Post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a life-changing problem for troops coming back from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some veterans who repeatedly experience extreme trauma in war zones suffer actual physiological changes – changes that help them survive in war, but don’t serve them at home.
Now a non-profit group called Patriot Rovers trains rescue golden retrievers and gives them to veterans with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. Two service dogs from the organization are with veterans here on Cape Cod, helping them get their lives back.
For Cape Cod veteran Chris Cahill just being in North Carolina is something of a miracle. It took him four months to get out his front door.
“It was basically life or death to me,” he said. “I just kept telling myself, I have to go, I have to go. There was no turning back from this.
Cahill served in the Army and was stationed in Panama in the early 1990s. In addition to PTSD, he and also suffers from agoraphobia. Last winter, Cahill spent day after day alone in his living room staring at a TV screen, he said, lost in negative thoughts.
“I only saw black,” he said. “It was either going to stay black, or it was going to get bright out.”
Today Cahill and eight other veterans stand in North Carolina’s hot afternoon sun. They are about to meet service dogs that will be at their side for the next dozen years, 24/7. Trainers from a non-profit called Patriot Rovers leash up the freshly bathed and brushed golden retrievers. The veterans wait. It’s a life-changing moment – like, say, meeting an adopted baby for the first time.
For most of us, dogs are pets, our best friends. For these veterans the dogs are partners and a lifeline. At the end of their leashes, these returning warriors see comfort, security, and hope.
“I broke down,” said former sniper James Hamby, recalling the day he found out he would receive a service dog named, Pokey. “I was so happy. I knew I was getting my life back.
Hamby served multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and has PTSD. He’s a huge guy with a shaved head -- the kind of soldier you’d like to be next to going into danger. But since getting back to North Carolina, he barely leaves home to go to the mall or out to dinner with his family.
“It’s been hard for me and my family,” he said. “I have been hospitalized for it, the PTSD. It’s not something you can see. … it is a wound. It might be mental, but it is a wound. Your brain just don’t know when to turn off.”
Hamby’s assignments were extreme, but PTSD, he said, can happen to anyone in a warzone.
The military confirms that PTSD affects as many as one in five troops coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Daily occurrences -- like strangers being too close, or a car going by too quickly -- these can instantly trigger veterans with PTSD.
“Certain sights or smells will trigger it,” Hamby said.
Without warning these veterans say they find themselves angry or terrified -- and right back in the war.
“Sulphur smells,” he said, “dead animals on the side of a road, decomposing, the smell of a dead body. … The first week at home, I am driving down the road, I see a pile of trash and garbage on the side of the road. I’ve got my whole family in the car and I am slamming on the brakes. I am thinking it is going to blow up and kill me.”
Hamby can’t escape the horrors of war he has experienced.
“With snipers you actually see your target,” he said. “You are putting cross hairs on that person and you can see ‘em... My nightmares stem a lot from the job I did reliving every time I had to shoot over there, which was quite a few.”
David Cantara is the founder of Patriot Rovers. He’s trained and shown dogs for decades. Cantara’s a dedicated veteran who takes part in honoring fallen brothers and sisters at military funerals.
“I had five funerals in a row for soldiers who came back and took their own lives,” Cantara said. “It just didn’t sit well. These guys had made it home and uh… taken their own lives. It’s sad."
About three years ago Cantara started Patriot Rovers. Now, at 6.30 in the morning, he’s mopping out kennels and about to feed a dozen golden retriever pups. By the time the dogs are assigned to veterans, they know all the basic puppy commands and are comfortable in public. It’s amazing what special things the dogs can learn to do for their human partners.
“Some of our guys will have a little bag,” he said, “and put their pill bottles in the bag. The dog will go retrieve the bag and say, hey, take your meds."
The dogs even learn to recognize when a veteran is having a night terror.
“We have one soldier who will suffer night terrors and he’ll get up in the middle of the night and run for a door, and the dog will wake him up, stop, block that,” Cantra said.
And you know how sometimes -in the middle of a stressful day -- you just need a time out for a hug? Well, these dogs know how to do that, too. The command is called Paws Up.
“That’s where if I start getting real emotional, just shaking,” he said. “I can get Pokey to come up… I put my hands on my chest and tap it and he’ll put his paws here. I just hug him and match my breathing to his and it calms me down."
Halfway through the week. Cape Cod veteran Chris Cahill is afraid that he and his dog Jethro are falling behind and won’t make it to graduation. Cahill’s dog is named to honor Captain Eric Jones, a Cape Cod Marine pilot killed in Afghanistan. Jones’ flight name was Jethro. During outings at the mall, Jethro tugs at the leash and is acting skittish.
“He’s starting to act like I get around people,” Cahill said. “I get nervous and scared, and he’s starting to do that. Even though they said my disability wouldn’t rub off on the dog, I feel that it is. It’s making me feel very uncomfortable. So I feel like I have this tremendous weight sitting on me.”
Later that day, the trainers make a simple change in Jethro’s collar to make handling easier.
“The dog has done a 180 degree turn around,” Cahill said. “It was like someone took the dog aside and actually had a conversation with him."
At graduation Saturday morning, veterans join family members, friends and mothers of fallen soldiers. All of the veterans and their dogs have passed a canine good citizenship exam to complete the program. Now the dogs get their official service dog tags and vests decorated with military patches. At the end of the ceremony retired Bourne deputy fire chief Jim Newell stands up and said his son-in-law Chris Cahill has become a different person since he met his dog Jethro.
“The dog makes me feel like I am a somebody,” Cahill said. “I’m not afraid to go outside now. I just totally focus on the dog, and the dog focuses on me. ... They say 1 + 1 makes 2. No, 1+1 makes a whole. That’s me and Jethro. We are a whole. Good boy, he’s my buddy.”
James Hamby, the former sniper, said he won’t avoid crowds so much now.
“I’m going to try to get my life back,” Hamby said. “I think I’ll push myself to go more places, not try to make Walmart at midnight when there ain’t nobody there. It’s not going to be an easy road. ... Luckily, I’ll have him there. And he’ll calm me down. And tell me, Hey dude, you are in the real world, you’re not back over there."
Like others here he doesn’t expect a cure from PTSD, but he does see his life getting brighter. In the room there’s a shared recognition that the comfort these dogs provide is already helping these veterans cross the wide gulf between the trauma of war and returning fully home.