The VetsConnection Podcast

Ep. 55 - From Combat to Community: Building Veteran Support Systems Through Clear Path For Veterans Nonprofit

• Scott McLean • Episode 55

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Ryan Woodruff shares his journey from Marine Corps combat veteran to Program Director at ClearPath for Veterans, revealing how his own healing path led him to help fellow veterans through comprehensive support programs.

• Established in 2011, ClearPath for Veterans offers multiple services including their flagship service dog program for veterans with PTSD and TBI
• Veterans often carry constant stress that doesn't ebb and flow like civilians, creating unique challenges in transition to civilian life
• The Wednesday Canteen program welcomes 200-300 veterans weekly for community meals, connection, and introduction to other services
• ClearPath offers wellness programs including massage therapy and meditation to help veterans manage pain and stress
• The organization's 78-acre campus provides a healing environment with hiking trails, workshops, and natural surroundings
• The peer support model connects veterans with others who understand their experiences, creating psychological safety
• Service dogs provide life-changing support, helping veterans regulate emotions and reconnect with daily life
• The Operation Socrates program helps transitioning service members enter K-12 teaching careers
• ClearPath serves approximately 7,000 veterans annually with a staff of over 40 people and numerous volunteers
• Family members are included in all programs, recognizing they also carry the weight of service-related challenges

If you want to learn more about ClearPath for Veterans or support their mission, visit ClearPathforVets.org or reach out directly to speak with their team.


Scott McLean:

Welcome to the podcast. I'm Scott McLean. I'm going to start this episode off a little differently. If you're a listener of the podcast, you'll notice I haven't been around for a little bit, and it's a number of reasons, none of them bad, which is a good thing. We moved our studio from Delray Beach, florida, to Boca Raton, florida, and moving a studio isn't exactly easy. There's a lot of moving parts that go with it. So, with that said, that's one reason. Another is just my foundation's been keeping me busy the One man One Mic Foundation and we now are partnering with them in this podcast. So from now on you'll be hearing about the One man One Mic Foundation and this is my shameless plug.

Scott McLean:

One man, one Mic Foundation. We teach veterans how to podcast, from concept to publishing and beyond, because we believe that a veteran's voice is their biggest strength and there should be a lot more veteran podcasters out there. There's a lot more that goes into it. So if you want to check it out, go to the website one man, one mike foundationorg. We also do a story lab, which is a course on how to tell an effective story, how to create your story, and storytelling is a big part of helping individuals with PTSD and TBI. I'm in that world, so, trust me, it works. So, again, go to one man, one, mike foundationorg, to see what that's all about.

Scott McLean:

Now, with all that out of the way, my guest today, who patiently sat through that with his own nonprofit which is what this podcast is all about is Ryan Woodruff, ryan's with ClearPath for Veterans. They're located right outside of Syracuse, new York, and they were established in 2011. And usually I'll do a rundown, but ClearPath, they do a lot. They've grown since 2011. And I'm going to let Ryan tell you what it's all about. So, hey, ryan, how you doing man.

Ryan Woodruff:

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on the show, Scott.

Scott McLean:

Oh, it's a pleasure. No, not a problem. This is great. I think you know I'm in South Florida and I love helping my veterans down here in South Florida, but I think this podcast goes across the nation. So I think the more we branch out, the more places that we talk to nonprofits out there, the more beneficial it is to everybody. So you're a veteran, right? Right?

Ryan Woodruff:

I am, yeah. So as far back as I can remember I wanted to be a Marine and right out of high school I enlisted. It's at the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, so I you know. So I signed up to be in the infantry. I could think of no better way to enter into the Marine Corps and knew what to expect at that time and shipped off to Iraq not much long after I enlisted.

Scott McLean:

All right. How long were you over there for?

Ryan Woodruff:

Did two tours, so Marines typically are over there for about seven months. Each tour is seven months back to back, though, so it's clockwork rotation, you know six months of training, seven month deployment, come back, do the same thing all over again, and after my second tour I was fully prepared to exit the military and see what the civilian life had to offer.

Scott McLean:

You saw enough.

Ryan Woodruff:

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Scott McLean:

Yeah For the better or for the worse. I don't like digging that stuff up with some veterans. I know people like to hear those stories. But with that said, how did everything work out for you after the deployments, If you?

Ryan Woodruff:

know, I think it's important. You know, I've been out of the Marine Corps for over a decade now and it feels like everything is still fresh. It feels like it was just yesterday, to be honest with you, my first deployment. We didn't come back with everybody, we left with. You know, we lost 14 brothers on that deployment, saw a lot of combat and our mission was to eliminate the insurgent threat in our area of operations, which just sat right in between Fallujah and Ramadi In 2006,. There was a lot going on in that area. So, you know, a lot of things that I experienced on that particular deployment have absolutely never left me.

Ryan Woodruff:

It's funny, I was just having a conversation, you know, about this with my wife yesterday. Smartwatches are the thing these days, right, and they tell you like your stress levels and your sleep and everything else, and it's almost like a curse because I look at that thing and my stress is like off the Richter scale, continuously, always, and there's so much research and studies out is like off the Richter scale, continuously, always, and there's so much research and studies out there. Now that we've, you know, really dug into the subject of PTSD to better understand you know, what is that? How does that biologically represented in the human body and veterans are disproportionately dealing with stress differently, continuously, and it's constant, it's. It just is it doesn't ebb and flow in the same way like you, you know, civilian community members do, or those that haven't experienced significant trauma in their lives. And I was just talking to her, I'm like I don't know, I just don't get it. You know, I've been out for it's. It's been almost. It's been like 15 years, going on, 16 years now.

Ryan Woodruff:

But a a six or seven month tour in such a a high tension area where you're you're losing people, you're seeing it, you're experiencing it, bullets flying all over your head, bombs dropping IEDs, sniper fire I guess there's some things that don't just easily exit, right. So the transition was not what I expected. I thought I was mentally well. When we come back from deployment, they tell us all the same thing Don't raise any red flags, don't tell them you saw dead bodies, don't tell them that you are experiencing nightmares, and definitely don't tell them that you are experiencing nightmares and definitely don't tell them that you're drinking alcohol every day. Right? So that's what we did and we just continued the business as usual. But those things carried with me after I left the military, and it was anything but easy.

Scott McLean:

For sure At what point did you, if you don't mind me asking at what point? Did you, if you don't mind me asking, at what point? Did you finally say you know what? Fuck this? Like I, I gotta, I gotta deal with this nine years.

Ryan Woodruff:

Nine years it took me to lay down some things and, uh, you know I, I kept digging further into a valley. That's I've told a lot of people like change doesn't happen at the summit. It usually something significant has to happen in order to influence you in a different direction, to change that. Whatever path you're following. And you know I, I did have a pretty significant alcohol problem and I was trying to raise a family. You know, shortly Well carrying, you know, after I got out of the military, I got married and, you know, trying to raise a family, have a job and all that and just killing my body.

Ryan Woodruff:

Doing I was in a line of work that was comparable to the challenging work of an infantryman and I was also drinking every day. Long story short, after my kids were born, I realized one day, coming home, I could potentially lose my family, I could lose my job. There was just a lot going on in my headspace and I wasn't dealing with it, and so I just had a reckoning and decided that I would just quit and just stop cold turkey and and do my best. Little did I know that that doesn't fix everything right. It's just a start. It's a step in the right direction, but there's so much more that was required, but I did that. I quit drinking and that was a start on a path forward towards healing. Some other things that occurred, you know. Getting connected with ClearPath was a big part of my healing journey as well.

Scott McLean:

How did you get connected with them?

Ryan Woodruff:

So when I got out of the military I went to college and I ended up pursuing a career in forestry and natural resources, became an arborist. So I was climbing trees and doing hard line work for about six years. There was a point at which my docs at the VA were like your back is like destroyed and you really should think about doing something different. And you know I knew I was continuing to kind of break myself doing the work I was doing, also not having healthy habits at home. A friend of mine who doing the work I was doing, also not having healthy habits at home, a friend of mine who was also in the Marine Corps.

Ryan Woodruff:

We went to college together and he ended up pursuing veteran services. Before I did he was working with the homeless veteran population in the inner city, working in and out of the shelters, meeting with vets and trying to help them get back on their feet. He ended up getting a job with Clear Path for Veterans and starting an employment program to help connect veterans to work and meaningful, purposeful career trajectories. Well, they had a position open up for a peer mentor in the geographically right where I lived and they wanted to find a combat veteran that navigated from their military to the civilian career somewhat successfully. I will say that I fed a lot of bullshit to the crew to try to get this job, but it was like a flicker for me.

Ryan Woodruff:

I saw a light that helped me change my my course to go towards something that I thought would be more meaningful. I missed the military culture desperately. After years, after I got out, I started to think of wondering if I made a mistake, like maybe I should have just stayed in, Like it was the only place I felt like I had any kind of purpose or tribe or camaraderie. When you're provided a firearm and given the authority to kill in a mission and then at 19 years old, and then you come back into the civilian world and you go to college and you're just another kid on the block. Man, that's a lot to carry, Not to mention all of the trauma that you're carrying and the challenges of just trying to fit in with the community wasn't working, so I just continued to isolate and when I found ClearPath, I mean I ended up getting selected for this position. Not because my buddy worked there I will say I did terrible on the interview, but they ended up going with me and I started to see a different side of what these veterans were dealing with.

Ryan Woodruff:

Right, I was going to rural areas, underserved communities, just getting out there and meeting veterans where they were sitting down and having coffee. A lot of these guys were, you know, 20, 30 years outside of the service, homeless, substance abuse, like way far beyond what I had experienced, suicidal ideation, just all the comorbidities that you hear about related to these veteran challenges. And I was just on the road all the time meeting with these guys and trying to set them up, develop these case plans and, you know, just trying to be a mentor and a coach to them to get them to a better state. So that was healing, I'll be honest with you, just sitting down and talking with another vet and having coffee with them, similar to what you're doing here on the show. I think it's incredibly healing just to give somebody the space and time to talk, and a lot of these these people just didn't. They weren't doing that and that's the power of a peer support network right, because these veterans have lived in experience and they can identify with some of those challenges so I did that.

Scott McLean:

You're walking in their shoes. Yeah, they came before you. It's just like I'm a recovering alcoholic and, as you know, at this point only another alcoholic understands. You know, yeah, that, that, that the brain, what we go through, what we're thinking, how we're feeling in veterans, no different.

Ryan Woodruff:

Yeah, same thing about, you know, experiencing combat or living in dire circumstances. Or you know, like how many people do you come across in the general public that can say that they, they lived in a a fighting hole for a week out in the middle of February for training, like you know, these just things that people don't quite understand. What that does to your, I mean it builds resilience. I'll tell you that. I mean there's very little that I've experienced in the outside that has been comparable to the challenges that I faced in the military. So that's just one good thing that I've carried with me.

Ryan Woodruff:

So I was doing this work and all the while I realized that I was not only providing these services but I was a recipient as well. I was receiving the power of connection through meeting with all these veterans. Half the staff at ClearPath are veterans themselves and we could all just sit down at the end of the day and chat and talk about our experiences and relate to one another and not put it on a scale, you know, just to kind of meet each other where we were at and just be real. It was kind of like being back in the military, to be honest with you.

Scott McLean:

Not again. This isn't a cheap plug, but this is the. The pillars of the one man, one mic foundation is purpose, belonging and connection. Those are the. To me, those are the three biggest things that a veteran can find, and it sounds to me like you found your purpose yeah, connection and it found you and you, you have that belonging and you're definitely making connection.

Ryan Woodruff:

And I did not give any value to the power of community or a family that was dealing with transitioning out of the, out of the military, and trying to, you know, figure out what it is they were going. They are going to do, like what is reaching any semblance of potential actually look like, and you you tend to. I mean for me I made agreements like I'm never going to be better than I am right now. I can't, you know, be a keyboard warrior and just build PowerPoints and you know, like it hasn't. What does being an 0311 rifleman have to do with? Like the work that I'm doing now, going out and speaking in front of crowds and doing stuff that just was wildly different than I could ever imagine. But you know, I didn't believe in myself, but there are other people that believed in me, that walked shoulder to shoulder with me to help and it's so important and it definitely the storytelling. Just talking with other folks and being able to unload that weight was and still is incredibly healing.

Scott McLean:

Certainly is, and I can testify to that. That's why I started what I do, and this is why part of this podcast is always I want to know your story. You know what got you to where you are right now, and some stories are easier to hear than others, but in the end, it's their story, right. No story is better or worse than any other. It's your story, their story, right. No story is better or worse than any other. It's your story.

Scott McLean:

You mentioned something too, and it really it's just starting to come to light the family members of veterans that are transitioning, like the wife or the kids. I can personally say that my first wife God rest her soul she, I never thought about that, I never thought about what she's going through, because I was so caught up in what I was going through. You just look at them as your anchor. You know they're your steel pole in the middle of nowhere, right? But I never looked back, like I looked back later on and thought you know, wow, I never asked her how she was doing. She did it, you know she did it great, never complained, never complained to me, never did anything. But it's just. That's a whole different thing. That transition was so caught up in our own transition, you know, trying to get out of it or trying to find our way into it, so you get with clear path Now. You had told me in our prior conversation the clear path started as a canine service dog organization Great founding story.

Ryan Woodruff:

I mean Melissa Spicer, who's the co-founder, along with her sister Melinda, and Air Force veteran Steve Kinney. Melissa Spicer was running a dog training studio in central New York and this Air Force veteran kept reaching out to her saying, like I got this idea, I want to start this program. It's for vets to help them recover from symptomatic post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. And she wasn't making the connection. She actually thought he was a veterinarian trying to sell products to her studio. So several collisions later she finally said oh, I understand, you're an air force veteran, you're trying to do like you're developing a program. And uh, at the time she was going through some stuff, some really hard stuff herself. She had learned at this period of her life that she would never have children and she was trying to figure out what to do with all that pain. And she partnered alongside with her sister and this veteran acquired this beautiful property in central New York 78 acres natural landscape, and that in and of itself, I will say, is healing, just to be out in the middle of nature. And they built these programs and services, starting with this canine program. And they built these programs and services starting with this canine program, and that's kind of where my story intersected, too, because I went through as a recipient in the canine program in 2016 and just learned the power of the human animal bond and what it is to connect with a living, breathing being that literally absorbs your trauma.

Ryan Woodruff:

I mean, and that's true, and that's true of our families, too. I would say we owe a huge debt and credit to family members and spouses and kids, because they carry the weight with us and sometimes we forget that, but they do. And I think it's equally as important when we're attending to a service member or veteran, that we also offer those services to the family members as well. So we do both veterans and family members. At ClearPath. Everything we do is all inclusive for anybody in their family unit, and we don't define what that is. If somebody is the best friend they claim they're their brother, we're going to help them out in the best way we can too.

Scott McLean:

I understand. Like, who am I to say no to these people? You know, I know exactly what you mean. So it grew from canine to. I know that they do a peer to peer, which is how many other services does ClearPath offer?

Ryan Woodruff:

Several. So you know, again, back to like the, the challenges that veterans are facing when they transition out of the military. There's so many of them and it's a lot for one organization to carry the weight of trying to figure out how can we attend to each and every one of these. But essentially these programs were developed to to look the big you know challenges that we're seeing mental health, post-traumatic stress, isolation, pain, stress, like and how can we design a ecosystem so when veterans come to ClearPath there's something that they can participate in that's going to help move the needle. So we do peer-to-peer support that helps veterans connect with other veterans, and it can be anything from basic needs to connecting with education and employment, federal benefits. It's a navigator. Essentially they're the person that's going to walk with you and help you do life for as long as it takes to get you where you need to go. And beyond that, we do the canine program. So service dogs for military related PTSD and TBI, amongst many other things, which that is our flagship. Most of what people know us for is our canine program. We also offer a wellness program.

Ryan Woodruff:

So back to pain and stress. Right, the VA started doing this not too long ago, where they're offering different modalities such as massage therapy, meditation. So we're offering all of that on our main campus and we're also expanding digitally as well so that veterans that aren't, you know, within a reasonable distance from our facility can connect with us online and go through different modalities. But right on campus we have licensed practitioners that are coming several times a month to offer these services at no cost to veterans and their families. We see a big you know big attraction to that.

Ryan Woodruff:

Veterans that never went through meditation or massage therapy or finding that it's helping with pain or otherwise. They weren't clinically being able to relieve some of those symptoms. And then every Wednesday we do what's called a Wednesday canteen as part of our culinary program, and canteen is a was. It's a known event that took place back in world war II in North Platte, nebraska. Service members that were coming home. The community was welcoming home, coming off the train with home-cooked meals. So every Wednesday, between 11 and 1, we'll have up to 200, 300 veterans on site Wow, sharing community breaking bread, and it's it's a. It's a great time to introduce people to the organization and then see if there's anything else that they are willing or able to participate in that might help them with some of their unique circumstances.

Scott McLean:

Who does. Okay, that's, that's amazing. That's amazing, right there. Okay, so let let me break that one down. That's amazing, right there. Okay, so let me break that one down. So the campus has, it has a kitchen, it has a whole.

Ryan Woodruff:

Yeah, fortunately it used to be like a golf lodge, so I already had a commercial kitchen. It was in disrepair, but over the years, you know, from 2011 to now, everything's in top condition. So we're able to with a staff of culinary staff I think we have like five or six people full time and then we have a group of volunteers that show up throughout the week to help prep, clean up and take care of the veterans coming through.

Scott McLean:

So you have five people in the kitchen doing the cooking. Who does the menu? Is it the same menu every week, is it?

Ryan Woodruff:

changed up. No, it's definitely not the chow hall. I mean they're putting together really top-notch meals. We have an executive chef who serves as our director of food and beverage and he comes from the restaurant business. His father was a Marine, so he's finding purpose in feeding veterans and he pulls out all the stops. I mean he puts on incredible meals. He takes it on the road too. We have a food truck that travels around all throughout New York state providing the equivalent of the experiences you would get at the main campus as possible, and some of these remote, underserved areas that you know aren't able to get directly to the campus. So it's a great way to build community.

Scott McLean:

So when we were talking you had said in our kind of pre-interview that there's a. You know there's a lot going on there and I didn't expect that Like that's a two to 300 people coming in is not a small task. That's a in what a two hour period? Right, you said 11 to one, but it probably kind of travels beyond that.

Ryan Woodruff:

People are there at eight o'clock in the morning having coffee hanging out in the great room. You know sometimes they'll go to the art house, the wood shop. I mean, they're just, that's their time to get out and socialize.

Scott McLean:

There's a lot of restaurants that don't see two to 300 hundred people in in a, let alone a two-hour period. Right, all right, chow's on everybody. So that leads me to this question funding for that and getting donations, that's like, that's every. That's essential, right? How does how did that work? How did you guys, how do you get the funding and the donors and the it takes a village.

Ryan Woodruff:

But uh, you know, I've been told, like you do, the good work and the money will come. And we've been doing this incredible work for so long that the community has just established us as like a staple for wow, veteran services. So you know, we get a lot of grants, community foundations and local donors and that kind of thing that are helping keep up keeping us doing what we're doing. I mean, and it's no, I mean we have over 40 staff right now, 40 service dogs and training, full kitchen operation that we take on the road, two national programs. It it does. It does take a lot, but we're we wouldn't be doing what we are doing if the community didn't want to keep us here. So I mean, I believe that Clear Pasture would be in every community. If I'm being honest, I think that the model that we've developed over time really established itself as a unique model that could be replicated.

Scott McLean:

So you have a full-blown kennel also, I assume.

Ryan Woodruff:

We do. We are expanding that, though. In the coming year we're going to be launching a capital campaign to expand our canine training facilities. Right now, we're placing between 12 and 15 dogs a year. It takes two years to train each service dog and we're looking to triple that number. We do need more facility space. We're breaking at the seams right now just to offer accommodations on site classes, puppy enrichment areas, veterinary facilities. We treat our dogs as well as we treat the veterans coming in, so it really does take a lot.

Scott McLean:

I was K-9 in the Air Force for 10 years and almost 22 in US Customs, and I know how those dogs get treated better than us. Yeah, and that is in itself a whole huge undertaking of people that have to be there. It's almost 24, it is a 24-7 thing when you have a kennel and dogs and feedings and giving them breaks, and that's an operation itself. So, okay, let me see, you got a pretty much a full-blown restaurant once a week. You got a pretty much a full blown restaurant once a week. You have a full blown kennel every day. Like what else? Like that's. What else do you got?

Ryan Woodruff:

There's more. I mean there's. There's so much more. I anytime I get a chance to talk to people about what we do, we never cover everything we're. We're also. We just launched a DOD skill bridge program called Operation Socrates. So service members that are still active transitioning out of the military, that are interested in getting into K through 12 teaching fields we have a program dedicated for that and establish partnerships with school districts all across the country. It's 180 day internship and it helps veterans get placed in much-needed teaching jobs and veterans often don't think that they'd be a good teacher, but their experiences are. I can think of no greater to help shepherd the next generation.

Scott McLean:

And getting into the SkillBridge program. For a nonprofit to get into that it's not an easy process, correct?

Ryan Woodruff:

No, it's not Anything to do with the federal government can be a little bit cumbersome and difficult.

Scott McLean:

You can just come out and say it yeah, yeah.

Ryan Woodruff:

Yeah, it's a lot, yeah, for sure. I mean we're grateful and it's gotten a lot of attraction. A lot of folks are connecting with us from active installations all across the country. It's been incredible and again, I I think there's a great need for it. Teachers are. I know there's a struggle with retaining and recruiting for teachers right now, so it's a great opportunity for especially in rural areas and actually inner city areas too, for teaching yep so, yep, so okay, full-blown restaurant, kennel skill bridge for teachers.

Scott McLean:

Keep it coming, buddy. We talked about the wellness.

Ryan Woodruff:

That's been ramping up quite a bit. Events and activities you know our calendars fall every month. There's always something going on, like this Saturday. We have a annual back to school event that we do every year, expecting somewhere around the ballpark of 200 to 250 veterans and their families, and we give out free backpacks, school supplies. We'll have local resources available to chat with and just to help, you know, students get get back into the groove of school and it's easy.

Scott McLean:

It takes a little bit of a burden off the parents too.

Ryan Woodruff:

Yeah, very well received. Yeah, it's a great.

Scott McLean:

What else you?

Ryan Woodruff:

got. So there's. Each year we also do a big motorcycle ride and that's coming up in September. We'll have we've had the most bikes we've had is about 500 bikes, just again. It's a great community builder to bring people out to just support the organization and and also, you know, veterans themselves have an opportunity to connect, get some great food. Our chef puts on a great barbecue that day and it's an incredible event.

Ryan Woodruff:

New York state alone we're covering about 33 counties, five regions. New York's big right it's not people think of New York and alone we're covering about 33 counties, five regions. New York's big right it's not people think of New York and they often think of the city and it's just much bigger than that. So in these five regions we have peer mentors that actually live within those areas. So if a veteran connects with us and they're in the Southern tier of New York or Northern New York or out towards Buffalo or in the Hudson Valley, we have boots on the ground to meet them where they're at and help get them to where they're going, literally and figuratively. Right, I mean, some of these veterans that we're connecting with don't have transportation to the VA or to the DMV or to the Department of Social Services.

Scott McLean:

That's a big one.

Ryan Woodruff:

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot, I mean. The other thing I didn't hit on is we're a recipient of a VA program called Staff Sergeant Fox Suicide Prevention and so we're taking a concerted effort at really targeting veteran suicide. You know, this is everything we do is prevention in nature. We believe that finding or giving veterans a place to connect and participate in these core programs is great, but we're taking it a step further and really looking to seek to identify some of those at-risk individuals, get them enrolled, if they're not already connected to VA services. We have a conduit for that.

Ryan Woodruff:

We're also not, you know, shoving it down their throats and saying you have to be connected to the VA to be part of this program. We're fortunate here. I mean, in central New York, syracuse has one of the best VAs in the country. I've I've gone there and have had a great experience. Not everybody has a great experience and I get that, but we're just trying to max out as much as we possibly can with every veteran coming through our doors with any benefits that they might be entitled to, so shifting gears a little bit.

Scott McLean:

Every non-profit that I've talked to and I know I I told you that there's no trap questions in this podcast. I don't think this is a trap question. Give us off the top of your head a success story, something that you were like. That was fucking amazing.

Ryan Woodruff:

Like this is amazing yeah, yeah, a notable one from a couple years ago. So our canine program was our, is our flagship program? Right, it's been. It's been established since the beginning. So 15 years later actually less than 15 years we became accredited by an organization called Assistance Dogs International which, for those listening, if you're looking for a service dog, I would recommend looking for an accredited provider. There's just more benefits you're entitled to and it essentially means that we adhere to the highest standards in the industry. And it was audited by a third party. And I mean they look at everything. They look at your fire extinguishers to make sure they're not expired, they interview clients, they look at dogs, they evaluate, training, everything.

Ryan Woodruff:

And so when we became accredited in 2022, we decided that we were going to take the program national and a veteran reached out to me on LinkedIn just by happen, chance, saw our material, found me, reached out and Vietnam vet he was. He lives in Oregon and he had said, like I've, I've been looking for a service dog. I've connected with a few different organizations. They they can't help me or they say it's going to take three years or more, and I don't. You know, like I'm 72 years old and I'm really looking to do this in my life now. I've seen the benefits, I've done the research and I'm just wondering if ClearPath could help me. So I immediately I gave my cell phone number, like let's get on a call, I'll talk through what. What you got going on and you know. An hour later I had a great conversation with him, built a relationship and I told him like we'll get you in the pipeline and in training in less than a year.

Ryan Woodruff:

So eight months later we were able to bring this v Vietnam vet and his spouse out to ClearPath and they got. We just rolled out everything right. Like they got to go. We put them up in a really nice hotel local to the to the campus and he we basically wined and dined him. He had meals from our culinary program every day, he was connecting with peer support, he got to participate in some of our wellness activities and he got the full three weeks of training in place with a service dog that he says saved his life.

Ryan Woodruff:

A Vietnam vet right. For me that was the most special component of this, because the Vietnam vets got rolled over when they came home, not treated the same way we did, and a lot of the work that they've done has paved the way for veterans like myself to have as seamless of a transition as possible. It's not perfect, but it's much better than it was. So upon graduation I mean, there wasn't a dry eye in the room. We we placed him with this dog and we still maintain a great connection a couple of years later. And it's just one of several success stories. I mean, each month we're running up over 2,000 service deliveries as far as veterans served. We're connecting with over 7,000 veterans every year and various things right, like all kinds of different programs and services they're interacting with. So there's several stories, but that's that's one of the ones that's been most impactful that's an amazing story.

Scott McLean:

Vietnam veterans are hard nuts to crack, you know. The further along they get you know what, though, that might be too general of a statement, because veterans in general can be a hard nut to crack, especially the further along they get you know.

Ryan Woodruff:

Several vets have come to the campus and not gotten out of their car. You know, they just pull up, hang out for a little bit, drive away, do it again a couple times and eventually they're willing to take a step into the door and they're immediately welcomed. They're not asked, you know we don't say let me see your VA ID card or DD two, 14. We welcome them and say you want to have a cup of coffee? Hang out, grab a tour and just get to know them with no strings attached, because we're not in it for the number, we're not in it for a quota, we're genuinely in it to help our fellow veterans.

Scott McLean:

And the thing about that is nonprofits. Numbers are somewhat necessary. You know, people want to see we served, and I think that that's just a fraction of an aspect of what a nonprofit does and needs to show. You know, whether you help 7,000 a year or 70 a year, I think it should all be on an even keel. Look that.

Ryan Woodruff:

Yeah, I mean placing 12 to 15 service dogs a year, but it's not it's not easy.

Scott McLean:

Yeah.

Ryan Woodruff:

And it takes a whole community. We we we do have kennels, but we also leverage a community. We have volunteers that help us puppy raise for 18 months. So everything we do is to inspire the community that this is an enduring relationship. It's not transactional. We're going to meet the veteran, we're going to bring them into the community and we're going to walk shoulder to shoulder with them.

Scott McLean:

So what is in the community? What is Veterans Day like with you guys?

Ryan Woodruff:

it's busy. I mean we're, we're invited everywhere a lot of speaking engagements, parades and that kind of thing. It's a. It's a. It's a chance to highlight some of the great work that we're doing. I feel like every day is a chance for us to do that, so we don't only highlight Veterans Day as the day. I mean each and every moment we get out there to just share the work that we're doing or have a veteran that's received services talk a little bit about their experience. It's incredible. That's the kind of thing we'll never exploit anybody right. We'll never say like, hey, but as part of your participation, you need to go on national news and talk about what you've done with clear path. But a lot of them had had such a great experience that they're looking for the opportunity to just promote the organization, which is just great for us, because we we really do.

Scott McLean:

It's helpful just to have testimonials and people coming through and going out such a way for the veteran to give back to the organization also that they and it's it's always an honor for a veteran to be asked by that organization. Hey, do you want to speak Me? Like me, you know? Sure, yeah, you know which. That in itself is extremely healing. There's a lot of gratification in it for everybody. It's tangible, it's yeah, getting the veteran involved with the foundation is important. It's important, yeah.

Ryan Woodruff:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, a decade ago I wouldn't be on a podcast having an interview with you, right Like. I've heard these stories all the time about overcoming adversity and it there's. If you're willing to navigate the pressures that you're dealing with and work through them not by yourself there is so much fruit on the other end of it.

Scott McLean:

Yeah, if clear path ever wants to start their own podcast, I get the guy that will help you do it I know who to call.

Ryan Woodruff:

I mean, we're gonna in all honesty.

Scott McLean:

You have so much going on. That's content like galore. You know what I mean that you have an amazing organization, ryan. This is this is to me how big is the campus? It's like this thing has to be fairly sizable.

Ryan Woodruff:

Not big enough. It's big, I mean 78 acres. We have a puppy development center, which is a two-story home that's been remodeled to cater to our service dogs and training. We have the golf lodge, which is essentially a two-story. One end of it is like a complete restaurant. When I say lodge, it looks like what you'd expect out of going into a Bass Pro. Right it's got the fireplace. Incredible view. When you go into the great room you can see off into the horizon all of one of the Finger Lakes. It's one of the best views in central New York. In the lower levels, our dog training area. On the outside we have three different training corrals for service dogs. We have hiking trails up to three miles in the woods and then we have an art house, woodworking shop and we have a basketball court. So this used to be like a family rec center at one point. So we were able to capitalize on a lot of the existing facilities that were there and just get them up to contemporary shape and we're leveraging everything we have.

Scott McLean:

I cannot think for a second that you take for granted going to work there every day, or at least Monday through Friday. I cannot think you ever take that for granted. Going to work there every day, or at least monday through friday, I cannot think you ever take that for granted no, no, and usually I'm traveling with dogs in tow.

Ryan Woodruff:

I get, get to the parking lot, let the dogs out and get to take in the incredible views. Sunrises and sunsets are like nothing else. And every now and then we'll just be working right and one of our wellness practitioners will come up and say does anybody want like a massage or acupuncture, or like nothing else? And every now and then we'll just be working Right and one of our wellness practitioners will come up and say does anybody want like a massage or acupuncture? Really, it's like no, I'm good, Thanks, but or the culinary team will come out with lunch. You know, periodically it's. It is an incredible place to work. I mean it's. It's one of the. I got to say from a comparatively to what I was doing before.

Scott McLean:

I'm just going to say you were climbing trees, probably hung over.

Ryan Woodruff:

You know it, with a broke back, absolutely.

Scott McLean:

And miserable. And now you're doing this. God bless you, buddy. Good for you, good for you, thank you.

Ryan Woodruff:

Everything happens for a reason, man. Everything happens for a reason. So if somebody wanted to donate to this amazing organization, how would they do that? You're going to speak to a person. You could speak to me. Anybody is going to be there to take a call, monday through Friday, nine to five. We are open on Fridays and Saturdays too, periodically. We have all the social media handles. I there's too many to list at this point so I won't go through them all. Just know that we're we're on them.

Ryan Woodruff:

If you're looking to see what kind of work we're doing, you can, you can check us out there. Yeah, we'd love to reach out and have a conversation. The biggest thing for us is going to be this campus expansion. We are looking for folks that are willing to come alongside us and partner with us on this important mission. There is a multitude of research, articles and journals that support the placement of service dogs for veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. The data is incredible To me from one veteran who's actually experienced it. I don't need to get into the deep science of it. It's life-changing and life-saving for sure. When you look down at a dog that's looking you in the eyes and wants to co-regulate with you, be with you, support you and provide different tasks and services and go with you wherever you're going to go. There's truly nothing like it. So if you're out there listening and you're interested in supporting us in that mission, we'd love to talk to you.

Scott McLean:

Everybody that owns a dog, everybody a smaller amount, smaller percentage of people that have worked with dogs as a career understand that there is really nothing greater than that unconditional love that they can give you, that that's. All they want to do is just tell me what to do, and the best thing. They don't talk back. They're great listeners. They don't interrupt.

Ryan Woodruff:

Not by the time we place them, they're puppies. That's the fun about a puppy.

Scott McLean:

That's the fun part of a puppy. They're puppies, right it is fun.

Ryan Woodruff:

It's a great experience too a lot of our families that are raising puppies. For us, it's a project and it's a great way to educate your children on the profound impact that our service dogs have and give them back to the veterinary community. How do you?

Ryan Woodruff:

procure your dogs, donations A lot of different ways you give them. We do work with breeders across the country and some of them are donating to us in partnership. Some of them we do pay for. As an ADI-accredited member, we also get to participate in a cooperative breeding program and they're breeding dogs for health, temperament and trainability so we get some really good dogs there. We also have veterans that have their own dogs that want to enroll them into a training program. So we have a six month training program reserved for those kinds of dogs.

Ryan Woodruff:

We also have worked with shelters in the past and when we can find a high quality dog when I say quality I mean every dog is incredible to me and they all deserve a chance but when you're going to train and place a dog for service, you got to look for certain criteria that's going to be helpful and not harmful to the veteran that's going to be taking them out in public especially things like post-traumatic stress in public, especially things like post-traumatic stress. You don't want to place a dog that's hypervigilant or on a hair trigger or barks at people or has aggressive tendencies with a veteran that has all of those things themselves. They don't cancel each other out, it makes it worse. And dogs are really you know when I say co-regulateulate like you can vicariously traumatize a dog too if, if your symptomatic post-traumatic stress is hasn't been, you haven't done anything to help manage it. You know and you can.

Ryan Woodruff:

A dog's not going to fix everything. So it's important we always emphasize, before connecting with our program, you try some things like have you, have you done a support group? Are you talking to anybody? Have you tried any non-clinical modalities, like what are the kind of things that you have done to help this situation out before we provide you with this leash, with a living animal on the other end of it?

Scott McLean:

just all things that we've learned with time. It sounds like people just like hey, you know, can I just get a it's in? I'm sure you've had that question a million times and it's just not that easy because you're dealing with a live being, you know. Yeah, I don't even know what else to ask you that I mean, this was amazing. That's what a great organization. And if you heard earlier, go to the website and give them your money. If you like what they're doing, give them your money. I highly recommend it. If you like what they're doing, reach out to them. Like Ryan said, find out a way to get involved, if that's a chance. Any way you can. This sounds like I'm just picturing the campus, like that must be.

Ryan Woodruff:

Yeah, the invitation's open. Anybody out there listening? I might pop up one day for that lunch in the middle of the week. That's a way to experience it. I mean just to be there. There's never been somebody that I've given a tour to that walks away, just not having the same reaction you're having right now. It's truly incredible.

Scott McLean:

Well, ryan, I want to thank you. Is there anything else? Is there anything else before I wind this up, anything else you want to?

Ryan Woodruff:

There's a whole lot else, but I think we covered a lot of ground. Stay tuned. I mean, there's going to be more coming next year and we'll be blasting that out on all of our social media platforms and the website. So if you're looking to connect with ClearPath and because of where you are geographically, you think you can't, you can and there's going to be more ways to do that.

Scott McLean:

Give them the website one more time.

Ryan Woodruff:

ClearPathforVetsorg. That is not the number four, that is the word for F-O-R.

Scott McLean:

All right, Well, stick around for a second, Ryan, I'm going to do my outro and run this thing off. It's been good to be. It's good to be back behind the microphone doing this. This was a great, great interview to get back in the groove for the Vets Connection podcast. We got more coming up. Like I said, we're going to bring this to the next level with video and we're getting the cameras set up and we want to bring you the best content we can with the best organizations we can. And well, you know what. They're all good. They're all good If there's a nonprofit out there helping veterans, they're good. They're good.

Scott McLean:

I will most likely be back next week unless I get this technical difficulties. Again, I'm now doing this at the One man One Mic Foundation Studio in Boca Raton, Florida. Again, I'm now doing this at the One man One Mic Foundation studio in Boca Raton, Florida. If you have any questions, requests, or if you're a nonprofit or a veteran that feels you want to come on the podcast, reach out to me. Reach out to me through onemanonemicfoundation at gmailcom and we'll talk and stick around. There's a good public service announcement covers, you know, a number of things for veterans and family members of veterans and friends of veterans, actually. So again, thanks for listening, Thanks for watching and I will see you next week.

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Scott McLean

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