Chad Landrey served as a combat military police soldier in the Army National Guard from 2001 to 2008. He was sent to Afghanistan in 2004, and stationed at Bagram Air Force Base. After he returned to the U.S., he worked as a police officer in Sebring, Lake Wales, and Lakeland. Landrey got his first police dog in Lake Wales, and now owns the retired canine badge.
He began Chad’s Promise in 2023. The charity provides free boarding and emergency pick up for veterans’ dogs while the veteran has to be away for medical or mental health treatment. Dogs can stay up to 30 days, but the typical visit is two weeks. Landrey runs this charity alongside his dog boarding and training business.
“I kind of fell into it after I got out of law enforcement,” Landrey said. “Friends started asking me to train their dogs, because I did competition—canine stuff—they just kept asking, so I started the business. And after the business started, the veterans started hitting me up, telling me ‘Hey, I’ve got to go to the hospital. I can’t really afford to pay you for watching my dog.’ I did that a couple of times. Then the Veterans Administration (VA) found out about it, called me and asked, ‘Is this something you do regularly?’ I said, ‘No. It’s not set up or anything.’ They said, ‘We just sent a dog to animal control. It’s at the pound. It has been there five days. The veteran can’t get out of the hospital. He can’t get anybody to go down there to pick it up. We are worried that they are going to euthanize it if it goes past seven days.’ So, I called animal control and literally in two hours we had revamped their operating procedures so that somebody that doesn’t own the dog can take ownership of the dog from them before the adoption period is up. So, basically, as long as I had the owner’s permission to go get the dog, animal control has a liaison that will release the dog to me, and I essentially own the dog until the veteran gets out of the hospital. That didn’t exist before.”
“The first couple that I did was just doing it for buddies because I could,” Landrey continued. “I had space for it. And it felt good. They got out. One of them was a Baker Act. He was in a bad place, and he kept putting off going to get treated, and it just got worse and worse. He finally went and got help. When he came back he said, ‘Dude, thank you so much. You literally saved my life. I was just about to end it.’ After that, I got serious about making sure it didn’t happen to anybody else.”
“We hear that a lot when they come to pick up the dogs—‘You saved my life,’” Tracy Swinscoe added.
Mental health issues are the big frontrunner for the veterans who leave their dogs with Chad’s Promise. Today Chad’s Promise normally houses five to 10 charity dogs at any given time. “These guys act out of character with their dogs,” Landrey said. “They show up. They are giving up the dog, and they are a wreck, You don’t know if they are actually going to leave the dog, or snatch it back up and leave. Then they get back from treatment and they are a whole new person. They are with the dog and everything seems normal again. We have had only two or three veterans come back. Most of them have gotten their final solution.”
“Ninety-eight percent are feel-good stories,” Landrey said. “We had a girl that was at Bay Pines VA Medical Center, who had gotten into some kind of incident, and they were going to be keeping her for a few days. We had to go pick up her dog. She was super skeptical about letting her dog go, because she is not from the area and she didn’t know anybody. She was that type of person that was paranoid. We finally talked her into letting us take the dog. When she came to pick up the dog a few days later, she was super thankful and happy. She let us know she was looking for work down here, and she was looking to get into dog training, or dog care. We, at the time, could use a kennel assistant. So we gave her a job, and we rented the bunkhouse to her so she would have a place to stay.”
There are difficulties in operating a charity like this. One problem for Chad’s Promise is pick ups and drop offs. If the veteran doesn’t have transportation, the charity is put in the position to pay for Uber rides to get the veterans to the boarding location, and then back to their home. Another complication is almost none of the dogs are vaccinated when Chad’s team picks them up. Chad’s Promise pays for veterinarian bills, dog food, gas for picking up the dogs, crates, money to pay employees, and all the other things needed to take care of dogs. So, the organization always needs more funds. In terms of physical donations, Chad’s Promise needs dog toys, equipment for the play yard, and a van for pick ups.
Another need is hands-on help like volunteers who can come for two hours or more. Depending on physical capabilities, volunteers can take on several functions—for example, playing with the dogs, giving them baths, or making food bags. Chad’s Promise also needs volunteers with other sorts of skills including a fundraiser, a volunteer coordinator, a social media marketer, and an outreach coordinator. Also, Landrey would love to have a veterinarian volunteer time to help the dogs.
Currently, the charity is boarding a dog owned by a veteran who was hit while riding his motorcycle. The accident broke the veteran’s leg, and his neck. “Some of the dogs are here for months, and we are still waiting for them to be picked up,” Landrey said. “If we had fosters that were willing to take those dogs for that amount of time, then I could act as a middle man and essentially just let the veteran have that person foster the dog, and then we just check in on it.”
“It might not happen in my lifetime, Landrey said. “But I’d like to have a network of professional dog kennels across the country to offer this to every VA, or to push the VA to compensate veterans for their boarding needs.”
People who want to learn more about how to help in this effort can go to www.chadspromise.com.