CHRIS, United States Army
Paired with Charlie, adopted from Great Plains SPCA
Served in Afghanistan

I was born and raised in rural Oklahoma. Growing up, many of my family members served—Navy and Marine, and I spent a lot of time  playing “Army.” I always knew that one day that’s what I would do.

In total I served my country for 25 years. I enlisted in the Army in 1990 and retired in 2015 as a First Class Sergeant. Over the course of my career I fulfilled many different roles. When I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 I was a truck driver with the Ford support company for an infantry battalion. During this time I sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury, and returned with other wounds that were less visible from the outside.

This seems to be the most difficult thing to explain about PTSD—the internal struggle. Many people are familiar with the symptoms—stress, anxiety, night terrors, insomnia, depression—but it can be very difficult to detect when these symptoms are manifesting. There are times when I am having a panic attack in the middle of the store, but no one from the outside would have any idea, no clue what is happening to me on the inside.

Since I was diagnosed with Post traumatic stress in 2015 I rarely venture outside of my own home. Being around crowds and confronting situations that are unpredictable is extremely difficult—something that I avoid altogether if I’m able which has caused me to become isolated from people and completely prevents me from being able to do some of the things that I love to do.

In the past, several people mentioned to me that they believed that a service dog could make a positive difference in my life. Growing up I was always surrounded by dogs, family pets. There was no doubt that I loved dogs and understood what people meant by the special bond that people have between animals. I just wasn’t sure that I was ready for a service dog, for my PTSD to be outed in this way. But with time and a lot of research I came to the realization that maybe my friends and family were right, and that this step was worth the risk.

I’m so glad that I took that risk. Not even a week into training, Charlie has already made a difference in my life. He loves to cuddle which helps me to unwind at the end of the day and he’s ALWAYS happy. He helps me to get through places or situations I would entirely avoid—public places, crowds, loud noises, bright lights—because I know he is there. With Charlie I look forward to his companionship, to being able to go hunting and fishing again like I used to. Above all, I‘m most excited to live a more independent lifestyle, to have the sense of freedom and confidence to go wherever or do whatever I want.

 

 

 

Written by Samantha Jeffers; Director of Development at Warrior’s Best Friend

Warrior’s Best Friend Website

You need fundraising for your baseball team, softball team, cheer squad, or student organization and you want to sell custom shirts promoting your organization. There are many ways you can go about designing, selling, and distributing your shirts. Whether you have a great shirt design already or need help getting started Show Me Logos is here to help you! With our full-service fundraising experience, we deliver tools to help you make fundraising simple and easy.

Designing Your Perfect Fundraising Shirt

We all aren’t genius shirt designers and getting our message across perfectly can become difficult. But it doesn’t have to be. Utilizing our free online design studio, you gain access to predesigned icons, images, designs, and clip art to supplement your logo and message. Use the design studio to create professionally styled and designed shirts for your fundraiser. If you happen to be artfully inclined, you can upload your own design directly into the design studio easily!

How Easy Can Fundraising Be?

Well with Show Me Logos it can be very simple. Long are the days of walking up to each person, collecting a shirt size and money, and then taking the funds to the print shop. We help each of our fundraising customers make the process easier by providing a unique URL webstore to collect orders. We collect the orders, money, and then print the shirts to either be delivered directly to the people who ordered them or to you. After your fundraiser, you get a check for the money you made and the shirts that you want to distribute.

If you are ready to get started designing your next fundraising shirts visit our design studio. Check out our current web stores to get a better idea of how the process works. If you want to get the ball rolling for your next fundraiser call us at (816) 781-5367 or send us a message.

Does your business use corporate apparel to present a consistent image of your company to your current and potential customers? If you do it is likely that you cannot stand the issues that come along with the process including stocking inventory (costs a lot), putting together shirt orders (takes a lot of time), and delivering apparel (a huge headache).

Corporate apparel has many benefits to your organization.

• Establish a dress code that is comfortable and professional.
• Consistent dress codes “blur” the lines between management and subordinates, this promotes honest communication and cooperation between employees.
• When you have your employees wear corporate apparel, they generally identify more strongly with your company’s values and goals.
• Customers often associate a consistent image in corporate apparel with well-established companies, this gives them more confidence in working with you.
• Consistency is important, when they can associate their positive experience with an image then they will be more inclined to give repeat business.
• Corporate apparel helps to give your employees more authority. Customers often associate employees who wear corporate apparel as experts.

We know that our corporate clients enjoy simplicity and that’s why we brought them the Company Web Store option for corporate apparel. This tool allows our clients to setup a custom URL that they can then send their employees to for apparel ordering.
That’s fine, but where do you benefit? You benefit from not having to hold inventory stock, gather orders, or distribute orders. Your employees order what they need from the web store and can pick up or have the apparel shipped directly to them.

Interested in a Company Web Store contact us today to ask about options.

Organizing a corporate apparel order is always a headache for the organizer. The distribution of apparel after the order has been fulfilled may be more stressful. Worst of all may be collecting payment from everyone who wants apparel and making sure nothing is lost along the way.

This is exactly why here at Show Me Logos we decided to make the process of corporate apparel ordering simple. Instead of you the organizer having to handle every aspect of the apparel ordering and distribution process, we take on the responsibility to receive, process, and fulfill orders.

How we do this is simple.

1. Contact us online or by phone at (816) 781-5367
2. You decide on what apparel you want to offer your employees
3. We set up a custom webstore for your business
4. You get a custom URL for that webstore you can send your employees to
5. Your employees purchase their apparel directly on the webstore
6. You can have apparel shipped to your employees or pick up bulk orders

We have tried our best to simplify the corporate apparel process for our clients. This is because we have listed to the difficulties that they have had in past corporate apparel orders.

You can see what businesses and causes have custom webstores up now. You can learn more about our embroidery service, or you can contact us to get started with a custom webstore.

If you need help with design our in-house art department is glad to help you refine a logo or come up with a design from scratch. You can contact the art department through our online contact form or by phone at (816) 781-5367.