Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Five minutes is a bit of a surprise, considering that the notes I have are five to 10 minutes; however, we shall prevail.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to assist you in establishing the requirements for a federal service dog standard.
The best possible solution to a problem comes from asking the best questions to determine the root cause and decide on the best course of action to solve the problem.
As a direct result of a life-threatening military search and rescue mission off the coast of Atlantic Canada, I am a veteran living life with PTSD. I have battled the demons for over 30 years. I was one of those people who are amongst the 30% to 50% of PTSD survivors who are treatment resistant. My life was an unmitigated disaster, and my family suffered horribly as a result of my injuries.
The best pharmacology and therapist interventions failed to provide me with any relief. I was isolating and cut off from pretty much everyone in my life. I had night terrors every single day. At 4:30 a.m., I would awake shaking uncontrollably, totally soaked in sweat and in a state of extreme panic and anxiety. My life had spiralled to the depths of hell that you cannot begin to imagine, let alone survive. Life seemed hopeless with no way out. I felt abandoned by VAC and, to this very day, information on my case file shocks me. Suicide seemed the only appealing option to end the hell I was living with. Fortunately, by the grace of God, I failed when executing this terminally irreversible decision.
Two factors will separate me from the other witnesses. First, I know this enemy well. Second, and absolutely paramount, is the fact that for eight years and 305 days I have lived on the end of a leash as a service dog handler.
In our house we celebrate “gotcha day”. August 6, 2012, is the day that Thai, my yellow Lab service dog, came into my life. I started to have hope, to laugh, to love and to live again, but inside my left wrist you will notice tattooed “Invictus” with a paw print and a semicolon. This tattoo is my daily reminder to myself that, thanks to Thai, the suicide card is no longer in the deck. However, VAC and the CF are well aware of the high suicide rate of veterans suffering from PTSD.
An extremely important fact is that to date there is no known case of a veteran with a fully trained service dog who has gone on to self-harm. These dogs are a valuable therapeutic adjunct to the war on PTSD. If you ask my wife, she will openly admit that Thai's night terror interventions are one of her most endearing attributes. Thai is so good at her job that she has not missed, and she has become so adept that she can wake me up before things deteriorate.
There is evidence of efficacy. Yes, they work. Scientific studies have proven this, yet certain folks keep demanding more proof and holding out that what a service dog does is not treatment. In fact, you could make the same claim about wheelchairs. They do not treat the underlying injury, but they allow the disabled individual to strive for a quality of life that's unattainable without a medical assistive device. This is not an unimportant distinction.
The Purdue University research study found that veterans paired with trained service dogs experience greater relationship satisfaction and fewer problems in family functioning. Having experienced first-hand the difference that the difference makes, what started as a desperate attempt to reclaim my life morphed into Paws Fur Thought.
To date, Paws is coordinated with organizations like the NS/NU and Ontario commands of the Royal Canadian Legion, along with Wounded Warriors, in funding of agencies like National Service Dogs for the training certification and placement of over 200 service dogs.
Researchers have been asking the wrong question. They keep asking, “Do service dogs work?” when, in fact, they should be asking, “How do they work?” Thanks to science, there's an answer.
MP Doherty recounted an event where a PTSD service dog ratted him out for anxiety, and it does not surprise me, as service dogs do not have an off switch. They do what they are trained to do. I am about to explain in layman's terms what happened.
When MP Doherty started to feel anxious, his reptilian brain, which we cannot control, kicked in. Cortisol is released into your body with other neurochemicals. Dogs have a sense of smell that is unrivalled. They can discriminate a teaspoon of sugar in an Olympic-size swimming pool, a concentration that measures in parts per trillion. Take a moment to think about the employment of dogs' noses: search and rescue, drug detection, bombs, diabetic alert, cancer detection and, most recently, studies to detect the presence of COVID.
When an individual is triggered by a stimulus outside of their control, the reptilian brain activates and you sweat cortisol out of every pore of your body. A dog can detect cortisol and be taught to interact with the handler to mitigate the circumstances. Note the last paragraph on page one of the prescriber guidelines. Cortisol and its links to PTSD have been known.
The science lesson does not stop there. It may seem intuitively obvious that de-stressing the handler in these types of situations is a good thing and a desired result. One of the simplest ways to do this is to flood your system with a neurochemical called oxytocin—a.k.a. the trust hormone. Science has proven that petting your dog has exactly that effect. Your service dog is the readily available all-in-one solution that is both the detection mechanism and the antidote.
Thai and dogs like her allow us to become aware of issues that we are having and mitigate the magnitude and severity of our symptomology using our body's inherent defence mechanisms—no pharmacology required. You can call what a service dog does for their handlers whatever you want, but “effective” heads the list. Thai does not solve the issues of why I am having the episodes I do. That work is done with my mental health care team. She is there to alert me that I am heading for trouble.
Why have I been so passionate and unrelenting in my mission to provide service dogs to others? If you read my book, Further Than Yesterday: That's All That Counts, then you'll understand that all of this was to help the others. As a military leader, our troops are first and foremost our most important asset. Without them, we are capable of nothing. However, this fight has come at the expense of my health. My unrelenting push has seen my trauma issues exacerbated by institutional betrayal, compassion fatigue and survivor's guilt variant.
I could easily have done nothing after I reclaimed my life and broke free from the chains of hell that bound me. Nobody could deny me that—except for myself. The voices in my head will not let me sleep. I carry a huge burden of guilt and shame. I got my life back, and I have not been able to move the yardsticks and provide our troops the relief that I have gotten. This means that my brothers and sisters in arms continue to suffer, battling the demons that I know all too well, but my brothers and sisters in arms are somebody's mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter. Everybody is somebody's somebody. They are also your constituents.
As I close my remarks, you get two final questions to ponder. If it were your mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter, would what we're all doing be enough? Would you be satisfied with our country’s response?
I await your questions.
