Carlie’s Story: CGMA Assists with Service Dog for USCG Family

Military life can bring significant changes for Coast Guard families. For Carlie, becoming a Coast Guard spouse meant moving far from home while also managing a serious health condition.

A Challenging Move

As a new Coast Guard spouse, Carlie left her beloved small hometown in Maine and moved across the country to bustling, humid Miami.

Adjusting to a new city and military life was made more difficult by Carlie’s epilepsy. Her husband was stationed aboard a cutter and pursuing various trainings, which kept him away for much of the couple’s first months of marriage. Carlie needed reliable support while managing her condition during the times he could not be home.

A service dog could provide that support, but its cost had kept the family from moving forward.

Help Affording a Service Dog

With pet expense assistance from Coast Guard Mutual Assistance, Carlie and her husband were able to welcome Sully into their family.

“We have finally welcomed our new bundle of joy, Sully, my service dog. He is incredibly smart, and I’m sure it’ll be no time before he will start helping to sense my seizures and help with my epilepsy.”

Sully would become more than a companion. Carlie anticipated that, as he learned his role, he would help sense her seizures and support her in managing her epilepsy.

“I have wanted to get a service dog for a very long time,” Carlie said. Cost had previously made getting one impossible.

CGMA’s pet expense assistance helped remove that financial barrier and made an important source of support more accessible to this Coast Guard family.

Support for Coast Guard Families

For Coast Guard spouses like Carlie, frequent separations and moves can make an already challenging situation even harder. Timely assistance can help families obtain the resources they need to navigate those changes with greater stability.

By helping Carlie’s family afford Sully, CGMA provided support tailored to their individual circumstances and gave Carlie a new helper to accompany her through military life.

This is the Power of CGMA. This is the Power of Us.