Service dog gives new life to military veteran with PTSD

Meet a woman providing service dogs for people in need, for free

Jessica Brunet is an injured military veteran who is training the dogs for people with disabilities

Jessica Brunet, 27, plays with Yoshi, a four-month-old Leonberger puppy, who’s a service dog in training. Brunet runs K9 Partners Assistance Dogs (K9PAD), an organization providing highly trained service dogs for free to people with disabilities.

By: Yvette d'Entremont Metro Published on Sun Aug 20 2017

After Jessica Brunet was injured during military service, she needed a service dog to help her with very specific tasks.
When she couldn’t find a program that could help address her individual requirements, she decided to start her own.
K9 Partners Assistance Dogs (K9PAD) has been in the works since 2014, but officially incorporated as a non-profit in 2016. They’re now working with six dogs, and their goal is to provide highly trained service dogs free to people with disabilities.

“We didn’t want to produce dogs with general training but wanted to train dogs tailored for the individual, to mitigate their disability and not someone else’s,” Brunet said.

“As an example, because of the complexity of some of my issues, there aren’t really any programs that can assist, or they can assist for some (of my issues) but not all.”

Dogs were always a passion for Brunet, so after being released from the military she went to university part time and studied animal behaviour and psychology.

“A couple of friends were also trying to get service dogs but there were no programs in Canada that could train for their specific disabilities, including Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, or PTSD with mobility issues,” she said.

Her dog, Pirate, is trained to help complete tasks most take for granted. Things like going up and down stairs. Brunet’s passion is making sure there are more dogs like Pirate helping people in need.

“Before Pirate I wasn’t able to go run errands, I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t leave the house…He does a lot of work that I need and that people take for granted, like getting up and down the stairs,” she said.


“It’s as simple as trying to go have a shower. Things like going to have a shower for people with mobility issues or just taking the stairs or even getting dressed? That’s a huge thing that dogs can help with.”


Brunet said the dogs will literally be life-changing for some of their clients. They are now training dogs for veterans living with both PTSD and mobility issues, people with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and a boy with Muscular Dystrophy.

“Jessy is a brain injured military veteran…Her organization is run strictly by volunteers and is funded only by fundraising and donations,” said a client who nominated Brunet but wished to remain anonymous.

“This program has and will change the lives of many people who have mobility problems and disabilities here in Halifax.”

In between appointments for her own varied medical issues, Brunet said she spends hours each day training dogs, raising awareness and trying to get funds to purchase more dogs.

She said it takes about two years to fully train a dog tailored to individual disabilities. Although K9PAD is still a relatively small non-profit, demand is high and the program’s eight volunteers are kept busy.

“Our organization as a whole is finding there’s a lot of support for veteran service dogs and that’s fantastic. They’ve done a huge work on that for the past couple of years to really get that attention,” Brunet said.

“But there’s not a whole lot of support for the smaller known issues like Ehlers Danlos Syndrome or other conditions.”

Brunet hopes to increase awareness about the benefits of tailor-trained service dogs for people with mobility issues and other disabilities.
“The more service dogs you can produce, the more people you’re going to help. That’s what keeps me going,” she said.

http://www.metronews.ca/news/halifax/2017/08/20/halifax-heroes-meet-a-woman-providing-service-dogs-for-people-in-need-for-free.html

His lucky Clover: Service dog helps Canadian Forces vet cope with his PTSD

Jody Salway is training his service dog, Clover, and has a few tips for strangers

CBC News Posted: Jun 29, 2017 7:27 PM CT Last Updated: Jun 29, 2017 7:32 PM CT


Don't be taken in by Clover's puppy-dog eyes, says Jody Salway: he's training her to help him cope with PTSD, a task that requires cooperation from strangers. (No petting!) (CBC)

Jody Salway is never alone anymore.

Everywhere the Canadian Armed Forces veteran goes, so does Clover, an English mastiff service dog, who he's nearly finished training.

"She's a walking billboard. Everybody's like, 'Wow, you look perfectly healthy, what's going on? Why do you have a dog in here,'" he told CBC-Radio's Afternoon Edition on Thursday.

Salway has Clover in order to help him cope with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which resulted from a friendly fire incident while serving in Kandahar, Afghanistan back in 2006.

He sustained injuries to his neck, back and brain.

"Years go down the road, I start noticing that I'm not the same person anymore."

He suffered from mood swings, felt a high level of anxiety and enjoyed things less than he used to. He was also withdrawn and avoided going out in public. Eventually, he was diagnosed with PTSD.

"It's almost like I was the last person to recognize it. I think my wife saw it, my kids saw it and finally it was at the boiling point where it's like, 'We need to deal with this.'

"Being a soldier you have this warrior mentality where you're kind of bulletproof and you can do anything and it'd been completely stripped from me."


Salway has Clover in order to help him cope with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which resulted from a friendly fire incident while serving in Kandahar, Afghanistan back in 2006. (CBC)

Identifying triggers

He said there's a misconception that service dogs only assist people with visual or hearing impairments when in fact they are increasingly being trained to help with conditions like Autism, PTSD, seizures — even to help detect cancer.

In Salway's case, Clover helps him mitigate triggers that lead to feeling anxious.

For example, he said he suffers from nightmares and Clover wakes him up.

Service dog to help PTSD sufferers deal with nigh terrors
"She'll come and put her face on my face or she'll put both of her paws up on my arm. She's even gently bit down on my fingers once or twice.


Jody Salway with Clover. Salway says many people don't understand service dogs are used for more than visual and hearing impairments. (CBC)

He explained that it is Cover's job to identify when he feels stressed, which has helped Salway become more self-aware of his own emotions.

At first, he wasn't sure what Clover was doing when she would attempt to get his attention in certain situations, like while in a crowd of people.

"There are times where the leash will just go tight and she goes, 'You know what, you're not willing to do it for yourself, I'm going to do it for you and out we go,'" he explained.

Working dogs

Salway received Clover from Alpha K9 Canada in Lethbridge, Alta., where she received some initial training. The rest of her training essentially involves making a catalogue of his emotions, which is done through identifying the scent of him while, happy, anxious and in other emotional states.

Service dogs demand a high standard of training at all times, he said.

That means one of the toughest parts is to firmly stick to Clover's training regime without giving into her puppy-dog eyes.

He said that being slack even for a week can set her back two weeks.



Don't pet

Another challenge is dealing with people who may not be aware Clover is a service dog and attempt to pet her.

"I think the hardest part is explaining it to little kids. Little kids don't always get it, they just see a puppy," said Salway.

"It's really tough on them. Surprisingly, there's a lot of adults too that will ignore the vest and just come in and pet without asking."

He wants people to understand that service dogs are working all the time, even when they may not look like it.

Petting a service dog, making eye contact or speaking to one will distract the animal from its important task at hand.

To paint a picture of what that may feel like for an animal, Salway explained it might feel like someone sticking a finger in a person's ear while they are concentrating on a math test.

"If you cannot make eye contact or speak to the dog, you're doing the handler a great service because this way the dog's got 100-per-cent attention on the handler and nothing else."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/ptsd-service-dog-saskatchewan-1.4185017[/color]

Service dog gives new life to military veteran with PTSD

MARY CATON

Published on: March 17, 2017 | Last Updated: March 17, 2017 5:56 PM EDT


Veterans Richard Hummell and his partner Karen Ann Sutcliffe sit with National Service Dog Bailey (NSD BAILEY) at their Windsor residence on March 9, 2017. Bailey is the service dog for Sutcliffe who is a veteran.

As the first female trained in the Canadian military as an infantryman, Karen Sutcliffe soon learned you couldn’t always tell the enemy by the uniform.

It was the early 1970s and not everyone in her unit was pleased that she hadn’t been relegated to office work like all the other servicewomen.

Her father was in the military and had taught Sutcliffe how to shoot as a child. She was fit, athletic, a lifeguard and swim instructor at 17 with no desire to sit behind a desk.

“I begged them don’t put me in an office job,” she said.

She finally found a recruiting officer willing to take a chance and headed off for general military training.

“There were some people that were pulling for me, and some that put their jobs on the line to train me,” the east Windsor resident recalled.

She finished second in her unit out of 30 recruits.

Eventually, Sutcliffe became a radio operator and was sent overseas on assignment.

However, her proficiency as a soldier did not offer any protection from the emotional, physical and sexual assaults she endured.

“It started the first time I walked into the CFB Trenton hangar and someone grabbed my breast,” said Sutcliffe, who has waged a long difficult battle with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The most horrific sexual assault occurred while she was voluntarily attending a course in 1994 at CFB Borden. She was drugged, taken off base and assaulted multiple times in a hotel room.

She needed reconstructive surgery for the physical injuries and spent almost a year under psychiatric care in an Ottawa hospital.

Sutcliffe had coped with the earlier ugliness from the ’70s, shoved it down and gone on to be a mother of two boys with a challenging career.

“I shut it all off, told myself, ‘I’m fine. It’s over with. I’m a nurse. I’m a social worker now,’” she said.



But the sheer brutality of the ’94 attack sent her over the edge.

She struggled with depression, nightmares, flashbacks, severe anxiety, sleep disorders, angry outbursts and withdrawal.

In 2009, the Quebec native relocated to Windsor where she had fond childhood memories of bird watching with her family at Point Pelee and Holiday Beach.

The crippling PTSD followed along.

“I had been slowly going into very dark places,” the 63-year-old said. “Multiple suicide attempts.”

She became a prisoner in her own apartment, only venturing out for the mail once a week when her social worker was there to accompany her.

“I was avoiding all people,” she said. “It was just so much of a trigger for me. I’d get on a bus and just start to shake.”

Going to dinner with friends or taking a shopping trip to the mall were out of the question.

The triggers to another anxiety attack lurked everywhere. She felt hopelessly broken.

Then her social worker suggested a service dog trained specifically for those suffering from PTSD. National Service Dogs, a program located in Cambridge, started a PTSD outreach in 2011 for veterans and first responders.

Sutcliffe left the application on a shelf for four months. After filling it out and being accepted for the program, she was on a waiting list for another two years.

Then Bailey trotted into Sutcliffe’s life last May.

The three-year-old Labrador golden retriever mix is now a constant by her side.

“I went from locked in my apartment 24 hours a day to all over the city,” Sutcliffe said of the change.

She started gradually, by walking Bailey around her apartment building. Then she started visiting a nearby park. She goes to church and to Tecumseh Mall.

Sutcliffe’s partner, Rick Hummell, can’t believe the difference.

“Even before she’s starting to have an episode, the dog will recognize it and go to her,” Hummell said. “It breaks the cycle. If she starts wringing her hands Bailey will put her head on Karen’s knee to distract her and the attack stops.”

If they’re out in public and Sutcliffe gets overwhelmed by the humanity around her, she’ll put her back against a wall and Bailey lies down in front of her like a canine force field.

Tamara Leniew, National Service Dogs’s program manager, says there are now 20 Canadians using PTSD service dogs.

“What they’ve shared with us is that they’re able to go out a lot more in public,” Leniew said. “They’re able to cope better in stressful situations.”

The National Service Dogs program receives no government funding, relying instead on donations and sponsorships.

“We only have the resources to graduate around 10-12 dogs per year,” Leniew said.

She said there are currently 98 applicants waiting for a service dog of some discipline or another, including 30 waiting for a PTSD dog.

As Canada’s only accredited program with Assistance Dogs International, National Service Dogs takes two years to train a dog. When breeding, training and ongoing support throughout the animal’s 10-year career are factored in, each dog is valued at $30,000.

Any fees associated with the service dogs are based on ability to pay and with help from the North Wall Riders Association, a local veterans support group, Sutcliffe paid $4,000 for Bailey.

Each year, different Canadian cities, including Windsor, host an Easter egg hunt for dogs as a major fundraiser for the National Service Dogs program. This year’s event is April 14 at Malden Park. At $25 per dog, registration is open and available online at www.nsd.on.ca.

Sutcliffe is going to do her best to attend.

Bailey has not resolved every issue she faces on a daily basis. The idea of going to Devonshire Mall is still off the table.

“Unfortunately, I still have nightmares and dissociative episodes. I still have depression,” she said. “But it’s fightable now.”

http://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/service-dog-gives-new-life-to-military-veteran-with-ptsd