Warrior’s Call Boxing Club in Baden has become a healing outlet for veterans in the area.
Brandy Horchak-Jevsjukova jokes that she is Tyshie Wagner’s service dog.
A veteran’s service dog is trained to lean into her to provide comfort, to stand watch behind her, to jump up or paw her to interrupt a crisis.
Brandy has leaned into Tyshie persistently since they met in 2017, when Tyshie was almost 400 pounds, terrified of leaving her house, and imagining — and once attempting — suicide. She had gone through several therapists and had a husband who was at his wits’ end.
Cutting through the chronology of their story, we arrive at the Warrior’s Call Boxing Club in Baden, Beaver County, one recent morning.
Brandy and her husband, Vitali Jevsjukova, whom everyone calls “V,” opened the club in 2015 to be the help to veterans that boxing had been for them during their military service in Iraq.
Brandy pulls on a pair of flat mitts. Tyshie, who has dropped 200 pounds since she first arrived at the club in 2017, is wearing gloves.
They spar, moving from one side of the gym to the other and back, Brandy calling sequences, moving her mitts accordingly to catch jabs, punches or uppercuts. Tyshie’s face is a mask of concentration.
“Up high, come on, Tysh,” Brandy says. “Good. Two minutes … Hook! Get it, get it, come on, hard Tysh, harder … Good!” She huffs. “Whew! Uppercut, good, walk it out, Tysh, walk it.”
After a 45-minute session, Tyshie collapsed on a bench, took a swig of water, wiped her face and drew a deep breath.
“In therapy, sometimes, you can’t focus,” Brandy said, “but with this, you have to. I change the sequence on her, so she has to concentrate.”
She asked Tyshie what she had planned for the rest of her day.
“I’m going to go tanning. Then I’ll go home and water my plants. Then I’ll go outside and talk to the girls” — neighbors on the front stoops. “That is a big deal for me.”