Woodworker Builds Patriotic Doghouse For Hackettstown Police K9

HACKETTSTOWN, NJ - Scotch Plains resident Lou DiBella is a woodworking hobbyist who spends his free time and weekends working on projects and one of those was a patriotic doghouse for a police K9 in Hackettstown.

The idea for the donation started about three months ago when DiBella's oldest daughter asked him to build a doghouse for their family dog, Sophie. When he posted his finished results on his Facebook page he got such an overwhelming response. He decided to craft four more doghouses and even donated one to his company TD Bank for charity.

DiBella was then inspired when President Donald Trump honored K9 Conan, the military dog injured in the Baghdadi raid, at the White House.

"I thought I could build a large-sized doghouse with a patriotic theme to honor working dogs," DiBella said. "It's a tribute type of doghouse."

The patriotic doghouse features emblems for service dogs, the national monument for military working dog teams, 9-11, police K9 and fire department.

It took DiBella 45 working hours to construct the entire doghouse which included hand painting every detail such as the 50 stars on the roof.

Once completed, DiBella attended an UNICO meeting where he met Scotch Plains Police Detective Lt. Al Sellinger who put him in touch with retired Scotch Plains Police K9 Officer Chris Aversa. Aversa then put DiBella and Hackettstown Police Officer and military veteran Chris Laver together.

Laver served from 2005 to 2006 in Al Asad Iraq with the 57th Gun-Truck Co. 10th. Mt. Division. He is also currently the handler for K9 Jada, a Belgian Malinois.

"I talked with Chris about his beautiful dog and told him he sounded like the perfect person to give this to and I would love to donate to the police department," DiBella said.

Laver brought Jada to DiBella's home this past Thursday where they did a demonstration for DiBella's family of how Jada works to protect others.

"It was really exciting to see how Jada works and how she responds to [Laver]," DiBella said. "It was amazing to see the connection between her and Chris, their tight bond."

Jada went right into her new doghouse and seemed to enjoy it and also the blue and white blanket DiBella purchased for her.

"This was very rewarding," DiBella said. "I've been working for 30 years in the IT industry and as an IT project manager for TD bank for seven years. In all the things I've accomplished in my career it was nothing compared to what I felt donating. It was just amazing."

This story was reported by Alexis Tarrazi

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