Dogs Being Trained To Help Soldiers Suffering From PTSD

Dogs Being Trained To Help Soldiers Suffering From PTSD
By: SHEILA PARKER
Published: September 21, 2011
FORT STEWART, GA - WSAV --
Dogs are man's best friend. Some are also trained to help with tasks like search and rescue or guiding the visually impaired. Others offer psychological and emotional comfort to our fighting men and women in uniform. News Three introduces you to a program -- helping veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

The dogs are being trained to do incredibly helpful things -- open doors, refrigerators and cabinets, turn on lights and deliver their leash -- but it's the more intangible things they do that help the men and women suffering from post traumatic stress function on a day to day basis.

Sgt. Joshua Campbell says, “For me...loud public areas are very, very scary for me... Where there's a lot of people and I have no control it really gives me a lot of anxiety. What the dog does for me is acts like a second set of eyes and ears, you know, and she does it intuitively. I don't have to ask her to do it." He’s had his dog Jackie for three months and says, “The dog for me is the same as a wheelchair is for someone else…her just being with me gives me the ability to not necessarily cure me but help me work to that point, you know, just having a... Like a buddy system is what it feels like for me…she will be trained to notify me, let me know about people behind me. There's commands for her like "pop in the corner" where she can look around corners that I can't see and also cover my 6, you know, military terminology that they can do to let you know."

After three deployments led to post traumatic stress, working with Jackie has helped Sergeant Campbell rejoin society. He says, “It's still small steps but getting out of the house more, for instance, it's really hard for us to get going. We can't leave the house very much and we have to with the dog because the dog needs to be exercised. The dogs need to be, you know, taken care of and treated properly, so that gets us out."
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