SEASIDE – Seaside resident Jim Ballos has a favorite saying: “There’s no better psychiatrist than a puppy licking your face.”

For Ballos, it’s more than just a cutesy bumper sticker slogan. Not so long ago, he was homeless, socially outcast, and almost completely unhinged by a two-year tour of duty he’d taken during Desert Storm.

Upon returning home from the Persian-Gulf War in 1992,

Ballos found himself in an abyss so deep, no amount of counseling or medication or entreating could pull him back out again. His family couldn’t help him. His therapists couldn’t help him. And the medicines they put him on left him in a dreamy stupor.

Then came Digit, a docile, patchy Jack Russell terrier and constant, doting companion. And, with him, a second chance that Ballos is determined to pay forward to other veterans across the Pacific Northwest.

Day to night

As a young man, Ballos was full of big dreams. In high school, he enrolled with the National Guard. He served in Longview and Seattle for four years, but he was hungry to see combat action, so he enlisted in the army. Ballos deployed to Germany with the A/40th Field Artillery MLRS (Multiple Launching Rockets System) 3rd Armored Division.

From there, it was off to the Persian Gulf War, a mere two weeks after the birth of his youngest son.

Ballos “saw a lot of action,” during Desert Storm. He worked primarily as a cook, but he also manned a 50 caliber and made regular ammunition and ration runs. He found himself unsettled by what he witnessed: land mines a few steps in front of him, carpet bombings, spates of oil well and chemical fires that regularly blackened the sky.

“I watched day turn to night may times,” he said. “Many days were nothing but darkness.”

Soon it would become a metaphor for his entire existence.

After a two-year tour, he returned to the States in 1992.

Ballos and his family moved to Austin, Texas, where he served a prestigious two-year apprenticeship as a chef’s apprentice at the Hyatt Regence in Austin, Texas. He found himself cooking for the likes of Former Texas Governor Ann Richards and the Dallas Cowboys. Things were good, for awhile.

The family returned to Washington State, and Ballos began working as a fine dining chef around the area. But something wasn’t right. As the years passed, Ballos sunk into a deep physical and mental depression. He started drinking heavily and was in and out of the local psychiatric ward. His relationships suffered. Then, the bottom dropped out. After a second divorce, Ballos attempted suicide.

“I ended up in a mental institute because I had a breakdown,” he said. “And that was the beginning of a very difficult four-year road. It was nasty.”

He found himself homeless, disoriented and wandering the West Coast from Olympia to Northern California. In 2007, he made his way back to Washington. His relationship with his family was strained, but he went to his sister and told her he needed help.

She took him to a local crisis center, where he enrolled in counseling and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression. He began a heavy course of medication that clouded his judgment and left him sleepy. He continued to bounce around, and finally wound up at Lifeline Connections in Vancouver. There, he met psychiatrist Daniel

Beavers and was soon placed in a respite unit on the local VA campus. He rarely left his room. He had trouble talking to people and he slept and slept. He spent a year that way, just pondering the next step. And something in him said, “Enough.”

“I just got tired of all these friggin’ pills,” Ballos said. “I was unhealthy. I looked like Elvis in his last days. I was bloated, swollen, introverted, and I didn’t want to nothing to do with nothing.”

He thought about the times in life when he’d been happiest, and he hearkened back to his days growing up on a ranch in Kalama, Ore., to the animals he so loved as a boy. So he pitched the idea of a therapy dog to Beavers, who wrote him a prescription for a therapy dog of his own.

This was not a choice to be made lightly. For months, Ballos kept an eye on the comings and goings of the dogs at the Clark County Southwest Humane Society. After all he’d been through, he’d developed a soft spot for the downtrodden, and he was determined to adopt the dog no one else wanted. That dog turned out to be an unassuming white-and-brown terrier named Digit.

Ballos took one look at his frantically wagging tail and said, “Let’s go home.”

A new beginning

Ballos was matched up with Digit through Pets for Vets, a charitable organization

that matches rescue pets with American Veterans across the country. The pairings are made based on the needs of each veteran, and the animals are fostered and trained before being turned over to the vet. It’s a service performed at no cost to the vet, and at a cost of $500 to the organization, which relies on donations and grants.

As often happens, Ballos and Digit developed a quick and intense bond.

“There was a small adjustment period between Digit and I, but instantaneously there was a transformation as if I had put on a superhero outfit on,” Ballos said. “All of a sudden I was able to socialize, and started being more physically active.”

Ballos saw the way other vets warmed up to Digit as the two strolled across campus, and realized that what was helping him could also help them.

“It’s the unconditional love they show you know matter what things your experiencing in life,” he said. “They sense when things are stressful and are there to ease your fears or nightmares. If I can help pay forward my success of having a companion animal to veterans, then my inner chi is much more balanced.”

So he got in touch with Clarissa Black, Pets for Vets director, and by December 2010, they had a Northwest regional chapter of the organization up and running. They’ve recruited a volunteer training coordinator, Christine Hibbard, and several volunteer trainers. So far, they’ve paired two pets with vets with one more match in the works and other applications coming down the pike.

The Pets for Vets initiative exists in something of a gray area. To qualify as a service animal, a pet must perform mechanical tasks for a vet – clearing a space behind him or her at the grocery store, flipping on the light before the vet enters a room. Dogs like Digit are classified, instead, as therapy animals.

But for Ballos and many other veterans who have had to learn to advocate for themselves by counterbalancing resources available through the state, the county, and the VA, mining the gray areas is nothing new.

“With 90 percent of the vets I’ve talked to, it’s up to us,” he said. “The government is doing things to help, but it’s not really enough.”

It might just be a one-shot deal’

Today, Ballos considers himself a changed man. He’s reduced his medications by two-thirds. He’s dropped 50 pounds. He eats right and his only therapy is what he calls “sunset and doggie counseling” – long, rambling walks down the Seaside Promenade with Digit in tow and sometimes even midnight stargazing runs.

When asked about his new life philosophy, he references a quote from musician Frank Zappa: “You’ve got to be digging it while it’s happening ’cause it just might be a one shot deal.”

But his quest isn’t finished. Ballos is classified as a “disabled veteran,” and he hasn’t yet reentered the work force, but hopes to soon, perhaps working with vets full time in addition to his Pets for Vets duties.

Ballow now sits on Pets For Vets’ National Board of Advisors, and he’s working to expand the Northwest chapter into more remote areas. A few months back, the man who once hated to leave his room stood before the Seaside Chamber of Commerce – Digit at his side – to speak publicly about Pets for Vets. He felt a real connection with the audience, he said.

Pet treat purveyor Blue Dog Bakery is on board to help out, a website is forthcoming, and Ballos is working to develop relationships with other veteran organizations. The Brothers in Arms Motorcycle Club has committed to helping with fundraising, and Ballos is also working with the VA clinic at Camp Rilea in Warrenton to get the word out about the program.

“So many guys are hesitant to take that first unknown step,” he said. “But we’re here to offer hope and an alternative to medications.”

What accounts for the special bonds so many vets are forging with forgotten animals? It takes one lost soul to spot another, according to Ballos.

“The dogs are veterans too,” he said. “And we’re giving them a second chance. It’s a win-win for everybody.”

To find out more about Pets for Vets, email Jim Ballos at csidejimmer662011@gmail.com.

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