I was reading an article about Gina, a military working dog. Gina’s job was to sniff out drugs and bombs. She deployed to Southwest Asia for a five month tour, but came back a different dog. She could not tolerate loud noises and would refuse to go into buildings.

On her tour, Gina routinely went on patrol looking for IEDs. She experienced the loud explosions and the sounds of soldiers kicking in doors. She was riding with her handler when the vehicle behind her was hit by an IED. This spooked Gina and when her deployment was over she was not the same working dog.

I never thought about this before, but it does make sense. Dogs a sensitive creatures. When abused, they can take a along time to recover. I believe my own dog, Lucie was abused before I rescued her. At first when I would take out the broom, she would always cower and run away. She does not so much now, but it has been almost a year and a half since I brought her home.

Gina is being rehabilitated now. It looks like she will be able to continue working as a military working dog. On July 1st she was recertified and assigned to a new handler. These dogs usually work for about ten years, so Gina should be around for while.

Obviously, PTSD is hard for humans to handle,  causing much distress. In my opinion, more needs to be done to help men and women returning from war to cope with PTSD, but I was glad to hear that these military working dogs are not forgotten and cast aside and there is help for them too.