★ MY WHY ★
The dog who saved my life.
MY WHY - IN MY OWN WORDS
The Happy Hunting Grounds exists to honor the life changing bond between dogs and people. We are a veteran owned, purpose driven company crafting premium dog jerky that fuels more than just tail wags.
No less than 25% of our profits go to shelters, and to supporting veterans in finding healing through canine companionship.
With a commitment to mental health and transparency, we show exactly how each purchase helps give shelter dogs and others the second chance I was given.
Thank you for helping us on our mission to save lives.
SEE WHERE THE MONEY GOES★ WHERE IT STARTS ★
I thought I was dumb until I was twenty three.
My parents were immigrants. They came to this country wanting nothing but the best for me, and education was the biggest part of that. It was the whole measure of whether you were going to be alright.
I was severely dyslexic. Nobody knew that word in our house, and nobody at school caught it either. So there was only one explanation left for the grades: I was not trying.
I was beaten for it. That is the honest word, and I use it because softening it would be a lie. Hitting was the only language they had for a problem they did not understand, and they were carrying their own history when they used it.
I believed them. I walked around for more than twenty years thinking I was stupid, and I built everything else on top of that.
Nobody had a word for what was wrong with me, so I became the word.
★ THE ARMY, AND AFTER ★
Getting out was harder than getting in.
The military gave me the first structure that ever made sense to me. A mission, a job, people who counted on me showing up. For the first time in my life, reading slowly was not the thing that defined me.
Then I got out, and all of that went away overnight. Nobody tells you how loud a normal life is after that. I came home with PTSD and no idea how to be a regular person, and I did what a lot of us do. I masked it. Alcohol, for years, because it was easier than saying any of this out loud.
Seeing the name of a friend I served with etched onto a dog tag hanging from a memorial flag shattered me in a way I was not ready for. I gasped for air, as if all the breath had left my lungs. I turned away so my family would not see me break.
That was a veteran with no mission and no purpose, trying to fit back into a world that had moved on without him.
Twenty two a day is not a statistic to me. It is people I knew.
★ THE NIGHT, AND WHAT CAME AFTER ★
She got on top of me and would not let up.
I got to the end of my rope. There was a night I decided I was done.
I locked April out of the room, because whatever else was true, she was not going to see it. She came apart on the other side of that door. I could hear her losing her mind out there, and I could not let that be the last thing I ever heard.
So I opened the door. She came through it and went straight up onto the bed, right on top of me, licking my face, pushing into me, and she would not let up. She was not moving until I did.
The next day I started getting help. Not fixed, not fine, just started. That is the part I want anyone reading this to hear, because starting is the only bit you have to do today.
She died of old age years later. Losing her broke me open all over again, and I built The Happy Hunting Grounds the year it happened, because I was not going to let her be a thing that just quietly ended.
I took my deepest pain and made it my purpose.SHOP WITH PURPOSE
PHOTOS - APRIL ★★★