Joe Buzay was haunted by his time as a military policeman with the U.S. Army in Somalia. The Loman-area man saw three friends die in battle, and he was forced to kill enemy fighters during the 1993 battle of Mogadishu.
He left the service in 1994 and endured a rough emotional period back home. In 2010 he took pills to try and permanently end the pain of post traumatic stress syndrome. But he woke up 10 days later in a hospital, where doctors had said he probably wouldn’t live.
Buzay barely hung on for the next six months. Then he took his veterans service officer’s advice and visited the Lucky Dog Boarding and Training Center in Detroit Lakes, where dogs are trained to live with and help veterans struggling with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and other psychiatric symptoms.
Through the Patriot Assistance Dogs program, he walked several dogs, hoping to take one home. There was no love connection — until “Frankie” appeared.
The boxer-husky mix took a walk, then jumped up on Buzay’s lap, slurped Joe’s reddish beard, wiggled his back up against Joe, and grinned at facility owner and head trainer Linda Livingston Wiedewitsch.
“Frankie looked right at me, and it was, ‘I’m home. Make me get down,’” Wiedewitsch said.
“I looked at him, and that was it,” Buzay said. “He was the same way. It was just, boom, the match was made right there.”
Frankie is also a survivor. He was an underweight puppy with a choke chain grown into his neck, metal slivers in his mouth, and buckshot in his insides when he was rescued near Wadena.
He was named Frankie because his striking blue-eyes resemble those of the late singer Frank Sinatra — and because he’s charismatic, like Sinatra.
He trained for several months in Detroit Lakes. And the two wounded warriors went home together under a foster agreement on Dec. 6, 2011.
A friend in need
Frankie goes where Buzay goes. He stands behind Joe in the grocery store, protecting his personal space. He knows Joe is having a panic attack before Joe does, and he’ll lean against him and try to get his attention.
Buzay says, “Outside,” and Frankie guides him to the nearest door.
Frankie often lays a calming paw in his friend’s hand.
“I used to have the night terrors really bad,” Buzay said. “I’d have two or three a night. I could hardly sleep. And the first night I brought him home, we hadn’t done any training on it, and I woke up and he was laying on my chest, licking my face, and wouldn’t get off me ‘til I calmed down. To go from being that abused to a service dog … it’s just amazing.”
Wiedewitsch, a retired Detroit Lakes police officer, started the Patriot Assistance Dogs program in 2011 and placed the first service dog teams in 2012.
As of Oct. 18 there were 91 certified dog-veteran teams, united at no charge to the veterans. Buzay and Frankie were among the first to be paired.
Each dog learns assistance skills specific to the veteran’s needs.
“It’s extremely rewarding to see the two of them work together to rescue each other,” Wiedewitsch said.
Better days
Buzay seems like a happy man at age 52, having emerged from the nightmare inside. He stays busy raising a variety of birds, from bobwhite quail to peacocks, on his 17-acre farm, and helping other veterans benefit from the PAD program.
He and Frankie are featured in a 2015 book, “Unconditional Honor, Wounded Warriors and Their Dogs,” by Cathy Scott and Clay Myers.
“I know where these guys are heading, because I’ve been there,” Buzay said of other veterans. “If I can help one, that’s one less suicide. There are still over 20 a day and that’s wrong. One is too many. And I should’ve been one of them. But there’s a reason I’m here, and that’s to help vets get dogs. I do whatever I can for the program.”
Once he wanted to die. Now Buzay smiles and laughs when talk turns to his best buddy. Frankie enjoys lying around with the birds and riding in his pet carrier — mounted on the back of Buzay’s Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
“He’s just the biggest baby in the world,” Buzay said. “He loves everybody. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. When I got him I was going to the VA, every other week, just about. They had me on a handful of psych meds. And in January it’ll be two years since I’ve taken any psych meds. I’m done with those. I’ve got Frankie. That’s all I need.”
