‘Lewis County Director of Fluff’ Clyde to begin training to serve area veterans

Veterans Journey Forward director gets new puppy in hopes he follows in Clyde’s footsteps as organization prepares to expand

By Owen Sexton  / owen@chronline.com
Posted 11/15/24

Clyde, a veteran therapy dog in-training affectionately dubbed the “Lewis County Director of Fluff” by his handlers, celebrated his first birthday this week with both county staff and his …

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‘Lewis County Director of Fluff’ Clyde to begin training to serve area veterans

Veterans Journey Forward director gets new puppy in hopes he follows in Clyde’s footsteps as organization prepares to expand

Posted

Clyde, a veteran therapy dog in-training affectionately dubbed the “Lewis County Director of Fluff” by his handlers, celebrated his first birthday this week with both county staff and his veteran and specialized recreation friends, Lewis County Director of Public Health and Social Services Meja Handlen said in an email to The Chronicle.   

“We were celebrating Clyde being 1-year old,” Handlen said.

His exact birthday is unknown as Clyde was originally picked up as a stray puppy with his mom on Twin Peaks Drive in Toledo last January. He already appeared to be at least two months old at that time. 

Clyde’s mother, a Great Pyrenees, has since been adopted. When county staff noticed Clyde’s docile nature and relaxed disposition, the Lewis County Veterans Service Office moved to adopt him with plans to train him as a therapy dog.

Clyde is believed to be a Great Pyrenees and poodle mix.

Members of the office are now his handlers and have been bringing him to the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis weekly to socialize Clyde and give him basic command training in preparation for the American Kennel Club’s Canine Good Citizen training and therapy dog certification.

“Clyde is now old enough to enroll in the therapy dog training. They have to be a year old to start,” Handlen added.

Along with his trips to the Veterans Memorial Museum where he interacts with the many veterans who spend time there at the “unofficial” USO lounge, Clyde has also been socializing with many veterans utilizing counseling services offered by the county’s Veterans Service Office.

Additionally, Clyde now has company on his weekly trips to the Veterans Memorial Museum, as Jesse Lloyd, U.S. Marine Corps veteran and director of Veterans Journey Forward based at the museum, recently got a new puppy named Yogi.

The hope is Clyde helps train Yogi — a 12-week-old sheepdog and poodle mix — in his calm and mild-mannered ways.

“We purchased him from a breeder in Portland because trying to find a dog with this type of temperament is very difficult. Clyde is a very unique pup,” Lloyd said.

Once Yogi is old enough, he will also be trained to be a therapy dog.

“He’s gonna be accompanying me a lot of times during mental health treatment. So when I have clients dealing with mental health struggles, predominantly PTSD, he’ll be able to comfort them,” Lloyd added.



The two dogs were together at the Veterans Memorial Museum on Thursday, Nov. 14. Clyde was shy around his new four-legged friend.

“I think Clyde’s afraid of smaller dogs, so Yogi was just trying to love on him and Clyde wanted nothing to do with him. Over time, we’ll introduce them more and more, and they’ll be best friends in no time,” Lloyd said.

Veterans Journey Forward is a nonprofit headquartered inside the Veterans Memorial Museum that focuses on providing military veterans with both mental health and peer-counseling services along with helping them navigate veterans benefit programs.

Lloyd added they just recently received a grant from TransAlta — $300,000 over the next three years — that will help the nonprofit be able to win more matching-fund grants from other organizations.

“This will launch us into more staff and more services. Just in the last three months that we’ve been tracking, we’ve gotten veterans about $250,000 in back pay,” Lloyd said.

For more information, visit https://www.veteransjourneyforward.org/ or follow the nonprofit on its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/veteransjourneyforward/

Dedicated to honoring the memory of U.S. military veterans who have served in both war and peacetime throughout the nation’s history, the Veterans Memorial Museum is located at 100 SW Veterans Way in Chehalis.

To learn more about the museum, visit https://www.veteransmuseum.org/ or follow the museum on its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/chehalisveteransmemorialmuseum