Salute to Veterans Story: Man’s Best Friend

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Terry Kehoe with Harley and Prince in Vietnam.

Terry Kehoe with Harley and Prince in Vietnam.

Naples resident Terry Kehoe has two dogs that never leave his side.  First, there’s Harley, a spunky two-year-old golden retriever.    

“He’s with me all the time,” Kehoe says. “Sometimes I can’t even go to the bathroom without having Harley right there.”

His other four-legged constant companion, at least figuratively, is Prince, a German shepherd whose picture Kehoe carries in this wallet every day.

“I carry a picture of the most important person in my life. My wife’s number two,” he says about the photo of Prince, making a point to note that Lois, his wife of 47 years, is fine with that sentiment and arrangement.

How Harley and Prince became intertwined in Kehoe’s life is a tale that spans five decades and two continents and is a testament to the powerful and sometimes life-changing bonds that can occur between animals and humans.

Kehoe first met Prince when he arrived in Vietnam in 1970 as a sergeant and specially trained dog handler in the United States Army.  

Prince had already been in Vietnam for a year as one of an estimated 4,000 dogs deployed by the U.S. government to Vietnam and Thailand during the war as scouts, sentries and trackers.

“He was the one with combat experience, not me,” says Kehoe.

The scouts, mostly German shepherds, were deployed to battle zones with a “handler” at the front of a combat patrol. Using hand signals and eye contact, along with the dogs’ incredible senses of smell and hearing, the handlers and dogs worked together to detect enemy mines, booby traps, tunnels and caches of weapons, a process called “walking point.”   

It was dangerous work for the handlers and dogs but highly effective in the war effort. Kehoe said he’s read estimates that dogs saved more than 10,000 lives in Vietnam.

And that explains the almost brotherly bond that developed between Kehoe and Prince. “It’s hard to explain, but when you have a dog that on a daily basis saves your life and the lives of others, it’s not just a dog,” he says.

When asked about his best memories of Prince, Kehoe points to their helicopter rides together, flying from Landing Zone English in Bong Son, where they were based, to the front lines.   

“I’d sit in the open doorway with my legs hanging over,” Kehoe says. “He’d sit next to me and he’d have his head out there in the wind, just blowing.   You could see his smile. He knew where we were going or where we’d been, but it was this interim time that was really great. Like the way dogs put their heads out the window of a car, but it’s on a helicopter, going a little faster than a car.”

Kehoe received his discharge orders in April 1971. Two weeks prior to his departure, he had to turn Prince over to his next handler but could no longer interact with him while the handler and Prince got accustomed to each other. “I couldn’t be within earshot of him. I couldn’t be around him at all,” he says. Before their forced estrangement, though, he was able to say a proper goodbye and take one last photo of Prince.   

Kehoe’s return home was marked with the same challenges that plagued other veterans of the war in Vietnam, starting with the then government’s lack of support for transitioning soldiers.

“I left Vietnam on April 24th, 1971,” he says. “I landed in Fort Lewis, Washington on April 24th, 1971, with the time change. The next day, I was on the street as a civilian, with no transition. So I went from a war zone to a civilian zone with nothing in between. The first year you’re back from a war zone, you’re not sure what you’re doing. You’re not even sure if the friends that you had before are really the friends you’re going to have.”

Kehoe, who is naturally service-minded and considers helping others his “bailiwick,” fulfilled his childhood dream and became a fireman, serving three years as a volunteer, and another 22 years as a professional, rising to the rank of assistant chief before retiring in 1995. While he found the job both fulfilling and fun, he suffered from bouts of post-traumatic stress syndrome, like so many other Vietnam vets.

“I call it ‘circling the drain,’” he says, noting he has had a lifelong struggle with suicidal thoughts, alcohol abuse and angry outbursts, often stemming from his love of Prince and their shattered bond. “I was obsessed with him.”

A particularly rough episode occurred in 1994, shortly after his wife Lois retired from her prominent role as executive director at a large law firm in Minneapolis, where they lived at the time. He remained an actively engaged assistant fire chief, and their divergent career paths caused strain in their marriage and a backslide in Kehoe’s mental health and sobriety.  

After a brief separation and couples counseling, Kehoe sought solo counseling and recovered his mental health and marriage over time, only to backslide dramatically again in 2018.    

That year, Kehoe received devastating news about Prince’s remaining time in Vietnam. When they left Vietnam, Kehoe and the other scout dog handlers were told by their commanding officer that once decommissioned, the dogs would be flown to a veterinarian clinic in Saigon, where the dogs would be assessed and redeployed, or so they thought for nearly 50 years.  In 2018, Kehoe learned that Prince, along with another 40 or so dogs, had actually been euthanized. Kehoe says his separation from Prince and the realization the dog had been euthanized, are the “main part” of his PTSD.

“If you talk to all the handlers, we’re still upset about it,” Kehoe says.

Also in 2018, Kehoe and his wife Lois attended a weekend retreat in the mountains of South Carolina with a group of fellow Vietnam scout dog handlers. In Kehoe’s description, the weekend turned out to be less of a “retreat” and more of a dysfunctional mess.

“Half of them were never sober,” he says. “One was doing plenty of drugs.   Another talked about if his girlfriend didn’t treat him right, he’d slit her throat. They hadn’t gotten the help that I’ve now gotten.”

Kehoe and his wife ended up leaving the weekend a day early, but that event, and the realization that Prince had been euthanized, sent Kehoe into a mental health tailspin along the lines of what he’d experienced in 1994.

He started experiencing anxiety and exhibiting violent behavior. By 2020, he was “circling the drain for a second time,” he says.

Thankfully, at the urging of a fellow vet, he started attending weekly group therapy sessions at the Naples Vet Center, run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. With the help of counseling and group support, he has regained his mental health.   

It was at an American Legion meeting at Marco Lutheran last spring that he met Harley, when two volunteers from the Legion brought him to the meeting through the Golden PAWS Assistance Dogs Program.

Golden PAWS, a Naples-based nonprofit, “provides highly skilled service or assistance dogs to combat wounded veterans, first responders and children with life-changing disabilities,” according to their website.  

Kehoe, who says he had never had a service animal in the past but enjoyed volunteering to walk dogs at Domestic Animal Services in Naples, fell in love with Harley instantly, and after a lengthy application and interview process, was selected for the program and paired with Harley. 

Before the two could start their life together, however, Harley had to undergo the special training for dogs that serve vets with PTSD.

“If I were to have bad nightmares, he would wake me up,” Kehoe says. “If I show anger, he would step in to intervene.”

Kehoe took delivery of Harley on August 14 and the two are now working together to complete Harley’s training, with instruction from Golden PAWS.    Kehoe says he’s actually the one doing the most learning, given how different training Harley is from his training of Prince nearly 50 years ago.

“It’s a 180-degree difference,” Kehoe says, noting that at Golden PAWS, the goal is to eventually get Harley off his leash, while in Vietnam, Kehoe says keeping Prince on his leash was how he gave him commands. “It’s like the difference between riding a bike and a unicycle, but they say I’m on target.”

Kehoe says he’ll be serving as emcee at the Veterans Day ceremony at Veterans Community Park on Marco Island November 11. His wife Lois, who is a professional jazz singer, will close the event with her rendition of “God Bless America,” and Harley will likely make an appearance as well.

In addition to the more solemn moments the day will bring, Kehoe wants his newfound happiness to shine through. “I’m hoping to make it a little fun with the little bit of time I’ll have on the microphone,” he says. “I want people to feel like this was a great time.”

For his part, Harley is slowly weaving his way deeper into Kehoe’s life and his healing. Kehoe says there’s talk at the American Legion to make Harley their official mascot, and Harley tags along with him every Tuesday morning for a regular breakfast Kehoe has at the Skillets in Lely with his fellow veterans from the Naples Vet Center. “If I can transfer some of the love from him to the other guys, you know we’ve all won,” he says. “That’s great.”

Kehoe and I arranged to meet at Veterans Community Park in late September to get some photos of him with Harley. We strolled through the park and as we approached the memorial pavers honoring those who served, one stopped me in my tracks. It read: “Prince 672M. Infantry Scout Dog. Always On Point. My Buddy-Partner. Sgt. Kehoe Vietnam.”

Holding Harley by his leash, Kehoe welled up as we read it. So did I. I asked, “What does 672M mean?”   

“That’s his ID,” Kehoe said. “It was tattooed in his ear. They didn’t have chips back then.”

Harley’s got a chip. And a best friend that he knows will never leave his side.

Coastal Breeze News is bringing back “Salute to Veterans.” If you have a story idea, feel free to reach out to Brad at brad@coastalbreezenews.com.