A dog named Eddie gave an Army veteran his life back

Jeff Ballard wasn’t himself after he got back from Afghanistan. A chocolate lab named Eddie changed all that.

GORHAM, Maine - As an ER nurse, Jeff Ballard saw a lot of traumatic injuries on the job, so when he and his Army unit arrived in Afghanistan 16 years ago, he thought he was ready for anything.

But he wasn’t ready for the guy they brought into Combat Outpost Zomat near Gardez in southeastern Afghanistan.

Ballard, an Army medic, got word that an Afghan army patrol had hit an IED. He went out to wait for the wounded.

“A truck pulled up, and the driver had blood on his face,” Ballard recalled. “Someone started walking him to the aid station, and the driver motioned furiously to the truck.”

Ballard walked over to the truck, opened the back door and saw a mangled ball of flesh on the floor. At first, the figure wasn’t recognizable as a human being. Both of his legs were missing, as was most of his left arm, and the lower half of his right arm.

Ballard reached down and grabbed for what he thought was a dead man, lifting what was left of him by his body armor.

“I rolled him over, and he gasped,” Ballard said. “It was an inhale, not an exhale. Dead bodies don’t inhale.”

Ballard’s training kicked in. He started two IVs on what was left of the soldier’s right arm. Despite his efforts, the soldier died.

“I had been a paramedic back home, and an emergency department nurse, so I had done trauma,” Ballard said. “But this was different. When I was cleaning up, for the first time it hit me: that could have been me.”

Before, whenever he was out on patrol, Ballard didn’t think like that.

But there was something about the Afghan soldier that did something to Ballard’s brain, to his internal survival instinct.

He started having nightmares and flashbacks. He couldn’t sleep, and when he could, it was fitful sleep.

Back home, he went to a warrior transition unit at Fort Drum, where his physical injuries were treated, but those to his mental health were not.

Like so many of the soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, he started self-medicating with booze, hoping he’d find some peace at the bottom of a bottle.

He was prescribed Klonapin and other medications that masked the symptoms of his invisible wounds.

He went back to work as an ER nurse.

“Every patient I took care of, it was that Afghan soldier,” he said. “I didn’t mess up. I could do my job. But I was not in a good place, at all.”

A couple of things saved him.

First, he and his future wife, Kate, found themselves suddenly, by chance, together again. They had met in 2005, when they were working at an ambulance service in Nashua. Ballard had turned to the co-worker who introduced them there and said, “I’m going to marry that woman some day.”

But Kate moved to Louisiana, and Ballard met someone else and got married, hoping to get over Kate.

By 2018, his marriage was over, and he moved to Maine, hoping for a fresh start. By chance, Kate, a physician’s assistant, had moved to the same area and they came into the same orbit.

They reconnected in 2019 and married in 2021.

Kate noticed her husband didn’t want to go places where there were a lot of people. He was hyper vigilant, his head always on a swivel. And he had nightmares and migraines. Therapy at the VA in Portland could only do so much.

Then, five years ago, as with the random luck of reuniting with Kate, Ballard got lucky again when he was in St. Augustine, visiting his in-laws.

He bumped into a group of trainers from an organization called K9s For Warriors. He was impressed by the trainers as they explained their ethos. Not only were they determined to lower the average of 20 veterans who kill themselves every day, they wanted to save some of the 1,000 dogs that are euthanized every day.

“They said they want to save lives at both ends of the leash,” Ballard said. “That really resonated with me.”

So did Eddie, the 85-pound chocolate lab who was paired with Ballard two years ago.

When they met, Eddie raced over and jumped on Ballard, knocking his glasses off.

It was love at first set of broken glasses.

“Training was hard,” Ballard said. “The hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

But, two years on, he and Eddie are inseparable, and Jeff Ballard is more like the Jeff Ballard before he went to war. He’s more present for Kate and their son, Matthew. He went back to running and other things that brought him joy.

As a service dog, Eddie is a disciplined protector, putting himself between Ballard and others who get too close too fast, bringing Ballard comfort when he’s in a crowded place such as Fenway Park, where Ballard goes regularly as a hardcore Red Sox fan.

The two of them were at Fenway on Saturday to participate in the annual Run to Home Base, to benefit Home Base, the program started by the Red Sox and Massachusetts General Hospital that treats the invisible wounds of war.

And on Monday, Ballard and Eddie will be back at Fenway for a celebration of the 15th anniversary of K9s For Warriors, which has helped more than 1,300 vets and saved more than 2,500 dogs destined to be put down.

Eddie is now 4 years old, a couple of months older than Ballard’s son Matthew, whom he nuzzles when he’s not on duty.

Eddie’s a real sweetie, with a cold nose and a warm heart.

He gave a veteran and his family something priceless: a new leash on life.

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Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.