Guide Dog User to Full-time Advocate: Joe Link, VetDogs National Outreach Coordinator

Retired Marine Captain Joe Link never wanted to use a guide dog. Even when he began to have trouble using his cane to get around, he was reluctant to get a dog. In August 2006, however, he trained and was partnered with a guide, and now he’s the national outreach coordinator for the VetDogs project, part of the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind’s expanded outreach to America’s veterans.

On December 3, 1971, during his second tour in Vietnam, Link and his men were observing Viet Cong troop movement just south of the demilitarized zone near Laos. Without much warning their position came under attack with heavy rocket fire. Most of Link’s men were killed, and he sustained critical injuries, including the loss of sight in his left eye.

Link was shipped to the Philippines and ultimately to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC to recover. After his release, he made the transition to civilian life, and for the next 26 years, while Link gradually lost the sight in his good eye, he graduated from the University of Arkansas with an MBA, founded a successful software company, and reared two boys.

In 1998, Link found that age was taking its toll, especially in his ability to maneuver with his cane. He had been a committed cane user ever since his injuries in Vietnam.

“I was losing energy and my mobility was decreasing” Link says. “A friend told me to visit with Sandy Alexander, a Guide Dog [Foundation] board member and VA employee in Kansas. Sandy got me into the VA Blind Rehabilitation program in Chicago; eventually we talked about the possibility of getting a guide dog.”

After complaining to Alexander that it would be “too much trouble” to care for a dog, Link relented, chose the Guide Dog Foundation, and traveled to the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center in Florida to be trained with his guide.

“The Guide Dog Foundation, through their VetDogs program, trained me on site at the VA Medical Center. The VA has a wonderful relationship with VetDogs that allows for a half day of guide dog work coupled with a half day of computer training. The experience opened a new world to me,” Link explains.

Link was exuberant after his training. He says, “I didn’t realize how much independence I had lost when I used a cane. Obtaining [my guide dog] was like being reborn.”

It was this enthusiasm, as well as Link’s devotion to his fellow veterans, that led the Foundation to approach Link to be the national outreach coordinator for the VetDogs project, a voluntary position. VetDogs provides guide dogs for visually impaired veterans and service dogs for those with other special needs, and the training to help them lead active, independent lives again.

Link says he wishes he could capture a couple of minutes with disabled veterans and show how excited they get at the thought of being self-reliant again. “[The] dogs are lifesavers,” he says. “They restore souls and save our lives.”