NEWS

 

On Saturday, October 19, from 5:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m., kick off the fall season by bringing your friendly and well-socialized dog to Beaver Dam Historic House at 19600 Davidson Concord Road for Continuing the Mission’s First Annual Fall FurFest! Make sure you are following our event page so you can learn more about our vendors and amazing silent auction items!

Make sure to purchase your ticket today. This $35 ticket for human guests (canine companions are free) provides: games and contests for you and your canine companion, music, a chance to shop the silent auction, and the satisfaction of knowing you have fed a Continuing the Mission (CTM) service dog in training for a month.

Delicious food and drink will be available for purchase from AC and Events (BBQ pulled pork plate), Baltimore Crab Cake Food Truck (Crab Soup and Crab Cake Sandwiches) and beer and wine by 11 Lakes Brewery. Canine guests will be provided a student escort to allow human guests to eat, shop the auction, and enjoy the music.

Guests are welcome to dress up their furry friends with costumes to celebrate the season, if desired. Prizes will be awarded for Best Canine Costume, Cutest Trick, Craziest Ears, and Best Smile. Test your loose lead walking skills and see how many tennis balls your canine friend can “bob for” in a minute.

*Please message us if you, or your organization, are interested in becoming a sponsor!!* Visit our website or email us for more information.

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Continuing the Mission (CTM) is a non-profit, dedicated to improving the quality of life for Veterans in North Carolina living with Post Traumatic Stress (PTS), and their families, through pairing them with uniquely trained canine partners. These uniquely trained partners provide companionship, a feeling of security and safety, and aid in the re-integration into everyday life. Continuing the Mission provides fully trained Assistance Dogs at no cost to the Veteran.

We have established a Birth-to-Placement model that immerses our dogs in continuous social and functional activities from the time they are eight to ten weeks old. Additionally, our unique immersion model ensures that our dogs are consistently in a social or family setting, and we look for opportunities for our dogs to “give back” throughout their two-year training period. To this end, our dogs participate in numerous events that support our Veterans and larger community. Additionally, they are placed with prison inmates through the program, New Leash on Life, for two, eight-week periods. This placement provides intensive training for our dogs, which is then reinforced while they reside with puppy raisers. Our puppy raisers are dedicated volunteers who are committed to Veterans’ well-being and are passionate about animals.

Dogs are evaluated for advanced training between 12-18 months of age and, if accepted, begin more rigorous training in pubic and with service dog specific tasks. Dogs who are not accepted into advanced training are released and adopted out with priority going to Veterans and their families or puppy raisers. If there are no available Veterans or puppy raisers interested in a dog, the dog is adopted out into the community.

CTM strives to build community throughout the training process by bringing people with a passion for dogs and helping Veterans together to accomplish the common goal of training an assistance dog. Along the way, we also hope to share the joy these pups bring with others in the community, as well as provide education to the public regarding assistance dogs and modern Veteran challenges. We would like to “touch as many lives with the leash as possible.”  During the pairing process, Veterans will spend 50 or more hours training with their new dog and at least 10 hours doing book-work learning about service dog laws and dog care. CTM also builds community post placement in the form of continued training and support to our Veterans.

We are a non-profit organization that is supported by the community. We rely solely on donations from people who want to support our Veterans and are constantly looking for opportunities to fund-raise and increase the support of our assistance dogs. For more information on how you can change the life of a Veteran through an assistance dog, please visit ContinuingtheMission.org.