News From the Cause
2 stress relief dogs prepare for Iraq mission ( The Seattle Times)
February 14, 2011
As far as retrievers go, Zack is exceptionally impervious to distraction.
He calmly walked at his handlers side through a training ground at Joint Base Lewis-McChord on Friday while automatic weapons and cannons fired in the background.
He greeted teams of camouflaged soldiers and offered his golden head for petting.
Zack is one of two dogs preparing for a mission in Iraq with a medical company charged with providing stress relief for deployed soldiers. The canines job is to draw out soldiers who normally would avoid a therapist or to just give someone a break from thinking about a long tour in the desert.
Soldiers are "built to be strong, so we go to them," said Capt. Andrea Lohmann of DuPont, whos deploying with about 50 members of the 98th Medical Company and bringing a stress-relief black Labrador named Butch.
Zack and Butch will be the seventh and eighth stress-relief dogs provided to the Army for combat deployments since 2007 from VetDogs, a New York-based nonprofit that also gives specially trained canines to disabled veterans.
The animals are "icebreakers" for the therapists and psychiatrists who walk through bases and check in on soldiers. People whove worked with the pets say the sight of a wagging tail can lift a soldiers spirits.
"They made contact with units that didnt want anything to do with huggy, mental health people," said Lohmanns commander, Lt. Col. John Gourley.
Gourley saw stress-relief dogs in action on his last deployment to Iraq in 2007-08. Labradors Budge and Bo became popular attractions on bases in and around Mosul, to the point that soldiers would look forward to their weekly visits.
"The biggest problem is the soldiers want to love on the dogs too much," he said, describing the fistfuls of table scraps that would find their way to the pets.
It didnt matter if the soldiers wanted to see a therapist. The dogs gave them a needed break, Gourley said.
"Theyre therapeutic in their own way," he said. click to view more
