What if you discovered a way to save two lives at the same time? That’s what Cathy King, a long-time animal rights activist found she was able to do when she paired animal rescue dogs with veterans who needed the love and guidance of a trained rescue dog. Dogs offer their owners unconditional love, along with tools to help veteran through the mind-bending experiences of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Service dogs help veterans with PTSD, panic disorders, anxiety disorders, depression and other conditions. Studies have found that service dogs trained specifically to be paired with veterans can reduce the severity of PTSD symptoms, suicidal behaviors as well as panic and anxiety disorders.
Formerly the Executive Director of Friends of Animals, King always had an interest in pet therapy. Animals, especially dogs, have been shown to improve the well-being of older people, hospitalized patients and heart attack victims. Simply petting a dog can lower blood pressure. Bringing a dog into a children’s cancer ward or an assisted living home has been shown to boost patients’ moods and their social interaction. A UCLA study found that dog owners need less medical care for stress-related aches and pains than people without pets. Some studies show that pet owners actually live longer than non-pet owners.
Armed with this knowledge, King decided to start a nonprofit, Canines with a Cause, in 2011 that would rescue dogs from shelters, then train the dogs to help veterans with PTSD who are returning from war to cope with their symptoms. One in four Iraq and Afghanistan veterans experiences PTSD, depression and/or anxiety, making it difficult to reintegrate into civilian life. A companion dog can help heal the invisible wounds of war.
There is a huge demand for dogs to be matched with different populations, says King but she decided to concentrate specifically on veterans. “Dogs for autistic children need to be trained very differently than a see-alert dog, for instance. It didn’t make sense to try to be everything; it wasn’t working as a model. That’s why we ended up focusing on veterans. Now we are not trying to train a number of different types of dogs.”
The nonprofit focuses on three programs. Pawsitive Partnership: Veterans, that takes rescued dogs and pairs them with veterans who work together through the Canines with a Cause training program to meet the veteran’s needs. These free training courses can last as long as the veteran likes, giving both the veteran and the dog time to learn and practice the Canine Life and Social Skills curriculum.
The Comfort Crew: Veterans goes one step further, training veterans to take their dogs out to aid other veterans in need. The therapy animals are trained to go to VA hospitals and assisted living programs to provide comfort and love to veterans unable to care for a dog on their own.
Most recently, Canines with a Cause partnered with the Utah State Prison Women’s Correctional Facility to teach female prisoners how to train service or assistance dogs for veterans. There are more than 2.4 million people in prison, more than half of whom suffer from mental illness. This program allows these inmates to feel as if they are contributing to society as well as garnering the benefits of caring for and working with service animals as they train them. The Pawsitive Healing Prison Program allows the animals to live with the inmates, providing the women with a much-needed opportunity to love and cherish another living being. Trained dogs are then matched with veterans based on personality traits, size, energy level and other characteristics. “Most of these women are there for life, so they have very little interaction or touching. They really do bond with the dogs,” King said.
On the rare occasions when a match doesn’t work out, the dog is never returned to the shelter, King emphasized. Instead, the dog is matched with another veteran or an outside family. To find out more or to donate to this Utah organization, go to www.canineswithacause.com.
By Lynn Goya
Lynn Goya is a regional best-selling author and Emmy-nominated writer who covers veterans, business, people, the environment, and families for regional, national and international publications including USA Today, Audubon and Outdoor Family. With many family members in the military, including an uncle who was a POW in WW II, she has long been an advocate for military men and women.
Published in Veteran Journal
5-24-2014
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