Walking to share hope, and life

By Jennifer Kellner

Michelle Breach, and her crisis response dog Kip, visited Mount Ayr while her husband, Peter, is running across the country to raise awareness for HOPE AACR.

Peter and Michelle Breach, and their crisis response dog named Kip, passed through Ringgold County just after Memorial Day. The couple is on a mission to walk/run across the country to raise awareness for HOPE Animal-Assisted Crisis Response (HOPE AACR).

Little did Michelle know that her dog Kip would end up comforting her through an unimaginable sequence of events that nearly claimed her husband’s life.

Peter, Michelle and Kip, volunteer members of HOPE AACR, began a cross country walk last September to raise awareness for the non profit organization, and associated travel expenses.

Starting in Carlsbad, CA on September 9, the more than 1,300 mile run/walk took Michelle through several states including California, Louisiana, and Texas before arriving in Jekyll Island, GA on January 18. Just a few miles shy of the finish line, Peter and Michelle made a plan to meet at the beach so they could live stream the finish.

“I walked three miles that morning to the visitor center,” said Michelle.
Her friends and other HOPE people from the region met her there.
“We were all talking, having a great time, you know, greeting everybody I haven’t seen in so long, and meeting people,” recalled Michelle.
“They all wanted to walk the last three miles with me,” said Michelle, “and we decided Peter was going to drive the van to the island, because everybody didn’t want to walk back.”

Then Peter remembered that there was somebody in the visitor center that wanted to talk to Michelle and get a picture with her. Michelle was standing in between two people, while her friend Carleen took pictures.

“Peter, he’s kind of a jokester,” explained Michelle, “he hopped in between us, and he likes to take pictures of people taking pictures, so he’s off to the side here a little bit taking a picture of my friend.”
In the midst of everyone laughing and enjoying themselves, Peter fell forward onto the ground.
“He had not one sign, and just all of a sudden, boom,” Michelle stated as Kip comforted her, “we both initially thought, oh he’s photobombing us.”

It took both Michelle and her friend Carleen a little while to realize he wasn’t joking. In the midst of taking pictures to commemorate the last day of the run, Peter suffered a widow maker heart attack, despite training with Michelle to run cross country himself.

Thankfully, both Michelle and her friend Carleen were trained Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs).
“It’s just such a shock, even as EMTs,” said Michelle, “at first we thought he was having a seizure, because that’s what somebody hollered out.”

The two trained technicians noted Peter was turning blue, and wasn’t breathing.
“I just didn’t conceive of the fact that he was dead,” said Michelle, “so we rolled him, and started CPR.”
Intermittently, they would get a pulse, and he’d take a couple of gasping breaths on his own, and then they’d lose him again.
“We did that about, I think, three times,” said Michelle, “it was 12 minutes from when they called 911 to when EMS got there, and they shocked him in the ambulance.”

The two friends had done enough CPR together to know the situation didn’t look good.
“We didn’t expect him to be alive when we got to the hospital,” said Michelle.
“It’s a miracle it happened where it did,” Michelle stated, “I had all sorts of support around.”
One of the local HOPE volunteers took Kip so that Michelle could be in the hospital with Peter, and her two closest friends drove her to the hospital.
After sitting in the waiting room, they were able to go in and see him, actually awake.
“We were just all so surprised,” said Michelle.

After having a stent placed right away, he looked great for 24 hours.
The doctor then released him to a regular room from the ICU, but there was no rooms available, so they kept him in the ICU until a bed opened up. Later that night, his heart stopped again, and Michelle was there to help bring him back.
“It’s a good thing he was in the ICU still,” said Michelle.
Peter’s heart stopped two more times that night.
He was then sent down to Jacksonville by ambulance, to get a pacemaker.

Michelle finished the last three miles of the run/walk at Jekyll Island.

At that point, Michelle and Carleen decided to go and finish the last three miles of the run/walk, as the visitor center was three miles from Jekyll Island, where Michelle planned to finish.

Just three months later, Peter started his own journey, “running” across the country.

Starting on April 10, Peter headed west from Virginia Beach, VA towards Newport, OR. He passed through Mount Ayr on Tuesday morning, and ended the day near Bedford.
The couple plan to return home to the state of Washington once their journey is complete.

However, raising awareness for HOPE AACR and funds to help pay for Kip’s travel expenses is an ongoing mission.
Kip is a trained crisis response dog for HOPE AACR, and Peter and Michelle are his handlers. He’s the third crisis response dog the couple has raised and trained.

They generally start therapy dog training when dogs are around a year old, and most dogs take roughly 2-3 years to train.
After working as a therapy dog for at least a year, they then undergo a 3-4 hour screening process and more intense training to become a crisis response dog.

Peter and Michelle also went through handler training, because they are not therapists, they are there to let the dog do their job.
“If we do have to travel, we pay for the hotel, we pay for the airplane, the gas, the restaurant, eating, all that on our own,” said Michelle, “It’s not cheap, but once in a while we get reimbursed from the Red Cross or FEMA or a business might give a grant or something.”
Any funds they raise go towards travel expenses, as all volunteers deploy at their own cost.

HOPE AACR is a nonprofit organization that provides comfort and encouragement to individuals affected by crises and disasters through animal-assisted support. You can learn more by visiting their website: www.hopeaacr.org/donate-support

Michelle and Peter Breach, and their crisis response dog Kip, are running/walking across the country to raise awareness for HOPE AACR.