Tension over role of service dogs for vets

JERI CLAUSING

Asso­ci­ated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sto­ries like Jim Stanek’s are com­mon and quickly mul­ti­ply­ing: An Iraqi war vet­eran with post­trau­matic stress dis­or­der and trau­matic brain injury, he says his life was saved by a dog that gave him the con­fi­dence to do seem­ingly sim­ple things, like go out to din­ner and look his wife in the eye rather than watch his own back.

But the grow­ing list of small non­prof­its involved in train­ing afford­able assis­tance dogs for vets like Stanek has cre­ated a Wild West-type atmos­phere in the ser­vice dog world, cre­at­ing ten­sion between mom-and-pop groups try­ing to fill what they call a cru­cial void and the Vet­er­ans Admin­is­tra­tion and more tra­di­tional ser­vice dog groups.

Exac­er­bat­ing the sit­u­a­tion are sev­eral recent actions by the VA, includ­ing a deci­sion against cov­er­ing the cost of ser­vice dogs for PTSD and trau­matic brain injuries until a study on the sci­en­tific ben­e­fits can be com­pleted — a study that has itself been plagued with poten­tial delays and prob­lems, includ­ing issues with aggres­sion of some of the par­tic­i­pat­ing dogs.

At the same time, the VA refused to loosen its require­ment that ser­vice dogs it cov­ers be trained by groups accred­ited by either Assis­tance Dogs Inter­na­tional or the Inter­na­tional Guide Dog Federation.

The actions are frus­trat­ing to peo­ple like Stanek, who was unable to obtain his own ser­vice dog through tra­di­tional channels.

“I tried like nine dif­fer­ent times to get a ser­vice dog through orga­ni­za­tions,” he said. “The door kept clos­ing. I didn’t have the money. They can cost $10,000 to $30,000 to $60,000.”

So he and his wife, Lind­sey, a for­mer vet­eri­nary clinic worker, decided to train their own res­cue dog, Sarge, to be his ser­vice dog. That led to the cre­ation of Paws and Stripes, which in nearly two years has matched almost 50 vet­er­ans with shel­ter dogs.

The own­ers select their adult dog from a group of pre-screened shel­ter dogs. The dogs go home imme­di­ately with the vet­eran, then the pair goes through six months of train­ing so the dogs can learn to assist their own­ers, whether it’s to help them phys­i­cally or just to pro­vide that back-watching peace of mind that many Iraqi and Afghan war vet­er­ans need to do sim­ple things like go into a shop­ping mall, or sit down to din­ner in a restau­rant and relax, know­ing strangers are behind them.

Paws and Stripes has a wait­ing list of 600 vets from around the coun­try. But like a num­ber of sim­i­lar oper­a­tions around the coun­try, it is not affil­i­ated with one of the major ser­vice dog accred­i­ta­tion groups, although it is work­ing on its appli­ca­tion to join ADI.

Because of its lack of affil­i­a­tion and accred­i­ta­tion, Stanek said he had to fight to get his dogs approved for admit­tance to VA facil­i­ties. “A lot of peo­ple are try­ing to get away with bring­ing their pet with them to the hos­pi­tal,” said his wife, Lind­sey. “That bad apple is ruin­ing it for everyone.”

Still, the wide vari­ance in train­ing stan­dards among groups like Paws and Stripes is rais­ing ques­tions in the tra­di­tional ser­vice dog world.

Using shel­ter dogs, most of whose back­ground and true tem­pera­ment is unknown, is “like play­ing Russ­ian Roulette,” said Corey Hud­son, sec­re­tary of ADI and CEO of Canine Com­pan­ions for Inde­pen­dence in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Hud­son notes that his group uses only dogs bred specif­i­cally for train­ing to be guide dogs or ser­vice dogs, and still “only about 45 per­cent graduate.”

“We want to place a dog that makes them more inde­pen­dent, not depen­dent,” he said. “Accred­i­ta­tion is a safeguard.”

Sharon Wil­son, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Free­dom Ser­vice Dogs, which works with sol­diers from the Wounded War­riors pro­gram at Fort Car­son, Colo., says her orga­ni­za­tion also uses shel­ter dogs in part because Col­orado has an abun­dance of labs and other good ser­vice breeds in its shel­ters. Her group does not place the dogs until they have been trained in house for 7 to 9 months.

“PTSD dogs have to be what I call bomb proof,” she said. “You have to know how they are going to react when that pit bull walks by.”

Bar­bara Teas­dale, founder of the San Francisco-based Vets Adopt Pets, which hooks vet­er­ans up with groups that adopt shel­ter dogs or pro­vide ser­vice ani­mals, says there is a need for stan­dards. But she notes that many of the groups work­ing to help vets are small “labor of love oper­a­tions” that can’t afford accred­i­ta­tion fees.

And the groups are fill­ing two needs: help­ing vets and giv­ing home­less dogs a sec­ond chance, she said.

One thing they all seem to agree on, how­ever, is that dogs do help sol­diers suf­fer­ing PTSD.

“For instance, we had a client who had night ter­rors,” said Wil­son. “He would wake up in the mid­dle of the night just scream­ing. His dog was taught when he starts get­ting rest­less, the dog would turn the light on … then jump in bed and push his body as close as he could. His wife said his breath­ing would start to mir­ror the dog’s and he would never wake up.”

Stanek com­pares his rela­tion­ship with his dog to that of a sniper and a spot­ter in the military.

“Sarge is my spot­ter. When we go out, she lets me know what’s going on. She lets me know how I am doing,” he says. “On a scale of one to 10, I used to sit at about an eight or nine on a con­stant basis — like wake up that way. Now I sit around at two or three. And Sarge will alert me when that level starts to rise.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.