Table of Contents

All Sources are listed under their tags in the top right hand side of the blog page
1. Concept Map
2. Encyclopedia Articles
3. Irrelevant Sources
4. Relevant Bibliography
5. Research Outline
6. Research Question and Statement
7. Title Page
8. Journal Entries

Below on the Blog Archive is a complete individual list of all postings.  Citation for photo is at the bottom of the blog.

Journal Entries

Journal Entry, September 22-28, 2014,

My first thought when I saw the assignment (find two encyclopedias or dictionaries and research your topic) was to find a psychology encyclopedia.  I first attempted to find one such book at the Undergraduate library, they possessed none.  Then I went to Davis Library, where I found an encyclopedia about trauma and psychology.  I thought this would give the perfect explanation about PTSD but I was wrong.  This encyclopedia was much too specific and contained no entry about PTSD in general.  Then I tried another, “The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology” which yielded the desired results.  I was able to glean the information needed quickly after the book was located. 

            After I found Information on PTSD I set out to find information on Psychiatric Service Dogs, or Therapy dogs, as is the more general term.  I first went to the UNC Library website and checked their catalog.  My first search term was encyclopedia dog, which yielded the book The international encyclopedia of dogs, it was in the Undergraduate library, so after some internal debating I packed up my laptop and went to the other library.  This Encyclopedia yielded no results, it was disappointing.  I then tried the online portion of the library, library.unc.edu then too E-research by discipline, then too encyclopedias, which yielded no results.  I then went back to the homepage and retyped encyclopedia dog I scanned the results and tried a few that lead me nowhere.  I then tried the search term, encyclopedia animal.  Which lead me to a book review which lead me to the book “NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ANIMAL ENCYCLOPEDIA” which seemed promising but lead me nowhere.  I then called it quits for the day and decided to try again tomorrow. 

            After some procrastination I tried a different approach to my problem, instead of searching for “Psychiatric Service Dogs”, I simply searched for “Dog”, it might not be the best for my project, but service dogs specifically for psychiatric use are a relatively new phenomenon, in fact most of the articles on this subject have been written no earlier than 2013.  However, this search did yield results and I have decided to use them.  After going to the UNC library website I typed in “animal encyclopedia” and limited the search to online resources, and clicked on the first link that caught my eye, specifically the “encyclopedia of animals” and then went to the “Dog” entry.  This was a decent encyclopedic entry and I have decided to use it. 

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Journal Entry; Annotated Non-Relevant Bibliography. 

          I started this assignment in a mindset of, oh crap I have three other projects due all in the same two days.  That being said I did try my best to make this look presentable.  Most of the articles I nixed in the prior assignment was because of the singularly militaristic view point they were written in.  It’s not a bad thing, but I already had so much from that one perspective that they just started being redundant.  As I’m writing this I just realized that I should probably ask my dad for advice on this project.  He was in the K9 division in the air force for a couple years in the 70’s, and trained Schutzhund dogs for a while after that. 

          The hardest part of this assignment was getting enough sources that weren’t websites.  There are a lot of blogs and such that talk about PSDs, but I couldn’t just use them in the assignment. 

          The research is not as hard as I thought it might be, more and more people are starting to write about this subject, so there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that this treatment works.  The difficult part of this research is that there are no peer-reviewed research papers about PSDs.  However I still think that my research is convincing. 

          The topic itself is still interesting to me, so I still like researching it.  My only qualm is that no one else seems to realize how helpful these dogs can be for people.  To me, once you hear about it, it almost seems like common sense.  When I was about 7 my mom’s doctors thought she had cancer, fortunately it was just an odd piece of fat, but none the less for about a month after I hear about it I was terrified.  But my two dogs were always there for me, Lilly used to walk up to me and just sit down on my lap when I was particularly scared, and I would always feel better because of her.  So by the same stroke, why can’t people whose brain is literally always telling them that they should be afraid feel better too when they have that same reassurance from a dog.  That’s why I’ve persisted with this topic, it seems like it could really help a lot of people who desperately need it.  

Until Tuseday

Montalván, Luis Carlos, and Bret Witter. Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him. New York: Hyperion, 2011. Print.

My Border Collie, Rowena

My Border Collie, Rowena

 Gerquest, Heather. "My Border Collie, Rowena: Trials & Tribulations of a Psychiatric Service Dog & Her Handler." : WHAT IS A SERVICE DOG? N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2014.

Dogs enlisted to help veterans with PTSD may be harder to come by

Dogs enlisted to help veterans with PTSD may be harder to come by



Adams, John S. "Dogs Enlisted to Aid Veterans with PTSD Harder to Come By?" USATODAY.COM. USA Today, 7 June 2012. Web. 02 Nov. 2014. Annotation: 

THE DOGS OF WAR: EBSCOhost

THE DOGS OF WAR: EBSCOhost

THE MENTAL TOLL OF WAR HAS THE ARMY SEARCHING FOR NEW WAYS TO HEAL BROKEN SOLDIERS. THEIR BEST THERAPISTS MAY BE ONES THAT TRAVEL ON FOUR LEGS

THE WORD SPREADS IN LOW VOICES: "He made it past the sushi!"

Soldiers from the Warrior Transition Battalion have gathered in a parking lot at Fort Stewart in Georgia. They're watching through the windows of the base PX, where Caroline, a psychiatric service dog, is guiding Sergeant Jeff Mitchell past the Asian takeout and down the crowded cereal aisle.

No big deal, you say? Maybe not for you.

The last time Mitchell attempted to enter the commissary, he had barely made it past the plate glass doors before dropping to the linoleum, folding into a fetal ball, and melting down.

NOT LONG AGO I spent time with some of the bravest men and women in the United States. They were all veterans of overseas wars and had returned home physically and mentally battered. Some, like Mitchell, were so traumatized that they could not leave their barracks. Others would become spooked by, say, a fireworks display, or the shadows cast by a highway overpass, or the bright lights of a crowded grocery store. Still others had lashed out with words and fists at their fellow GIs or even their officers. War had changed them, beaten them down.

Then they met their psychiatric service dogs.

At Fort Stewart, the U.S. Army has been pairing specially trained dogs with soldiers suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. On the face of it, the pilot program seems to be working: I watched haunted men brighten as canine trainees bounded toward them. Lieutenant Colonel William Reitemeyer, a buff, hard-bitten combat veteran and the commander of the base's Warrior Transition Battalion, told me, "It's almost like there are electric currents coursing through the leashes, connecting the minds of the soldiers with the minds of their dogs."

Reitemeyer realizes that the army's medical community has, as he puts it, "made mistakes." It's made plenty, in fact, as evidenced by reports in 2007 about care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. So to do a better job at healing bodies and minds, the army created 29 Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) here and in Europe. The dogs are an experiment within the WTUs. "I was skeptical of this dog idea at first, but I'm willing to try anything," Reitemeyer says. "I want to help thousands of wounded soldiers. But if I help just one, I'll consider this program a success."

And many soldiers need the help. According to a 2008 Rand Corporation study, nearly 14 percent of the 1.6 million soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan may have PTSD. Without treatment, the study notes, combat veterans experience increasing trouble with social interactions and their ability to maintain relationships. In that sense, Jeff Mitchell's story is tragically typical.

A member of the howitzer battery of the 2nd Squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Mitchell was twice deployed to Iraq. In 2003, he described his first firelight in a letter to his mother: "The first explosion shook everything and the shock waves caused ripples in the ground as if you threw a stone into a pond. I saw a civilian running from the blast; he was hurled 200 feet into the air. [There were] earth-rattling explosions, huge balls of fire and mushroom clouds, and red, white and orange pieces of burning metal blown into the sky. We are all lucky to be alive."

He encountered roadside IEDs hidden in deflated soccer balls and dead animals. And then he went through it all again, during a second deployment to Tal Afar, north of Baghdad. More combat. More IEDs. Mitchell returned to the United States in 2006 plagued with flashbacks and hallucinations; he battered his girlfriend when she woke him from a nightmare. He became too anxious even to leave his barracks.

After his medical discharge, he returned to his parents' home in Atlanta, entered his old bedroom, shut out the light, and locked the door. He found a liquor store that delivered. He became, in military jargon, a "cave dweller." And he remained that way until he met Caroline.

"ARE YOU GOING TO TRAIN THAT DOG or just play with it?"

It is not a question; it's a human bark, directed at a petite National Guard specialist. She's supposed to be training a dog named Drake to sit and stay. But she's clearly just enjoying the interaction. That in itself is a relief; I've barely heard the young woman speak. In Iraq, she had become separated from her unit and ended up spending several days alone in the desert before being rescued and returned to her comrades.

The man barking at her, Terry Henry, is the executive director of Paws4Vets. He's a retired military man with a history of PTSD himself; his first career was as an air force counterintelligence operative. Henry's manner is 100 percent drill sergeant, right down to his salt-and-pepper brush cut, thick as otter fur. And, okay, he can seem like a real prick, especially in his manner with these vulnerable people. He admits that his first loyalty is to his service dogs.

The idea to launch the organization came a dozen years ago from Henry's daughter, Kyria. The 12-year-old had been visiting nursing homes and geriatric hospital patients with her golden retriever. Suddenly the frail, ill senior citizens were engaging with the dog, with one another, and with staff, as they never had before. In what Henry calls "a blindingly idiotic idea," he quit his lucrative job as a telecommunications executive and threw himself into uniting dogs with people who needed them.

His first visits were to children's hospitals and schools. The work was so successful and rewarding that Henry began buying and breeding puppies, training them especially for these sorts of interactions and then introducing them to kids with mental or physical disabilities. Demand for trained therapy dogs was high, so he reached out to prison wardens for inmate volunteers to teach the dogs rudimentary commands. More than 75 inmates in five facilities are now training Henry's dogs.

Henry saw miracles. A child with severe learning disabilities learned to count and recite the alphabet when she had a dog for a companion; another with cerebral palsy began to walk with a dog's help. Why couldn't his dogs help combat vets with physical and/or psychological disorders? In early 2010 Henry received the go-ahead to unleash his dogs at Fort Stewart.

Drury, B. (2011). THE DOGS OF WAR. Men's Health, 26(8), 168-195.

Canine Comfort Vets' Best Friends: EBSCOhost

Canine Comfort Vets' Best Friends: EBSCOhost

SHARI DUVAL'S K9S FOR WARRIORS HELPS VETERANS WITH POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER BY GIVING THEM CALMING COMPANIONS: TRAINED DOGS RESCUED FROM SHELTERS

When Shari Duval's son Brett Simon returned home in 2005 after nine months in Iraq, the previously outgoing Army-contracted dog handler was a changed man. "I thought I was going to lose him to suicide, he was that despondent," says Duval, 68, a grandmother of 10 from Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. She was researching post-traumatic stress disorder when she hit upon an idea: helping her son and others by together starting a service-dog program for struggling vets. Now 43 and married with a 6-year-old son, Brett says, "It's been a life-changer."

Not just for him. The nonprofit K9s for Warriors (k9sforwarriors.org), aided by 500 volunteers, has paired 96 vets with canine companions—nearly all of them rescue dogs trained by Brett. "Dogs are really good about helping [reduce] anxiety," says psychologist Tracy Stecker of the Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center. She says the dogs' vigilance makes the vets feel protected, and their unconditional love develops trust.

No one knows that better than retired Marine Capt. Jason Haag. After three tours of duty, he shut out his wife and kids, sleeping with a gun under his pillow in a darkened basement. A little more than a year after getting his 2-year-old German shepherd Axel, he has reconnected with his family and has coached baseball for his sons, 11 and 8. "Axel hit the reset button," says Haag, 33, who still gets counseling but has reduced his medication for anxiety and depression. "Thank God for a dog."

ALEX BROWN, 28, & SKIP, LOUISVILLE, KY.

"He was as broken as I was," says the retired Army specialist. "We had to learn together. Every day is a battle for me, but I don't go through it alone anymore."

STEPHANIE GENSICKE, 26, & CHINOOK, JACKSONVILLE, N.C.

A sexual assault survivor, the retired Marine is now a college student studying nursing. "Nothing would have changed without Chinook."

AMY LUTENBACHER, 26, & MACY MAE, NECEDAH, WIS.

"When I start to have an anxiety attack, I'll pet her, and that grounds me," says the retired Air Force airman. "She's given me my life back."

LEROY JOHNSTON, 31, & APACHE, 29 PALMS, CALIF.

"My issues are large open spaces," says the Marine. "He walks me through and basically says, 'Hey, Dad, I'm going to get you there.'"

JOSE GONZALEZ, 28, & SADIE, YORK, S.C.

"The only time I left the house was to go to the doctor," says the retired Marine. With Sadie at his side, "there is hope that things will get better."

DAVID MOORE, 47, & WILCO, NEWNAN, GA.

In providing a dog to soften the stress, Moore's wife, Cara, says Duval and Simon "have saved my husband's life, and they have saved our family."

JAIME LEON, 36, & SHADOW, FT. BENNING, GA.

With every nightmare, says the Army sergeant, "she would nuzzle my hand and wake me. That's when I decided I didn't need medication anymore."

JASON HAAG, 33, & AXEL, FREDERICKSBURG, MD.

"Axel helped me wind down and take my foot off the gas," says the retired Marine. "I can enjoy life again."

TRUESDELL, J. (2013). Canine Comfort Vets' Best Friends. People, 80(25), 98.