they can actually save a suspect s life, stopping him before he gets shot or tasered. the better trained the dogs are, the safer everyone is. training is how, just like when i was in the military, it s the same thing. you train, train, train, train, and your odds of success go up. spike s canine fund is a small charity. jimmy runs it along with his director of operations, emily sukino. currently we serve in 25 states, and i would like the map to light up with dogs we ve helped. jimmy says more than 80% of the money donated goes to dogs vests and medical expenses, which sometimes aren t covered by local police departments. he s gotten vests for 288 police dogs so far. by the end of the year, he d like to be able to say he s outfitted at least 500 police dogs. last month i met up with jimmy
of the police force. indeed, for sure. they re not really on the spreadsheet for a budget. they re actually pretty expensive. so, often in a police force budget, with all the limited resources they have, the dogs are pretty low on the list. right. since the canine fund is so small, they need donations to keep going. jimmy asked me to attend a fund-raiser in may. you can make a huge difference in this organization. and you can actually see the difference you make. you can see the vests that you buy that are on the dogs that are helping to protect them every single day. and that s just an amazing, amazing feeling. one thing i wasn t all that keen on doing this weekend was skydiving. i m afraid of heights, but jimmy has a way of convincing you to do things.
whoa! yeah, man! that was intense. that was intense. getting out of the airplane is so unnatural. it s so, like, holy [ bleep ]. jimmy hatch is no longer wearing a uniform, but that hasn t stopped him from continuing to serve our country. and it hasn t stopped him from continuing to fight to keep all of us safe. he s an incredible guy. if you want to find out more about jimmy s charity, go to spikescaninefund.org. cnn and hln anchors will be bringing you the causes close to
when he was working with the norfolk police canine unit. anderson, come in here. listen to this dog, man. see how he keeps biting to get deeper? one of their police dogs, kreiger, was shot to death in 2016. through spike s canine fund, i was able to help get bulletproof vests for a number of police dogs in the area. officer ryan mcniff was kreiger s partner. this animal was named for stacy. thanks to his canine fund, officer mcniff s new partner has the vest that kreiger did not. what s cool is he s wearing the vest provided for the dogs. that s a bulletproof vest and he wears it to work every day. jimmy somehow convinced me to suit up so i could experience the power and discipline of these dogs. i got him. i got him. come on, let s get up. feel how intimate that is? he s talking to you. they should be unsung heroes
money to protect the lives of police dogs, buying them custom-made bulletproof vests. wow, she s fast. she s an athlete. i met jimmy two years ago when i interviewed him for a story. he served in the navy for almost 26 years. most of it as part of a special mission unit in iraq, afghanistan, and elsewhere. jimmy doesn t like to make a big deal of it. he has seen a lot of combat in his life. he has done some remarkable things to help protect us. on his last mission in afghanistan in 2009, jimmy was critically wounded, shot in the leg by a taliban fighter while searching for army private bowe bergdahl. his life was saved partly because of a military dog in his unit who was the first to spot the taliban fighter and the first to come under fire. i watched his body language. as it changed, i knew we were