East Lyme — A 10-week-old yellow Labrador walked into Lillie B. Haynes School on Friday morning as a puppy and walked out with a new identity.

The 460 students in the preschool through fourth grade building were met with a unique opportunity: To name the furry bundle of energy who will be trained over the next year and a half as a therapy dog for a veteran experiencing either post-traumatic stress disorder or mobility issues.

They called him Sunny.

The naming rights were bestowed after students raised $3,000 through their annual Veterans Day walkathon for Forever in My Heart, a Middletown-based nonprofit organization started in 2017 to match therapy dogs with veterans. School Principal Melissa DeLoreto got the idea from East Lyme Veterans Representative Brian R. Burridge, who has been helping connect the school with individual veterans in need for the past four years.

Friday's event began in the school's small gymnasium, where the principal picked 7-year-old Evan Richert to draw the winning name. He pulled it at random from a colorful array of popsicle sticks representing the top 10 names selected by school officials based on student feedback. Due to social distancing, only the students who submitted those names were in the gym as witnesses. The rest looked on from their individual classrooms via telecast.

Forever in My Heart founder and President Mira Alicki promised students Sunny would return periodically so they could track his growth and learn more about how therapy dogs are trained to help veterans.

The organization has placed about 10 dogs with veterans since it started, according to Alicki. Each one takes about a year and a half to train and costs roughly $25,000, though they are provided free to veterans. The group's focus on using rescue dogs has expanded to include purebred puppies because genetic health and temperament benefits make it more likely the dogs will succeed in the program, she said.

After the brief assembly, students converged on Sunny in one moving mass while the dog sniffed them out and dislodged masks with affectionate licks. Then it was Evan's turn. Sunny made his way over to the motorized wheelchair so the one who pulled his name could pet him gently on the side of his face.

Burridge looked on from beneath his VFW hat. He served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War era and later in the Connecticut National Guard. He retired in 2005 as a staff sergeant.

"Now these students get to see what their work went to, and how it helps veterans," he said. "I am so proud of these students."

Niantic is home to the highest concentration of veterans along the shoreline because of proximity to the sub base, U.S. Coast Guard Academy and three National Guard facilities, according to Burridge.

The veterans liaison said PTSD and the isolation that often results can make it difficult for veterans to reach out for help — and harder for him to meet them where they are so he can connect them with services.

Alicki said therapy dogs are well suited to help veterans escape isolation. She cited one of Forever in My Heart's earliest matches, which put a German shepherd with a veteran who had not left his house for any appreciable amount of time in more than four years due to anxiety from PTSD.

Alicki's organization made the match that April, she said. By October of the same year, the veteran felt comfortable enough not only to attend the organization's annual gala but also to address the crowd.

"He stood in front of 430 people and spoke," she said. "The dogs make such a difference in their life that therapy and medications cannot do."

The assembly gave way to Sunny's tour of numerous classrooms spread out in the former middle school building, which now contains the district's preschool and Kindergarten through fourth grade students.

DeLoreto, the principal, signaled the dog's entrance with a "Who's ready for Sunny?"

In one classroom, the dog gravitated toward second-grade student Addison Barajas.

"He smells my dog," she explained. While the dog sniffed out his new friend's face, she assured everyone she was used to it.

'Get my back'

Sunny's trainer for his first two months is volunteer head trainer Glenn Rodriguez of Middletown. A licensed dog trainer, Rodriguez has a day job at the Center for Community Alternatives as the director of juvenile facility programs and reentry.

He said training started with basic obedience. Now, it will have to incorporate the name change.

"He's been responding to 'Puppy' for the past two weeks," he said. "He's going to have to learn his name."

Once Sunny has spent his two months with Rodriguez, the pup will be on to another trainer in the group of volunteers. The list includes inmates at York Correctional Institution who are chosen through an application process to participate in the program.

Rodriguez said it's important to expose Sunny to different trainers — including both men and women — so he doesn't get too attached to any one person and will remain open to the veteran ultimately selected to provide his forever home.

Rodriguez came to Connecticut from New York, where he was employed by the Puppies Behind Bars program that trained psychiatric service dogs to carry out PTSD-specific tasks and respond to specialized commands.

Forever in My Heart volunteer trainer Doug Sanders of Berlin said those commands include "get my back" and "block."

At the "get my back" command, Sanders said a dog will sit against the veteran's left leg facing backward. The security helps veterans who experience hypervigilance, which is the state of constantly assessing potential threats.

Both Alicki and Sanders referred to one Navy veteran matched up through the program whose dog started waking her up at the first signs of a nightmare. The security of knowing she could look forward to a night without nightmares helped her insomnia, according to Sanders.

"They're afraid to go to sleep," he said of many veterans with PTSD. "But if they know the dog is going to wake them up, it can make such a difference."

According to Alicki, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been slow to recognize those with PTSD need service dogs as much as those with mobility disabilities. She said the lack of support makes it harder for them to afford a dog on their own, and those who can get on the waiting list for donated service dogs offered through various groups might have to wait a long time.

"Some of them, with the suicide rate, they're not going to make it in five years," she said.

The most recent data from the VA shows 6,261 veterans died by suicide in 2019. The agency said the rate among veterans was 52.3% higher than for nonveteran U.S. adults when adjusting for age and sex differences.

Burridge pointed to a new federal law passed this summer that will provide dog-training skills and service dogs to veterans with mental illnesses, regardless of whether or not they have mobility issues.

But the veterans liaison said nobody can tell him how to unlock the federal funds. He lamented the difficulty in accessing benefits that veterans with PTSD have been granted and deserve.

"How does the funding happen now that the law is there? Because we've got everything in place. We've got the veterans needing the dogs, we've got the dogs in training, we've got the capability to continue training," he said. "But the funding has to come from students doing walkathons."

e.regan@theday.com

Photo gallery

For more photos from the puppy's visit to the school, visit bit.ly/elschoolpup.