Down a winding driveway surrounded by twenty acres of rolling farmland in the Sparta area of Caroline County is a white circa 1850s house set amid a stand of shade trees. The bucolic landscape is interrupted only by the sound of songbirds’ singing, some chickens scratching in the yard and the calming sound of a barking dog wafting along a summer breeze.
It is a peaceful setting for The Hero Academy, a nonprofit organization providing service and facility dogs to veterans, first responders, their families and communities. The farm’s owners, retired U.S. Navy veterans Danique and Matt Masingill, have a shared vision for the nonprofit’s work. The nonprofit’s mission is simple: to serve those who serve.
Together with fellow veteran, trainer Julie Rasure of Fredericksburg, The Hero Academy provides trained therapy and service dogs to veterans of any era and first responders completely free of charge. All three are volunteers; no one takes a salary from this donor-supported organization. Monetary donations, veterinary and dog food sponsorships, as well as corporate sponsorships, help cover the costs of a dog’s food, vet care and training.
“We have ten dogs in our [training] program currently, plus eleven additional puppies,” Danique Masingill explains. “This is our personal farm, but we have a kennel and training building onsite.”
The dogs and puppies in training live in volunteer foster homes, Rasure explains, adding, “I am responsible for all the dogs and fosters. I train the fosters, and I also train dogs onsite at The Hero Academy and go to the farm on a regular basis. I interact regularly with the fosters, because they [dogs in foster homes] live all over the place.”
Danique Masingill says she and husband Matt bought their property in 2017 with a vision to do just what they are doing now. The Masingills and Rasure had worked together in the past with other dog-related organizations. Founded in 2022, The Hero Academy, is “under” Texas-based Hero Labradors, founded in 2016 by veteran Chuck Ziegenfuss.
The nonprofit Hero Labradors mission is to breed Labrador retrievers of the highest caliber with the temperaments necessary to do service dog work. The organization then provides these dogs at no cost to service dog training programs like The Hero Academy. Participating programs agree to further the dogs’ training and make them available at no cost to American veterans, first responders and their families. Hero Labradors reserves the right to recover and “recareer” any dog that does not graduate from the [training] programs.
The Masingills, Rasure and Ziegenfuss all came together in different but similar ways. On a recent stop at The Hero Academy enroute to Pennsylvania to deliver lab puppies to other groups, Ziegenfuss jokes, “I found an IED [improvised explosive device] the hard way” in Iraq in 2005 as he lifted his pant legs to reveal cratered scars.
On Hero Labradors’ website, he gives a more detailed account of his war experience: “I lost part of my left hand and full use of both hands. My eardrums were injured, and I lost large patches of skin on my legs and arms. The list of injuries is far longer, but I died twice on the way to Walter Reed [hospital] and spent many months in the hospital trying to get well enough to return to duty.” He recovered, returned to duty and served an additional five years before retiring with 22 years of service in January 2015.
In 2006, his wife Carren gave him a Labrador retriever. The duo bonded for the next year as Ziegenfuss did physical therapy and worked on his recovery.
He recalls on Hero Dogs’ website, “Major [my dog] would brace me going up and down stairs, giving me an anchor—I get ‘wobbly’ sometimes. He would force me to give him attention when I was upset or angry just by sitting in front of me and putting his head in my lap. He accidentally became my first service dog.”
After he retired, searching for the next phase of his life, Ziegenfuss realized “what I really, truly wanted to do was breed Labradors for service dogs.”
He explains, “There are three kinds of working dogs: service dogs that help people with disabilities; therapy dogs that provide emotional support; and working dogs [such as guide dogs for the blind or police patrol dogs]. No one was breeding for therapy dog temperaments, so I started Hero Dogs—we are purpose-driven, not profit-driven.”
Photo courtesy of Hero Labradors
Hero Labs adult Labradors do important work in places like the York (PA.) City Police Department
Danique interjects that, industrywide, only 30 percent of dogs trained as service dogs “graduate;” she nods in Ziegenfuss’ direction, noting, “Ninety-five percent of his dogs graduate.”
“My service dog Polar Bear is also our stud dog,” Ziegenfuss says. “We breed by basing a lot of it on genetics, size and [parental] temperament. The [breeding] dogs are screened for genetic [issues] every six months, screened for hip dysplasia [common in Labrador retrievers] and have regular vet exams before each breeding. I want to breed the healthiest animal that I can. Right now I have seven adult dogs, and we have about four litters a year. They are raised in my home.”
Ziegenfuss says to produce a single litter, the cost is about $5,000. He keeps an extra $5,000 in the bank in case an animal needs special treatment, such as an emergency C-section. The dogs go to training programs when they are eight weeks old.
When she left the Navy, she adopted a retired working dog. Trying to decide on a post-military career and not sure what she wanted to do, Danique eventually went to Syracuse University, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public policy.
“I struggled with my own mental health when I was in school and became fascinated by the human-animal bond. My thesis was on service dogs,” she explains. “I wanted to work in public policy to get veterans more access to dogs.”
Trainer Julie Rasure has worked with dogs for years, including time spent rehabbing dogs for a dog rescue organization to make them suitable for adoption. She was a self-described “hobby dog trainer” and also trained her Chesapeake Bay retriever to be a certified therapy dog, becoming a certified therapy dog trainer herself in the process.
“I have a science, marketing and fundraising background and was a stay-at-home mom, but we always had dogs,” she says. “Now it is just what I do. I have two labs that are working dogs of sorts: one attends a 911 dispatch center several days a week, the other one is fifteen months old and is a ‘demo dog’ for The Hero Academy as well.”
Asked why she volunteers her time with The Hero Academy, Rasure’s answer is concise: “It’s a way to give back. I love dogs and for some reason I can ‘read’ dogs fairly well. My line is obedience training.”
She adds, “It’s amazing to hear a veteran or first responder say, ‘I went to the grocery store by myself today’—we take this for granted. They [because of their injuries or trauma] have lost that freedom protecting us. There are many reasons for service dogs; we [veterans] don’t have scars that people can [necessarily] see visibly. If you cannot see a physical disability it doesn’t mean there isn’t one. It takes courage to ask for a service dog.”
Fifty-percent of The Hero Academy’s dogs come from Hero Labradors; they also utilize rescue dogs and dogs surrendered by owners. Training takes two years to complete.
Mike Reinert, an officer in the support services division at York City Police Department in York, Pennsylvania, says their police department has three service dogs, all via Hero Labradors.
“I work in support service, which includes officer wellness; my partner and I are specifically trained in critical incidents, and we have a background in mental health. We help our officers through traumatic events and do critical incident debriefings with the dogs there. Dogs provide a level of comfort to people.”
Reinert served as a street patrol officer for fourteen years; he has also been a SWAT team negotiator and has crisis intervention training. Today his primary role is not enforcement but community-oriented work.
“On a daily basis I take Victory [his assigned dog] around and engage with the fifty to one hundred people who work in our building. We also take dogs into public schools, which has been a huge hit. We interacted with over 8,000 kids in this past year,” he explains. “I want a young child’s experience with a police officer to be a positive one. If you put a dog into the scenario, they are not concerned [with a uniform and gun].”
He adds, “Kids might be fearful of dogs but by the end of [the event] they are on the floor, rolling around with the dogs.”
One dog, the appropriately-named Doc, will be stationed with his officer at York Hospital, a Level I trauma center, to serve hospital staff.
Reinert says he is the first dog handler York City Police Department has had since 1971.
“In 1969, we had big riots in the city, and our thirteen patrol dogs were used inappropriately, so the mayor and city council got rid of dogs. In 2021, our commissioner said he wanted to try something different, so he went around the community and talked to people who had experienced the time during the riots. He got the blessing of the people in the community so we decided to try [therapy dogs, also known as community engagement dogs].”
He explains, “The benefit is almost immeasurable. For other departments thinking about doing this, in your community they will associate the dog with positivity. Dogs are almost universally liked. They have facilitated conversations with people I would never have expected to approach me.”
Reinert emphasizes, “These dogs are different than a patrol dog or a bomb-sniffing dog. Their attachment is to their handler. My dog goes with me pretty much wherever I go.” He says when Victory will work five to seven years; after five years, the dogs become the property of the handler per their department agreement.
“Hero Labs’ level of dedication impressed me and made me want to be dedicated as well. I want to give back like they do. From a police perspective, it’s the culmination of my career. I did not get into policing to put people in jail but to make a difference.”
Ziegenfuss says Hero Dogs “helps me pay it forward what was given me when I was wounded.” Danique Masingill says simply, “We’re helping our brothers and sisters we served with—we are a grassroots group and part of the community.”