A nine-year-old boy has decided to provide the hardworking dogs employed by the police department with the protection they need and deserve.
Brady Snakovsky is very passionate about the police and hopes to one day become a police officer himself.
He’s got a strong desire to do good, and this is obvious in the work he’s doing to improve the safety of K-9 officers.
Snakovsky has started a GoFundMe campaign that raises money for K-9 ballistic vests.
Bulletproof vests are expensive, as Snakovsky and his mother discovered after attempting to buy and donate one.
Snakovsky had been watching his favourite police show, Live PD, and noticed that one of the police dogs wasn’t wearing a vest.
After learning that police dogs weren’t guaranteed access to bulletproof vests, Snakovsky decided that he wanted to donate a bulletproof vest to a K-9 without one, but he soon found out that a single ballistic vest cost at least 1200$
But Snakovsky wasn’t about to give up. He set up a GoFundMe campaign in order to raise money for the vest and even sold cookies to make more money.
Snakovsky beat his original goal of being able to buy one vest and ended up buying four.
After that, he knew that he had to keep going and he’s been met with overwhelming support.
The young boy has now collected over 90,000$ dollars for canine ballistic vests and he’s been able to donate more vests than he ever dreamed of.
Thanks to Snakovsky, 134 police dogs have received vests and can perform their important work under much safer circumstances. A further 57 dogs are currently on the waiting list.
He has vested dogs in 19 states and, in recognition of his important efforts, he was recently named ASPCA Kid of the Year.
A few days ago, Snakovsky’s mother, Leah Tornabene, posted a plea on the GoFundMe page. A ten-year-old dog named Vito is on his fourth mission to Afghanistan and is in need of a vest. He is both trained to attack and to find explosives and could really use some extra protection.
Vito’s handler has promised that once Vito is done with the vest, the vest will be donated to another K-9 stationed in Afghanistan.
Vito is placed on the waiting list but Tornabene is hoping that someone could be willing to sponsor Vito’s vest so he can get it sooner.
Anyone who wishes to sponsor Vito, donate to the campaign, or simply learn more, can visit Snakovsky’s GoFundMe page here.
