The Paws at the Peppermill Benefit kicked off Saturday afternoon with the goal to raise money for Rockland County police dogs and dogs at departments across the country.

The proceeds will fund training, medical care, and transport vehicles for police dogs – like Blue, a Ramapo police K-9 trained in explosion detection.

The dogs require substantial funding, but despite the cost, they are an invaluable resource. Jimmy Hatch, founder of Spikes K-9 Fund, can attest to that. The retired Navy SEAL named the fund after Spike, his military K-9 who tragically died during a fight in Iraq in 2006.

“The guy took [Spike] to the ground and was fighting him. I put a bullet from my gun into the guy. The bullet went through the human and into the dog and killed him,” said Hatch.

When he came home from Iraq, he noticed some local governments couldn’t fund all the training, medical care and safety equipment for their police department's K-9s.

That led hatch to create the fund in 2014. Since then, the nonprofit has raised about $4 million to help police agencies with these extra expenses. He's helped 2,000 K-9s in all 50 states.

"Our mission is to take care of every single working dog that works on behalf of our community or our country in the United States, and that's roughly 25,000 dogs,” he said.

The event, which took place at Peppermill South in Congers and the VMA Field, was organized by police departments around the county, the Peppermill South and local attorney Heather Nappi.