Posted on July - 24 - 2011
A soldier’s best friend
ICON
OTTAWA — Retired soldier Dave Desjardins is best friends with a 2 1/2-year-old Rottweiler named Maggie.
Maggie helps the 41-year-old Ottawa resident pick up water bottles, take clothes out of the dryer, close the fridge door and get down the stairs. She gives hugs.
On easily the hottest day of the summer, Maggie sits panting next to Desjardins, who’s on his living room couch, and braces herself so he can get up for a glass of water.
“I know you hate when I do this,” he says. He grips her thick neck, tells her to steady, and, struggling against the pain of his hips, stands upright.
“That’s my girl. Good job,” he says, giving her huge jowls a scratch and then slowly making his way to the kitchen. Maggie happily trots after him.
Desjardins, a retired master corporal with the Canadian Forces, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in 2005 after he returned from a tour in Afghanistan. He also seriously injured his hips years ago in a training exercise.
Nightmares of soldiers being blown apart invaded his sleep, panic attacks seized him in crowds, and flashbacks of fully amputated limbs tormented his thoughts.
After trying all sorts of medication and talking endlessly to psychiatrists, the father of three came upon a program called Courageous Companions. Run by a local service-animal group, it pairs veterans, police officers and others who have experienced traumatic events with a trained canine to help them overcome their physical, emotional and mental symptoms.
“She’ll go with me to stores, malls, anywhere where there’s a lot of people,” Desjardins says as his smiling eyes follow Maggie as she ambles around the room.
“On that aspect, she’s more of a comfort than anything.”
He says the 44-kilogram canine, wearing her yellow service vest, creates a safe bubble around him as he does his shopping.
If she senses Desjardins is growing anxious, she gently gives him a nudge.
“She gives me something else to focus on, rather than focusing on all the people around me,” says Desjardins, who has been on three other military tours. “It brings me back from wherever is it I’m going. It’s like her way of saying, ‘Look at me.’
“I’ve trained her to look at me all the time. Now she’s telling me, ‘It’s your turn to look at me. Pay attention to me. Not to what’s going on.’ “
Terry Green, chairman of Animal Services & Integrated Support Teams, or ASIST, in Ottawa, which runs Courageous Companions, says working with patient, obedient and loving service animals can help people ground themselves again after a traumatic experience and speed up their recovery.
“Right now, we’re starting to work with doctors at the Royal Ottawa Hospital (a mental-health facility) where we’re going to very gently introduce animals into the patient environment,” Green says.
The program, which began as a pilot project with the Canadian Forces last year on a $50,000 grant from a soldier support fund, takes after similar well-established programs in the United States — such as Paws for Purple Hearts — and the United Kingdom. It now serves dozens of patients in Ottawa and Winnipeg, and plans to expand its pack of certified service animals to Edmonton, Abbotsford, B.C., Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Desjardins says Maggie has given him a new set of coping skills that conventional therapy did not, as he found himself withdrawing further from people and even refusing to leave the house.
“Conventional psychology is a lot of talking about the experiences and reliving them,” he says. “Where, you know, Maggie doesn’t care. She doesn’t care what I’ve been through. She doesn’t care, you know, how I’m feeling at any time or if I’m angry or not. She’s just there. She’s totally unconditional. She’s not there to ask questions.”
Green says ASIST is trying to convince the federal government, specifically the departments of Defence and Veterans Affairs, to help fund and expand the program, as it fundraises and establishes its charitable status. To help their case, the group has enlisted researchers at McGill University to come up with concrete evidence that service animals really do help sufferers of PTSD.
The Canadian Forces offers an arsenal of mental-health services for troops and veterans, and about 10,000 of them are currently receiving disability benefits for PTSD. Veterans Affairs Canada currently does not cover the use of service dogs for those with the disorder, but officials there and at the Defence Department acknowledge it as an emerging field and are conducting research with their counterparts in the U.S.
Desjardins admits he is frustrated that the government has not yet thrown its support behind service animals for PTSD because its payoffs are clear and programs in other countries are making real differences.
“I know there’s a benefit,” he says. “I’m at a place now where I’m relatively happy and I don’t want to go back to where I was.
“I’m in a much better spot now that I’ve been involved with the program, and working with Maggie, than I was before.”
twitter.com/laurabaziuk
Similar Posts:
- ‘If Facebook didn’t exist, I would be dead’: man’s life saved by marrow donor
- Health Clinics At Schools Get A Funding Boost
- Doctors need more data to help gays, lesbians: U.S. report
- Government allows infant-formula claims despite ‘no acceptable evidence’
- Prostate progress hailed just in time for moustache month
