Mountaintop Natural Pets

Source: ABCNews.com, Mar 16, 2010

Dogs, used for companions, search and rescue efforts and to aid the handicapped, have added parachuting to their list of skills.

Austria’s explosive sniffing dog joined NATO forces in Norway’s Operation Cold Response exercises. Strapped to his handler, the dog plunged 10,000 feet from a transport plane over Narvik, Norway.

The Austrians’ Belgian Shepherd dogs appeared to be perfectly calm both before and during the jump, according to a reporter with Central European News agency.

“They don’t perceive height difference the same way humans do, so that doesn’t worry them. They’re more likely to be bothered by the roar of the engines, but once we’re on the way down, that doesn’t matter and they just enjoy the view.” One handler explained to CEN.

Some 8,500 soldiers from 14 nations participated in Norway’s Operation Cold Response. The three-week exercise ran from February 17 to March 4 in Northern Norway and included special operation forces, conventional forces, NATO units, and marines.

Dogs, just like their human colleagues, are regarded as valued team members and aren’t put into situations that could prove unnecessarily dangerous.

One operation trooper even said the new four-legged trainee “has a much cooler head than most recruits.”

Source: TimesOnline, Nov 12, 2009

An Australian special forces explosives detection dog has been found after going missing in action in Afghanistan 14 months ago.

Sabi, a four-year-old black labrador, was returned to the Australian base at Tarin Kowt after an American soldier found her wandering in a remote area of the southern province of Oruzgan last week.

The US soldier, named only as John, knew that his Australian counterparts had lost their canine companion during a gun battle between Australian, US and Afghan special forces and Taleban insurgents in south east Afghanistan last September. Nine Australian soldiers, including Sabi’s handler, were wounded during the assault and Sabi went missing.

Sabi, who was on her second tour of duty in Afghanistan, was officially declared missing in action. It is not known how she survived the past year, presumably eluding the Taleban, before being discovered by the soldier, who realised that she was not a stray dog because she understood certain commands.

Her trainer made sure that the dog was Sabi with a tennis ball test.

“I nudged a tennis ball to her with my foot and she took it straight away. It’s a game we used to play over and over during her training,” the trainer said. “It’s amazing, just incredible, to have her back.”

Trooper Mark Donaldson, a recipient of the Victoria Cross who is currently in London after a meeting with the Queen, was at the battle where Sabi went missing.

“She’s the last piece of the puzzle,” he said. “Having Sabi back gives some closure for the handler and the rest of us that served with her in 2008. It’s a fantastic morale booster for the guys.”

Yesterday Sabi was feted by US General Stanley McChrystal and the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who met the dog during an overnight trip to visit the troops in Afghanistan.

“Sabi is back home in one piece and [is] a genuinely nice pooch as well,” Mr Rudd said.

The Government is now working on returning Sabi to Australia after a period in quarantine.

Dogs have become loyal companions to the thousands of troops stationed in war zones around the world.

In August British soldiers were saddened to leave behind Sandbag, a sandy-coloured retriever who had been born on the base at Umm Qasr in Iraq, after Downing Street turned down a request to repatriate the pet.

Last year US Sergeant Gwen Beberg created headlines with her campaign to take a stray dog back to America when she returned home from Iraq. Sergeant Beberg had rescued Ratchet from burning rubbish in Baghdad.

Sabi is the first dog known to have become lost in battle — and returned home.

Source: USNews.com, September 3, 2009

Iraq war veteran Jennifer Pacanowski was unaware that she was racing dangerously down the freeway at 85 miles an hour when she felt a wet nose nudge her elbow.

She immediately slowed down.

The wet nose belonged to Boo, Pacanowski’s 110-pound Bull Mastiff, warning her that her anxiety levels were rising, a dangerous state given that Pacanowski has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from her experiences as a medic in the war.

Boo, who turned 1 in August, has been with Pacanowski, helping her deal with the world since last December.

“Sometimes I forget where I am and will go back to the war in Iraq. He brings me back to reality and makes me realize that I can’t run people off the road. It’s a frequent thing with PTSD to have road rage,” said Pacanowski, who returned to the United States at the end of 2004 and now lives in northeastern Pennsylvania. “He’s a comfort. I also know I’m not alone, and people can’t just sneak up on me without his knowledge.”

Boo is one of a team of “psychiatric service dogs” being used all over the country to help people with various mental health issues, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders and, perhaps most notably, PTSD.

“If a dog observes when a person with PTSD is escalating, the dog will be able to signal that they are escalating and, given it’s so early in process, the person can manage and even prevent the escalation,” explained Joan Gibbon Esnayra, president and founder of the Psychiatric Dog Service Association.

The dogs have been in service for about 12 years and while patients and professionals alike know they work wonders, there has been no real empirical evidence of their value.

That’s where the U.S. Department of Defense comes in. It’s starting a 12-month study to find out exactly how the dogs help by comparing soldiers with PTSD who have dogs with a similar group of soldiers without a dog. Researchers will measure changes in symptoms and medication use.

“We want to provide evidence for something we know observationally and help create a movement towards the use of psychiatric service dogs,” said lead investigator Craig T. Love, senior study director at Westat, a research corporation in Rockville, Md. “It’s time to make a change.”

“A recent survey showed that 82 percent of patients with PTSD who were assigned a dog had a decrease in symptoms, and 40 percent had a decrease in the medications they had to take,” added Dr. Melissa Kaime, director of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP), who spoke at a telebriefing last month. “I fully expect this will be positive trial.”

Details of this and several other studies being funded by CDMRP are to be presented this week at the Military Health Research Forum in Kansas City.

Other research includes creating a “virtual supermarket” environment to help veterans with both PTSD and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) cope with a return to civilian life.

Veterans with these conditions can have trouble adapting from being in a combat zone to being at home, where seemingly mundane daily events can prove jarring.

“These soldiers have challenges and difficulties when they have buttons that can be pushed and, when they are pushed, there’s no calling it back,” explained Dr. Charles E. Levy, lead investigator on this trial and chief of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System. “This is [a virtual] environment where people could have a chance to basically practice life skills without the consequences of failure.”

Levy decided on a grocery store because it “offers challenges of planning, challenges of finding the stuff once you decide what you’re going to get, managing money,” he said. “While all this may seem trivial, it’s actually not trivial to many of the people we’re seeing. Daily planning can be a challenge if you’re distracted all the time or if you’re nervous around crowds.”

The virtual environment will be populated with grocery carts pushed by other shoppers (some loud, some not) and soldiers will have to deal with a collision of shopping carts, said Levy, adding that the prototype is not yet finished.

Other researchers will be trying to develop a more effective helmet for combat, and others are seeing if mifepristone, known as “the abortion pill,” can help men and women with chronic, multi-symptom illness from the 1990-91 Gulf War.

“It’s exactly the same medication [as that used in abortions]. Safety studies have been done and we don’t anticipate any issue with that,” Kaime said.

There’s more on dogs like Boo at the Psychiatric Dog Service Association.