Steve Kinne is a retired family practitioner, preventive medicine specialist, and USAF Colonel. During his 23-year career in the AF he served as Chief of Clinical services, staff member of two residency training programs (including a position as Preventive Medicine Residency Director for the USAF), and commander of three Aeromedical squadrons. He developed many innovative teaching programs and professional courses during his career. He was also deployed to multiple countries in Southeast Asia, South America, Europe, and the Middle East and served as CENTAF Surgeon Forward during Operation Enduring Freedom. After retirement in 2006, he took up multiple community volunteer activities, including work in an animal shelter. Here he began training dogs and later served as a dog adoption counselor. He went on to further study dog behavior and training, apprenticing under an experienced positive reinforcement trainer for a year and a half, graduating with honors from Animal Behavior College (ABC), and completing the Eden Mountain Intensive Dog Training Internship.
He subsequently looked for and found a way to meld his past careers in both medicine and the military with his work training dogs and their owners. This culminated in the conception and development of a program for training shelter/rescue dogs as psychiatric service dogs for veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and/or Military Sexual Trauma. The Dogs2Vets Program is now the signature program for the Non-profit organization Clear Path for Veterans, Inc. As Program Director, Dr. Kinne is responsible for interviewing and selecting veterans for the program, selecting and matching appropriate candidate dogs from shelters/rescues, training foster families, and serving as primary trainer for those veterans learning to train their own service dogs. He also develops veteran referral sources, educates the community, and advocates for these disabled veterans on issues related to housing and public access.
As co-founder of Clear Path for Veterans, Dr. Kinne also serves as the board president and provides leadership for all of the healing-related programs. The latter includes combat veteran and spouse/family talking circles, the (all-volunteer) alternative medicine gatherings, and the evolving creative art healing programs. Lastly, he has developed and/or constructed several miles of hiking trails on the property as a major part of the physical activity and recreational piece of the organization’s mission.