Puppies Behind Bars Help Veterans Suffering with PTSD
In August, Jacob Hyde got his service dog, Mya, from Puppies Behind
Bars, a program based in New York State that uses prisoners to raise
and train dogs for lives of service. The organization has placed 23
dogs with veterans with P.T.S.D. in the last two years, training
them to obey 87 different commands.
“If I didn’t have legs, I would have to crawl around,” said Mr.
Hyde, 25. “If I didn’t have Mya, I wouldn’t be able to leave the
house.”
If Mr. Hyde says “block,” the dog will stand perpendicularly in
front of him to keep other people at a distance. If he asks Mya to
“get his back,” the dog will sit facing backward by his side.
The dogs are trained to jolt a soldier from a flashback, dial 911 on
a phone and even sense a panic attack before it starts. And, perhaps
most important, the veterans’ sense of responsibility, optimism and
self-awareness is renewed by caring for the dogs.
The dogs help soldiers understand “what’s happening as it’s
happening, what to do about it, and then doing it,” said Joan
Esnayra, a geneticist whose research team has received $300,000 from
the Defense Department to study the issue. “You can use your dog
kind of like a mirror to reflect back your emotional tenor.”
The dog is also often the first visible manifestation of a former
soldier’s disability. Because people are curious about the animal,
the veteran gets an opportunity to talk about his condition and his
war experiences, discussions that can contribute to recovery. More
broadly, the dogs help increase public awareness of P.T.S.D., which
the
Veterans Affairs Department
said affects about one quarter of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with
whom it has worked.
Under a bill written by Senator
Al Franken,
Democrat of Minnesota, veterans with P.T.S.D. will get service dogs
as part of a pilot program run by the Department of Veterans
Affairs. Training a psychiatric service dog and pairing it with a
client costs more than $20,000. The government already helps provide
dogs to soldiers who lost their sight or were severely wounded in
combat, but had never considered placing dogs for emotional damage.
But there is debate within the emergent field about the appropriate
time to pair a veteran with a dog. Sara Meisinger, the chief of
occupational therapy at the
warrior transition unit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center,
said a service dog should be used only in the final stage of
treatment, after a soldier has accomplished as much as possible with
traditional therapy. Many experts say the veterans should be living
on their own for at least a year before they receive a dog.
But when Gloria Gilbert Stoga, who runs
Puppies Behind Bars,
received an application from Maj. James Becker, she decided, with
support from his doctors, to take a chance on a veteran who had just
left inpatient care.
Major Becker, 45, suffered two severe brain injuries in separate
explosions, earning two Purple Hearts in his three tours in Iraq and
Afghanistan. When he came home last winter, his 24-year-old
daughter, also an Iraq veteran, was being treated for leukemia.
In Major Becker’s mind, home started to resemble Afghanistan’s
Helmand Province. His P.T.S.D. symptoms worsened, and a suicide
attempt in July landed him in San Diego Naval Medical Center for
seven months. A few weeks after leaving the San Diego hospital,
Major Becker flew to New York to collect his dog, Annie, and
participate in a two-week training session with Puppies Behind Bars.
Still, he said he spent a lot of time alone in his room “because
it’s easier to deal with four walls than it is to come out and deal
with crowds.”
But within days, Annie was beginning to pull him out of his shell.
“She helps me meet people,” he said, describing how people are
attracted to the dog.
He added, “I like to think it’s going to get better.”
A version of this article appeared in print on April 4, 2010, on
page A17 of the New York edition.
Department of Defense begins research on the canine potential for
helping veterans.
JoAnna Lou | 11 Sep 2009
The U.S. Department of Defense is financing a $300,000,
12-month study that will look at the effects of service dogs on
changes in PTSD symptoms and medication use.
Researchers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington
D.C. will compare soldiers with PTSD who have a service dog with a
control group of dog-less soldiers. Some of the dogs being trained
for the study will be rescues, making this program even more
compelling.
Last week, research psychologist, Craig Love, and
Psychiatric Service Dog Society
founder, Joan Esnayra, presented a preliminary
survey of veterans with PTSD.
Since receiving a service dog, 82 percent of respondents reported
fewer symptoms and 40 percent reported using fewer medications.
Furthermore, the length of time the team had been together
correlated with the reduction in symptoms and medication use.
source: Department of Defense
