Delayed Federal Funding Left a Montana Veterans’ Service Dog Nonprofit to Cover the Gap

This story draws on a September 2026 message from DeeDe Baker, Executive Director of Dog Tag Buddies, and on reporting by MTN News. It is one example of how disruptions in federal funding have affected Montana nonprofits, and the people they serve.

Dog Tag Buddies, based in Billings with seven training sites across Montana, teaches veterans to train their own service dogs. The two-year program is free to participants, and Baker has helped more than a hundred veterans through it.

About 80% of the organization’s budget comes from one source: the Department of Defense’s Wounded Warrior Service Dog Program (WWSDP). Congress wrote the program into law in Section 745 of the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act, directing the Secretary of Defense to support assistance dogs for service members and veterans, including those living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). Nationally, the program provided $16 million over two years to 28 service dog organizations in 23 states.

Then the funding stalled. WWSDP was left out when the fiscal year 2026 budget was first set. Baker told MTN News that the funding was in the House version of the defense bill but was removed in the Senate. Congress eventually appropriated the money. But until it did, Dog Tag Buddies had to cover the gap itself.

“This is not simply a nonprofit funding issue,” Baker said. “It is a veteran access issue.”

In 2025, WWSDP provided Dog Tag Buddies with $600,000. That year, the organization graduated 14 service dog teams, had 20 more in training and had 15 veteran applications pending. Each dog costs about $30,000 to provide, covering veterinary care, food and equipment, plus gas cards and hotel stays for rural veterans who travel to train.

There is no other federal source to fall back on. Baker told MTN News that the VA does not cover PTSD service dogs, and that without WWSDP, she could not serve as many veterans as she does.

For many of those veterans, a service dog comes after counseling, medication and traditional VA treatment haven’t worked. That matters in a state that, Baker noted, ranks among the top states for veterans per capita and among the top five for suicide deaths. Research from the National Institutes of Health has found that veterans with service dogs tend to have fewer PTSD and depression symptoms, less social isolation and less suicidal ideation.

Because veterans co-train their dogs over about two years, Dog Tag Buddies couldn’t simply stop and wait for the money to arrive. Twenty teams were already in training. Staff, training infrastructure, insurance, facilities and travel support all had to stay in place. Veterans can’t put PTSD, TBI or the challenges of daily life on hold while the federal government resolves a funding gap.

Small and midsized nonprofits aren’t built to carry the federal government’s share, even temporarily. Most don’t have large unrestricted reserves or access to capital, but they are still responsible for payroll, facilities, insurance, compliance and services to veterans already enrolled. If an organization can’t bridge the gap, the damage lasts. Experienced trainers can’t necessarily be replaced when funding returns, and veterans who couldn’t enroll in the meantime don’t get that time back.

“Federal funding that disappears for a year and then returns does not erase the damage created during the gap,” Baker said.

The same gap hit every WWSDP-funded organization at once, leaving veteran service organizations across the country preparing for the loss of millions of dollars. In rural and frontier communities like Montana’s, where veterans may already travel long distances for specialized care, there may be no other provider to turn to when one cuts back.

“What appears in Washington as an administrative or funding delay becomes a national reduction in access to services for veterans,” Baker said.

Congress did eventually restore the funding. For Baker, the problem is the gap between what Congress intends and what actually reaches the ground. WWSDP is already law. But when an authorized program goes unfunded for months, or dollars don’t reach qualified nonprofits predictably and on time, organizations and the veterans they serve absorb the cost. For Dog Tag Buddies, predictable funding means knowing whether it can keep the people who work with veterans, support the teams already in training, and responsibly say yes to the next veteran who asks for help.

“Federal funding should be measured not only by whether Congress appropriated the dollars,” Baker said, “but by whether those dollars reached the organizations in time to serve the people Congress intended to help. For WWSDP, those people are America’s veterans.”