Vietnam Navy Veteran Mushroom Montoya Partners with Freedom Dogs and Service Dog Yazzie for PTSD Support

Mushroom Montoya carries the weight of two tours of duty in Vietnam as a Navy sailor. Today, the Long Beach resident and retired architect is building a new kind of partnership through Freedom Dogs. His service dog in training is a puppy named Yazzie, chosen to honor Navajo Code Talkers who served as Marines in World War II. The bond is already reshaping how Montoya moves through the world after decades of living with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Montoya enlisted at eighteen, following in the footsteps of his father, a World War II Navy veteran. He served two tours aboard the USS Trippe and the USS Truxton. As a member of the repair division known as the R gang, he worked as a snipe, fixing plumbing, fighting shipboard fires, and keeping the vessel afloat under pressure. He also served as a gun spotter. Those duties placed him directly in the machinery of naval gunfire support off the coast of Vietnam.

In his 2013 book Viet Nam Body Count, Montoya describes the moral injury that came with the demand for higher body counts. On his first day on the gunline, while serving as the gunfire spotter, he watched three young boys carrying a box along the beach. The gunner’s mate fired before Montoya could stop him. Montoya couldn’t understand how the gunner’s mate could celebrate killing young boys. When Montoya said the boys were civilians, the gunner’s mate answered that they were not people. They were just targets. Later that day, the captain spoke of promotion tied to body count numbers. When the ship left the gunline to replenish its ammo, Montoya climbed to an upper deck and began running around the smokestack screaming. The ritual became a nightly release for the rage and grief that settled in his chest.

“They’re not boys,” the gunner’s mate had shrieked according to Montoya’s account. “They’re not people; they are just targets. Damn it. I couldn’t do my job if they were people.”

Montoya had spent four years in a Catholic seminary high school. The lessons of duty and the sacredness of life collided in Vietnam and left a fracture he could not close. He completed his two tours of duty in Vietnam, then received an early discharge as a conscientious objector. After the combat phase, the Trippe circumnavigated the globe. Montoya was part of that voyage.

He returned home, carried the experiences into civilian life, and built a career as an architect. He designed the country’s largest sleep studies laboratory at the Long Beach VA in 1988 and later worked as a project manager for the General Services Administration. He and his wife Denise raised a family. Their oldest son Jeremy followed the family tradition into the Navy and the Naval Reserve. Jeremy died at age twenty-two in a motorcycle collision. The loss deepened Montoya’s understanding of how short and unpredictable life can be. The family became advocates for organ donation.

For years, the memories of Vietnam remained close. After a second heart attack, doctors at the VA suggested a post-traumatic stress disorder support group. Montoya called it his safety net. Visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and tools learned through The Compassionate Friends after Jeremy’s death also helped. Still, the daily weight of hypervigilance, nightmares, and emotional distance stayed with him.

In May 2025, the Freedom Dogs Board of Directors announced that they had accepted Montoya’s recommendation to name the new puppy, Yazzie. The name honors nineteen Diné Code Talkers surnamed Yazzie who served as Marines during World War II. Freedom Dogs is allowing Montoya to train Yazzie as his service dog to help with PTSD issues. Denise and their daughter Celeste Montoya share in the puppy’s care. The early weeks focus on what Montoya calls human training: the practical skills of raising a young dog while the specialized service work begins.

“I am honored that Freedom Dogs is allowing me to train Yazzie to become my service dog helping me with my PTSD issues,” Montoya wrote. “For the time being, she is enjoying being a puppy and pampered by Denise Celeste and me. We take her to puppy training. Which is really human training on taking care of a puppy.”

Freedom Dogs, founded in 2006 by Beth Russell, RN, provides custom-trained specialty service dogs at no cost to active duty service members and veterans living with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and related wounds of war. The organization maintains the only formal ongoing partnership of its kind with the Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Battalion West at Camp Pendleton. Dogs begin training at approximately eight weeks of age and spend two years learning tasks that include PTSD alerts, deep pressure therapy, nightmare interruption, crowd barriers, item retrieval, and bracing support. Through the Partner Program, a dog and trainer team works with a warrior for about nine months. The Partner for Life Program places the dog permanently when that level of support is needed.

For Montoya, the arrival of Yazzie represents more than a trained animal. It is a living companion who will learn to interrupt the physiological cascade of anxiety and memory that still surfaces. The structure of the Freedom Dogs program places the warrior and the dog in a supported team with trainers who understand military culture and the specific needs of those who have carried invisible wounds for decades. The puppy stage already brings daily purpose, routine, and connection for Montoya, Denise, and Celeste.

Montoya’s path from seminary student to sailor to architect to shamanic practitioner and teacher also informs the present chapter. He has walked a Core Shamanism path since 1981, practiced as a healer since 1993, and taught since 2000 with a primary focus on soul retrieval. He describes his work as healing the planet one person at a time. The discipline of presence that shamanic practice requires and the steady companionship of a service dog share common ground. Both invite a person back into the body and the present moment.

Readers who want to know more about Montoya’s wartime experiences can find his book Viet Nam Body Count available on Amazon. The memoir blends narrative and reflection to examine body count culture, civilian casualties, shipboard life, and the long aftereffects of service. The author page and book listing appear at https://www.amazon.com/Viet-Body-Count-Mushroom-Montoya/dp/1484132823.

Freedom Dogs continues to pair warriors, like this Vietnam veteran, with service dogs who become partners for life. Montoya’s story joins those of other participants who have found that a well-trained service dog can interrupt isolation, reduce reactivity, and restore a measure of ease in public spaces and at home. The organization trains its dogs free of charge to the recipient and provides ongoing support so that the partnership can endure.

Montoya once ran the decks of a warship, screaming to release what the body count system and the deaths of civilians and fellow service members had planted in him. Today, a young dog named Yazzie is learning the skills that will help him meet those same memories with a different kind of strength. The work is early, yet the partnership has begun.

Freedom Dogs remains committed to speeding recovery and enhancing the lives of wounded military heroes through the life-changing bond of specialty-trained service dogs. Those who wish to support the mission of raising and training the next generation of Freedom Dogs can learn more at the organization’s website under What We Do and Who We Are. Puppy raisers, recurring donors and community partners make these pairings possible.

Mushroom Montoya’s journey from the gun line off Vietnam to a Long Beach home shared with Denise Celeste and Yazzie illustrates both the lasting cost of service and the possibility of continued healing. Freedom Dogs is proud to walk alongside him in this chapter.