- December 4, 2025
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Charles Moore was excited for his “playdate” with Mattie Mae.
As her foster parent Don Jackson pulled up in his vehicle, the dog came bounding out and pressed her hands on Moore's chest, licking him in the face.
The wheels she was wearing to support her back legs weren't an obstacle.
In fact, John Cox says wheelchairs have been the key to dignity and a normal life for the animals to whom he has provided them — 544 of them.
Since the former deputy with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office founded his nonprofit Ruck9 in 2021, his efforts have taken off to encompass countries around the world, and animals as diverse as dogs, ducks and skunks.
Cox says he has been asked where his love of dogs comes from, and compares it to his love of kids, about which he has been asked the same question.
Cox served as a schoolteacher after graduating college, and his 27-year career with the sheriff’s office involved roles that included a school resource officer and a lead instructor of Camp X-Ray’d, a bootcamp-style program for at-risk youth run by Teen Court.
Other roles included serving 15 years on the SWAT team, serving in patrol and as a detective, and running the police athletic league.
Cox spent his last six years in the civil section, where he met a Bernese Mountain dog who had been left in an abandoned trailer. His family adopted the dog and named him Writ, after a writ of possession document.
Today, he calls himself “not retired by any stretch of the imagination."
Currently, he's running a window-washing business called BiggunSqueegee, coaching girls' basketball and operating Ruck9, which also includes fundraising events like the Beer Mile it will be hosting at Big Top Brewing on Aug. 9.
The nonprofit began with another endeavor, the SUP & RUN 5K at Nathan Benderson Park, which was managed by Cox and his wife, Felicia, for 10 years.
Cox told a race sponsor about an idea he had of helping dogs in wheelchairs. She pointed him to a Labrador named Sandler at Satchel’s Last Resort — the same place where Cox would later help his 100th dog — who was in need of a new wheelchair.
The event raised enough funds to buy the wheelchair after Cox found the company that supplies them, Walkin’ Pets, which comes with a choice of pink or blue.
The work took off further after he raised $10,000 through a challenge to himself that was inspired by the 4x4x48 challenge he had heard about online.
He performed a 9K walk (as a play on the word K-9) which has a distance of 5.59 miles, repeating it every 5 hours and 59 minutes from May 4-6, wearing a 30-pound rucksack for each round.
Yet he said even from some friends, he was met with skepticism about the need for a nonprofit helping bring wheelchairs to dogs.
“Unless you know somebody that has a wheelchair, you don’t see them all the time, so they were like, is there really a need to have a nonprofit to help dogs in wheelchairs? I’m like, I don’t know, if I can help two or three or four here in the Sarasota area, that’d be perfect.”
Cox says the funds continue to pour in, with a “pot of gold” that makes it possible to assist whoever calls.
He says without the wheelchairs, many of these animals will be recommended for euthanasia. Yet even in cases where that is inevitable, it doesn't stop him.
“I don’t care if they say, we’re going to put him down in a week. I’ll overnight it to them,” he said. “I’ll pay extra to get it to them, so even if it’s a day, a week, a month or a year, they’ll have the gift of mobility, and it’s the dignity, the fact that they can run around like this instead of just laying in the crate.”
Cox will continue to support the same pets with new wheelchairs, whenever they are needed.
“I’ve had puppies that, as they grow, they call me back,” he said. “I get new measurements, and I buy the next size up, because a lot of these people can't afford them, and I'm not going to be like, ‘Okay, here's this for a puppy, as they get older, you’re on your own now.”
Thanks to word spreading on social media, his reach has come to extend globally, as he ships the wheelchairs to other countries.
The animals he has helped now total 544, he says, covering 43 of the 50 states, with 12 in Canada and 22 in 18 different countries from Romania to Taiwan.
Among them are goats, cats, sheep, ducks, raccoons, a rooster, a chicken, a miniature zebu cow, a goose, a skunk and “every imaginable type of dog,” with records including a 2.5 pound Chihuahua and a 215-pound Great Dane.
He describes the experience as “beyond words” to see “the dog be the dog again, or the sheep be the sheep again, or the duck be the duck again.”
Once, a girl reached out to him from India to let him know that a dog that was dragging itself through the streets. The dog, named Diva, now lives in Barcelona, Spain, where she could later be seen online running through waves along the beach.
In another case, a family who was visiting in Sarasota, but leaving the country, took along a wheelchair, and soon Cox was watching online as their dog navigated the streets of Egypt with them.
“It's just not me,” he said. “It's everybody that donates. It's everybody that volunteers and helps out that is able to gift someone an animal that mobility by giving it back.”
After his 110-pound pit bull, Gizmo, died, Charles Moore was left without a canine companion.
“I was beside myself in the house, didn’t hear no pitter patter, no dog,” he said.
Yet when he met Mattie Mae, a hound mix who was Cox’s 12th dog, he was quickly enamored with her.
Cox had found out Mattie Mae's story through social media, and after heading to Suncoast Humane Society in Englewood to take her measurements, called Felicia Cox to tell her that he was bringing the dog home.
He said Mattie Mae took to the wheelchair naturally.
“Because she'd already been in one, we dropped her, she was just gone, just flying around,” Cox said.
From there, Don Jackson, who began fostering Mattie Mae with his wife, would bring her to run 5K races with Cox, in her wheelchair, and he also introduced her to Moore.
Moore said he related to her because of her disability, having recently had back surgery at the time.
“She's the best thing that ever happened to me. I was lost without Gizmo,” he said.
He says they do have their differences, like when he'll have to clean up after she plays by digging holes in the dirt, or when she steals water from bowl of the biggest dog nearby.
Moore's and Mattie Mae are just two of the lives Cox has touched.
He says his goal is 1,000 animals currently, before he reevaluates, but he says it won't be a problem at the rate he's moving.
“I tell people all the time, I don’t care how stupid you think it is, or it’ll never work," he said. "I’m living proof that you see a dog, you get an idea, you start a nonprofit."
Correction: This article has been updated to with the correct name of Felicia Cox.
