For more than four months a Capital Region veteran has been kayaking and biking about 4,000 miles to raise awareness and money for military veteran service dogs. Jimmy Thomas pushed off into the Mohawk River from Glenville, New York in late September for a kayak paddle to Key West, Florida. From there, the 61-year-old turned around and headed north, this time on a bike.
He’s due to return on Saturday at the Empire State Aerosciences Museum in Glenville. A celebration is planned for 2 p.m. The effort called “Doggie Paddle” is run under the umbrella of the Glenville Rotary, of which Thomas is a member.
Beyond the physical challenge, the Army veteran lost his own service dog, a Golden Retriever named Boots, weeks before he left.
WAMC's Jim Levulis caught up with Jimmy this past week while he was stopped in Binghamton.
Thomas: Well, I've always been a little bit of an athlete, you know, runner and that kind of thing. And I knew that you're not going to be able to just do a five-mile run and raise enough money because it's a ton of money to get a service dog. So I knew I had to do something a little bit bigger. And I thought of what is about the biggest thing I think I can handle. And so I thought, well, let me see if I can kayak to Key West. And that was the first part. And then so last spring, I had never kayaked before. I never kayaked before I got into kayak, and I kayaked from Cooperstown to the end of the Susquehanna River. And that seemed like it was pretty easy. So I think, well, that wasn't too bad. And I thought, well, that's 444 miles, I thought, well, that's about, you know, 20-25% of kayaking all the way to Key West. How bad can it be? Well, a lot easier in the river than it is in the Intracoastal [Waterway]. So it was bad. So, but I knew that it had to be something that was going to catch a lot of attention, you know, for the same reason we're talking. You've got to do something different and bigger than what most people would do. So I knew it wasn't gonna be jogging around the block. Because my goals were, you know, dogs are expensive. Training for dogs is expensive.
Levulis: And so you leave Glenville in September by kayak if I understand. Can you sort of take us through your route?
Thomas: Yeah, I left a Maalwyck Park which is in Glenville, and it was Oktoberfest weekend, September 24. And I kayaked down the Mohawk River to the Hudson. Then I went as far down the Hudson as I could until the hurricane hit. The Coast Guard kicked me out of the river and had to go around and then a friend of mine put me back in on the other side of the river in New Jersey. And then it's the Intracoastal [Waterway] all the way to Key West Florida.
Levulis: And then from Key West, you make a transition to biking back north?
Thomas: Right. I had my bicycle mailed down to Key West, I had a friend pick up my kayak and bring it back to their house in Florida. And then I biked all the way from Key West, Florida, and I'm in Binghamton right now. And I'll be in Glenville, I might be there sooner, because I had to plan extra days for just in case of weather, but I'll be there by Saturday for sure.
Levulis: If you could, take us through some of your logistics. You mentioned trying out that 400ish-mile kayak trip as a test. But food, water, where you're staying at night, how has that all come together?
Thomas: That was easy. I mean, it's pretty easy because before I left, we had arranged with a bunch of Rotarians along the way. Not all but Rotarians would host me every night. So every night, I know, not every night, but most nights, I'd know where I was sleeping, and who was going to have me stay there. And, you know, either the river or in the intracoastal, I'd make it to whatever marina there was there, and they drive from where their house was, they picked me up at the marina, I’d get a shower, I'd get a spectacular dinner, they'd host me for the night. You know, I'd have breakfast and they put me back in the river the next day or two days, or whatever it was. And, you know, while I was out if I needed food, or whatever, for lunches in the kayak, I'd buy them while I was out. And, you know, they would do whatever was needed to be part of the journey to help veterans and to help them get service dogs. And then on the way back, the same kind of things, everybody that hosted me on the way down that was along the intracoastal. They also wanted to host me on the way back on the bike. And, you know, not all of them are on the bike route. Because once I got to North Carolina, I went inland and so I wasn't on the coast. And so then a whole new group was contacted. Then they hosted me on the way back. And, of course, it's a lot easier to get food and go to the bathroom and all those kinds of things when you're on a bike that isn't a kayak. But for the most part, either marinas helped me or Rotary people helped me and on the way back, you know, almost all, either Rotary people, friends of Rotary, cousins, sons, daughters of people in the Rotary, but the Rotary was the hub of most of the logistics part.
Levulis: Jimmy, you mentioned a hurricane when you were kayaking down the Hudson. Other than the hurricane, any unexpected challenges pop up for you?
Thomas: Yep, the second hurricane when I got to Georgia. That was another one. Two hurricanes. I got hit by a ferry boat. I did get pretty much run over and getting out of its wake and not chopped by the propeller was a challenge I came out of that the next day with every muscle in my body sore. I had an alligator run into the side of the boat and spin me in the opposite direction. I'm sure most people have been to Florida where the weather is supposed to be nice. And then all of a sudden, it's not nice, where the storm kind of came up for two or three hours and the wind went from five miles an hour to 25 miles an hour and four-foot waves. And you know, I'm now still eight miles, 10 miles from shore, with a rainstorm on top of me and it was basically like typing a submarine. And, you know, honestly, in those tests, you become more religious. And a couple of times I didn't think I was gonna make it truthfully, not to exaggerate or whatever. If anything, I'm minimizing it.
Levulis: Absolutely, two hurricanes, alligators, the ferry boat. Incredible. You mentioned earlier in our conversation you have to do something big, though, to get the attention, to get the support. What sort of support have you received? How's the fundraising been going?
Thomas: It's going good. I mean, the most impressive part of the fundraising, I would say is the fact that so many other Rotaries, along the coast that I met with want to do the same thing to help veterans. So now we've got anywhere from six to 10 other clubs that want to do the same thing. And kind of use ours as a template to help veterans also. So not only are we going to be raising money so now and that's always been the goal is to have more people like the idea and kind of mimic what we're doing and it's kind of flattering that they think it's good. If 10 people are doing the same thing we're doing then to super compliment and that makes it so 10 more places can get service dogs in their areas. That's one thing that's kind of a side effect and not really, you know, measurable in money, maybe. But that's one. We've got plenty of people who are willing to donate a dog per litter. I mean, a dog, like my dog Boots who passed away before I left, he would have cost $33,000. That can be a big amount of money. We've got numbers of veterinarians that are willing to help provide services for veterans that can't afford veterinary services. And we also have probably the single biggest cost, we've got a few, probably one of the categories that's lagging is there's not that many trainers, but we have a couple of connections with people who will train service dogs for free for us. And if you were to add that up, I wouldn't think we'd be exaggerating much by saying with what we know we have, we have at least a million dollars of in-kind donations for that. And then we have, of course, our money donation, which we don't want to tell anybody truthfully, because they think it's a lot of money, but when one dog can cost $75,000 to get trained, the money we have will go super fast. So I'm not telling you the money number, but it wouldn't be enough to support two dogs that would cost $75,000.
Levulis: Jimmy, you mentioned your dog Boots. If I understand correctly, you're an Army veteran? If I'm correct in that, Boots was your service dog I’m guessing?
Thomas: Yes. Before you go any further, I do not have PTSD. Somebody wrote that and it keeps getting repeated. I don't have PTSD. So don't print that, please.
Levulis: Absolutely. What might ask you though, what did Boots bring you?
Thomas: Well, I had stressed induced seizures. And somehow somebody turned that into PTSD, they're not the same. And so I would have stressed and do seizures. And I would just kind of like blackout. If you ever seen Avatar, I would just kind of like faint. And that'd be that. And so it made it. So that was very concerning on driving, and I do construction. So it's kind of interesting to you know, get up on a roof or a ladder to paint or, you know, whatever. And so it made it so that he would recognize whether I was going to have a seizure way before I had one. So he like, OK, I guess I'm gonna have to chill for the afternoon. And it just made it so that life was a lot more predictable. Instead of, you know, the last thing I want to do is get a car, have a seizure and run somebody over something or kill myself. But he made it so that life was normal. And you know, and he was just such an intuitive dog. Anybody like he would recognize even if we went to, you know, a presentation on service dogs, and he was there as part of the presentation and a guy in the audience had a seizure. And he kept telling me that this guy was have a seizure, but the guy, you know, didn't believe him or whatever. He had a seizure, maybe an hour and a half later. I mean, you could look his pictures and stuff like that, but he was a super smart dog. And he was, you know, I appreciated him to the point where I saw how big of a difference he made for me. And I thought, man, if he makes this big a difference for me, and I'm not, you know, I'm not that bad off. I don't know how to say that correctly. But there's many more people that are worse off than I am. If he can make that big of a difference for me. I can't imagine what a service dog would do for other people that they could be in a better spot with a dog also. So that's kind of where that part of the mission went. I felt a little guilty having a service dog and so many people that appeared that they could use one too didn't have one. And so I thought you know, I have enough ability to do some of these trips let me start raising money to help other people.
Levulis: And the passing of Boots, what was the timeline there?
Thomas: Three weeks before this trip.
Levulis: Wow. So you had been planning this trip and obviously, preparing for it and then Boots passed?
Thomas: Yes. He probably died, I don't know the date, somebody probably does, probably the 1st of September and I left 24 days later.
Levulis: Oh, my condolences there Jimmy. My condolences.
Thomas: Yeah, thank you.
Levulis: How can folks follow the last little bit of your journey here? How can they find out a little bit more about what you're doing?
Thomas: Okay, well, there's two main things if they want to go on the internet, it's doggiepaddle.org. And on Facebook is Doggie Paddle USA.