Once a trusting and playful German shepherd, highly intelligent Gina was trained as a young dog and was just two years old when she was deployed to Iraq to help detect bombs with her human soldier partners.

During her time of service, she conducted stressful door-to-door searches, often encountering sudden and very loud explosions. The severe trauma left her in a continually heightened state of fear; she became wary of all encounters and would shrink from even entering buildings as she was observed to tuck her tail beneath her body and slink along the floor, hiding under furniture or in a corner to avoid people.

Identifying this condition as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is known to affect especially military men and women, canine specialist Dr. Nicholas Dodman of Tufts University in the USA noted, “There is a condition in dogs which is almost precisely the same, if not precisely the same, as PTSD in humans.”

Gina began receiving psychological treatment for this disturbing condition. A team of trainers has worked caringly to help the German Shepherd regain trust, and a year later she has been pronounced as making excellent progress toward restored psychological health.

We offer our heartfelt thanks to Dr. Dodman for your insights that help treat such a condition as well as the members of Gina’s recovery team for their creative and loving care.

Wishing Gina a complete recovery of all the joys of life as we look forward to the day that such troubling conditions are no more as all societies co-exist in shared kindness and peace.
http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/08/canine_ptsd_military_dog_comes.html
http://www.tufts.edu/vet/facpages/dodman_n.html