It's been people like you, Jake. It's been people that we've met along the way, and even people
I don't know their names. I know you're a lot like me that you have random conversations with somebody on a plane, but it impacts you, it changes you, and you have to get to a point to where you're open to that to be able to learn something every day. Stay humble. It's all the cliche stuff that is at Walmart on every type of wood or paper.
Right, graphic, teas, graphic, but it is true.
But it's just accepting it.
What feeds your soul.
People, I have too many people in my life that I care about, and that's a good problem to have, absolutely, and I'm looking for more because I do think we can do whatever we want in this life and that there's never been a better time to be alive than right now.
Well said b J.
Cannam.
Thank you so much.
That is the good stuff, and we truly appreciate you and your friendship and all that you've given to this country and all that you're continuing to do.
Absolutely, thanks for being on the team, and proud of you guys for putting on this good stuff. More people need to hear the good stuff that's out there, and you guys are leading the way.
Well, I'll tell you what, brother, you preach it well and often, and it really is an honored privilege. And I love you, brother, and I appreciate you, and we are we're seriously honored, humbled and privileged to have you not even on this show, but in our lives.
So thank you, Dito man.
Such an incredible story and I cannot imagine a world without BJ in it.
Nope, it's definitely a better planet with him on it. So thank God to Dose and.
His perseverance and his tenacity to keep going through all of the highs and all of the lows and everything that he went through. And it took him staying the course and figuring out, hey, I've got more to live for, I've got more to do for this world. And he could have just moved forward and lived his life, but he didn't. He decided to go back and contribute and now he's changing other people's lives.
Yeah, and it's like I said in the intro, BJ epitomizes what it means to be a warrior post war. He's a shining example of the fact that you can be a benefit to society and your nation without wearing a uniform. And that's why I love the guy, because
he's one of the most selfless humans I know. And it doesn't surprise me at all that he's been able to do all these things and achieve all these things, and develop all these relationships and literally leave a footprint that will be I mean, there will never be another beach again. Right, He's the one and the only, and he's just an inspiration just by drawing breath.
Agreed. And if this story inspired you and touched you, please feel free to share it. If you've got a story you'd like for us to share, please reach out to us, connect with us, because this is the whole purpose of the Good Stuff.
It's to share these.
Stories to provide that inspiration that we all need on a daily basis.
Go be great, lean in, love hard, live well. You can't do the last one without fully doing the first two. Thank you for listening to the Good Stuff.
The Good Stuff is executive produced by Ashley Shick, Jacob Schick, Leah Pictures and q Code Media, hosted by Ashley Shick and Jacob Shick, Produced by Nick Casselini and Ryan Kant's house post production supervisor Will Tindy. Music by Will haywood Smith, edited by Mike Robinson, sound effects by Eric Aaron, mixed by Ryan Sanchez