MIND BEYOND THE MISSION EPISODE 36 — HOW CAN SERVICE DOGS SUPPORT VETERAN
HEALING? A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN DUGAS

Brian McKenna

You found our podcast. We are Mind Beyond the Mission. This is a podcast about Veterans and their Families, and
specifically mental health. What goes on in our lives, what goes on in our heads. We’re not talking to you as doctors or
professionals. We’re talking to you about living with it and what it’s like. Brian McKenna, 19 years in the Canadian
Forces. I’m joined by my partner, Laryssa Lamrock.

Laryssa Lamrock

Veteran Family member. I’m a proud military brat. My husband served in the military, proud military mom. We’re really
excited about this podcast to delve into issues that are important to the Veteran and Family community.

Brian

Join us as we talk about mental health from the perspective of Veterans and their Families.

[music]

Laryssa

Here we are for another episode of Mind Beyond the Mission. Brian, we’re not in the same room this time. I know
sometimes we get together in person. We’re not only virtual, but you’re not even in the country. It’s good that you made
time for it today.

Brian

Yes. Well, like a lot of Veterans and other citizens in the country, I’m pursuing health care and getting a little bit
of rest and relaxation at the same time. I happen to have to go out of the country to do that. Yeah, it’s a little
warmer where I’m at.

Laryssa

Nice. The podcast is audio only, so our listeners can’t see you. I’m just going to say the decorating in the room that
you’re in right now is atrocious. I wish that people could see that colour scheme.

Brian

I did not choose it.

Laryssa

You didn’t, okay. [laughs] Well we’re taking the onus off of you.

Brian

This bright green that looks like iguana skin in the background was not chosen for me, let’s put it that way.

Laryssa

You have better decorating tastes than that. I’m glad to hear. Well, we’re really excited for today’s conversation.
Today’s episode is going to feature John Dugas. John is a proud Canadian Veteran who has dedicated his life to service,
both in uniform and beyond. I first met John and his wife, Leah, more than a few years ago when he and my former spouse
served together as combat engineers. We’ve recently reconnected. His service, even after uniform, has continued in a
different way.

After his own journey through military life, John found purpose in helping others heal, becoming a respected service dog
trainer who pairs Veterans with highly trained companions. His work highlights the powerful bond between humans and dogs
and the life-changing role that compassion, structure, and trust can play in recovery. We’re really honoured to share
his story today. Thanks for joining us today, John.

John Dugas

Yes, well, thank you for having me.

Laryssa

Yes, I’m going to —

Brian

John, if I could just crack on a little bit here. Laryssa wanted to jump to the punch but this has been burning in my
head here, and I had to cut her off. It’s just what I do.

John

[laughs]

Brian

I wonder if you could just talk to us a little bit about what was life like before you decided to go down this journey
of a dog. You’ve got a dog, you’ve got many. You’ve done a lot of work, but there was a time where this wasn’t one of
the answers for you yet. You hadn’t got there. What was that like?

John

Well, the journey before the dog, I would say, would be like a rock-and-roll clown show. It was just all over the map. I
was having problems. This was after going through mental health as well, I was in mental health treatment. Then, when I
released from the service, I stopped. I didn’t think I needed it anymore. I felt I had enough tools to manage, and then
I took on a job as a municipal engineer after I got out of the Army. It was high stress, massive budget, absolutely
massive.

Then what I found over time was that compounding stress and pressure, it’s like death by a thousand paper cuts. You add
layer to layer to layer of stress, and then it just culminated. I was starting to have problems at work, mostly with my
memory. Also, when you have memory issues, for me, they tend to come out more in emotional dysregulation, I guess is the
best way to put it. It was a tough journey. I wrestled with it for about three, four months before I decided to get a
dog.

Back in the day, I had an altercation at work where I was working that had potential to become extremely violent. I
decided it was time to go back into treatment. Veterans Affairs was very quick to set that up for me. On that journey
back into treatment, the new doctor I was seeing had suggested a service dog. To give you an idea of my knowledge back
then, I look at where I am today and where I was back then, I knew nothing about this at all. I was such an angry man.
[chuckles]

I remember arguing with her, questioning her ability to be a psychiatrist, that you’re recommending a service dog to me.
I walked here, I drove here, I could see perfectly. I had never heard of a psychiatric service dog. She explained that
to me, and then I started researching it. I originally went to one organization who had no trainers in the town. I was
in the Edmonton area. It was Citadel Canine, another good organization, but they unfortunately couldn’t help me.

Then my wife bumped into someone with a service dog and asked them, and they were in the Courageous Companions program.
I contacted them, and they set me up with a dog. In about three months, which was in my whole time doing this, that is
the fastest I’ve ever seen someone get placed with a dog, and that was me. It’s not what people think. It’s not just,
turn the key and drive away, and everything’s great, your life’s a rainbow after that. It does not work that way at all.
I think there’s a big misconception in the industry for that.

Brian

Can you look at it now, though, and see like, even today, there’s a number of people in the mental health world that
still aren’t on board with dogs? There’s more than just people. There’s organizations, there’s structures. It’s almost
impressive to hear that back then there was a doctor that was open to the idea, even to the point of suggesting it. I
know a lot of other Vets have brought this up with their own doctor and been at least given an indifferent answer, if
that.

John

When I started this journey in 2016, the psychiatric service dog was just coming into the mix more popularly. They were
out there, but not as popular as they are today. The challenge I see mostly with most organizations is you have a whole
array of Cadillacs and Pintos in the service dog industry. People can say, “Oh, I can go get a dog for $5,000 here. Why
would I pay $20,000?” I always say, “Well, then go get that one for $5,000 and see where that gets you.”

There’s a lot of organizations out there right now that are training these dogs, that their hearts are in the right
place. They’re doing the right thing, but the reality is a lot of them, they’re doing it the wrong way. They’re creating
drive, pulling drive out of dogs and things like that. I would say the bulk of them are pretty, pretty straight, pretty
good. They put out a product, and it’s helpful. As long as it’s helpful, then that’s all I really care about from where
I sit.

Laryssa

Yes, which is something I want to hone in on a little bit, John, a service dog being helpful. You’ve talked about
psychiatric service dogs, particularly. Part of what I’m curious about is, I don’t know if you were a dog owner before
you had a service dog, but how is your relationship with a service dog different than just having a pet?

John

I had pets before. A lot of people that start this journey, they’re used to having pets, but the problem is when you’re
imprinting a dog — well, let me just start from the beginning. Let’s say someone wants to go and get a dog and train it
to be their service dog. There’s two challenges with that. The first one is the average person will not want to go spend
$2,000 to $3,000 from a reputable breeder to buy a dog. They’re going to go to the pound.

We used to do that with the charity that I run. The motto used to be, “Saving one life to save another.” As I’ve done
this now for the last over 10 years, I’ve found that these dogs that come from the pound are okay. Some of them are
okay, but generally, you’re grabbing a dog sometimes that has more baggage than you have. The dog needs to be an anchor
for you. You’re not here to rescue the dog. You’re here to rescue you.

We don’t want to get wrapped up in the empathy of the dog. That’s another dynamic under this unto itself with people who
are mentally vulnerable, right? A lot of them go get the wrong dog. I’m a big believer in, “Herding breeds should not be
part of the service dog industry.” Just my opinion. Obviously, there will be a lot of people that will argue that with
me, but I’ve been doing this for 10 years. I’ve only seen maybe a handful make it successfully into service. A lot of
them will have issues.

The challenge with herding breeds, they have two challenges. One is their genetic disposition is to herd and to protect.
If you have a medical emergency, there’s a high probability that that dog will not allow anyone to work on you, which
creates problems. Now, you could probably train that out of the dog. Under duress, you don’t know what that dog is going
to do. The other aspect of challenges is when you bring dogs like that into training with groups, those dogs have a
tendency to stare because that’s how they move.

Cattle, sheep, they stare, and they intimidate other dogs in the training session. All these other dogs are like
marshmallows with the herding dog off to the side, and it unnerves them. It causes the other dog to become reactive.
Unless they’re learning to redirect that dog to look at them and not at everyone else, remember, you are changing the
genetic nature of that dog to have it look at you and not look out.

What the people don’t realize is after you’ve done that for a year or two with that dog, you have a miserable dog.
They’re not doing what they’re genetically wired to do, so you’re suppressing all of that. Better to suppress something
that’s minor and let the natural genetics come out in the dog, like a Lab or a Golden Retriever. They’re like hippies.
They just want to be with you and see you. All dogs are like that, but they have a higher success rate.

Brian

My own story is that a service dog was a significant part of my healing. I remember wanting a dog so that I was having
less in-depth nightmares. More or less, I didn’t want to go through the entire patrol every night. I wanted the idea
that as soon as I walked down that path that I would be woken up and not have to walk down that path. That is what I
wanted. That did happen, but that took a long time. A benefit that I was not anticipating was people stopped bumping
into me in public because there was another set of eyes behind me.

There was a dog that they didn’t want to bump into as well. I spent two or three years having no one brush shoulders
with me at a grocery store. That was a good thing. That created a bit of a bubble. What it also did was create an
awareness around me that there’s something wrong with this guy. Whereas I might have been able to walk by people before,
all of a sudden, a lot of people felt very emboldened, like there was a green light to come up and say, “Hey, what’s
wrong with you?”

I think what they were doing is once they deciphered that I wasn’t visually impaired, they then thought it was open
season to ask me a whole lot of medical questions about myself. I bring that up because my own experience was that the
dog did what I wanted. The dog also brought a lot of things. I hadn’t even anticipated it. It was also, to a degree, a
bit of a beacon for people to come up and ask you some pretty personal questions that are none of their business. Do you
find that that’s pretty much common as you walk that path, too?

John

Yes, absolutely. I’m going to take some paper here so as I can write down some points as you’re talking because I have a
brain injury, and I tend to forget. My brain goes off on a tangent. You’re 100% right. Here’s the difference with, you
could own or train your own dog. That’s open to anyone in the public to do that if they want. The benefits of being with
a program, though, is a program should prepare you for those types of scenarios, how to interact with, because the dog
becomes a social bridge for people.

People see a friendly dog, it engages conversation. Whenever I’m interviewing someone to place a service dog, and
Veterans are very pronounced for this, everyone wants a German Shepherd, a Belgian Malinois, a Cane Corso. Those dogs,
yes, they make good dogs, but they just don’t make good psychiatric dogs. The reason for that is because of their
genetic disposition. Unless you know how to manage that genetic disposition, which everyone believes they can, you have
to be 10 seconds in front of that dog all the time.

You can’t even remember what medication to take. The average person, “I need the dog to remind me to take my
medication,” or something like that. How do you expect to be 10 seconds in front of the dog all the time when you can’t
even manage that yourself? That’s why I always say the challenge, I think, for you when you go into public is there is a
lot of intrusive people come your way. You do have to be prepared for that.

A good training program will scenario-run that for you. They’ll have someone come up to you. When I run a scenario,
we’ll go into a store. While the person is training with their dog, I will go up to the owner of the store and say, “I
want you to go kick that person out because of their dog.” We want to see what they’re going to do because we have to
teach these handlers how to manage that because Veterans with PTSD, they just go like Popeye, smoke coming out the ears.
We don’t want that either.

Brian

Well, you bring up a good point, though, is because the law might say you have access to places and people have to let
you into them, but the law also says you can’t go more than 100km/hour down the highway, but people do. This is the
reality that we encounter is the law can say X, Y, or Z, but people still will not know it or pretend to not know it.
Certainly, restaurants are a classic example of that because they have another law, health laws, and food hygiene that
say, “No animals on the premises.” There’s this mixture of this. This is what a lot of people, I would say, don’t
understand in the world when they’re considering getting a dog is, yes, the rule is out there. That doesn’t mean it’s
going to be applied all the time. You will get kicked out of places.

John

When you get the dog, there’s always this thing in your brain that goes, “Oh, life’s going to be so much better now.” It
really does get better, but it comes with other challenges like training never stops. Even when the dog is certified,
you still have to go — the skills we put in these dogs are perishable skills. If you don’t take that dog out into public
and work him, he’s just going to go back to being a dog, right? Then this is always the balancing act when you’re
working with a new handler because they don’t want to go out.

Remember, PTSD, we were reclusive. When I got my dog, I hadn’t really left my house in three years. I would go to work,
and I would go home. I didn’t go anywhere else. Those are the challenges. The dog is there to try to get you out, make
you feel safe in public. Let me rephrase that. The dog is really not there for safety or protection. If a service dog
shows any sign of protection towards their handler, they should be removed from service.

Same with doing bite work with a dog. That’s questionable. You don’t see that in this industry, bite work dogs being
medical service dogs. Some people are doing that right now in this industry, and it’s a bit of a double-edged sword,
right? I don’t think they really realize the liability. There’s people on TV right now walking around like, “Look at my
mastiff,” or whatever. What the people don’t understand is that person is a professional dog trainer.

Of course, he could take that dog and make it a service dog, but could you give that dog to someone who’s 15 seconds
behind it? Doesn’t even know what time of day it is and expect them to manage that dog, right? It’s more of the image.
They’re out there portraying this image, “We can take that dog and make it into this,” when the reality is that dog’s
probably in the one percentile to be in service.

Laryssa

I really like, John, that you are putting some realities and expectations out there. I wonder if you can delve into that
a little bit more. Before a service dog comes home, because you’ve mentioned a couple of times, yes, people think you
put the dog in the truck, you drive home, and everything is great, what hard conversations do Families need to have to
make sure everyone’s ready for what it really means to have a service dog in the home?

John

When someone comes with a dog, the first thing we interview, when I interview them, is I ask them, “Are you going out?
Are you doing anything? Do you want to go out?” If your intention is to just stay home, then go get a dog. We don’t need
to raise $20,000 for a dog if you have no intention of going out because these dogs are trained to go in public. That’s
why they take so long to train.

That’s always a balancing act, because a lot of these people will tell you whatever you want to hear, but with no fault
of their own. I’ve been one of those people myself. You really want the dog. You’re looking at the dog as a beacon of
light at the end of the tunnel, the dark tunnel. In some ways, it is that beacon of light for people. The reality is
when you get that dog, that dog is going to do nothing for you for about three months.

You have to bond with that dog. When you control all the timings, when they eat, when they sleep, when they poop, when
they pee, when they wake up, when they go to bed, et cetera, that’s how the dog becomes yours. Then, in our program, the
charity program that I run, the dog has to be paired with you at a certain time because we can’t train the medical tasks
into the dog because it does no good for me to train that dog to read my scent.

Brian

Your nightmare is not something you can train.

John

That’s right. It has to be with that person. That’s where we walk that through. To go back to you, Brian, for something
like nightmare disruption, you interview them. You say, “Do you want the dog? What do you want the dog to do for you?”
You have to think of that. This is where it gets really out to lunch. Some people, they think a dog can do anything. I
guess they can if you put the time and effort into it. The reality is, like I say, someone says, “I need my dog to
remind me to take my medication.”

My first question is, “Well, then who reminds you to feed the dog?” Of course, they always say, “No, no, I’ll never
forget to do that.” My reality of it is, if you can’t remember to take care of yourself, is it realistic to expect
someone to take care of a dog? A lot of them don’t like to hear that, but it is a bit of a reality check. The other one
is, the person who is assigned that dog as the handler, they have to do everything for that dog.

It’s not, “Hey, kids, can you walk the dog around the block tonight? Can you go feed the dog?” You can’t do that. It has
to be the handler. This is where the problem comes in some households. It’s not a showstopper, but there’s always some
buffers, right? Like in our charity program, when we place a trained dog, that dog goes through four public access tests
first to make sure he’s safe in public. Then he goes through five three-day certification tests to make sure he’s solid
in his skills, and then we give him to the person.

Brian

I really appreciate that you’re painting this picture here because it’s not just about the dog. It’s so much about the
person. The dog, in my opinion, has been assessed to be capable of being a dog for you, but it is not the dog for you
until you’ve done the work. We’re talking about months of intense training, lots of time, constantly going out. I think
it’s not something that’s easy.

It’s not something that’s light. It is not for the person that’s in the pit of despair. That has been my experience for
myself and others is you need to actively be trying to make yourself better and pursuing your own health care. You need
to be realizing that this dog needs exposure, and you need exposure. These things are both going to be happening, and
then we get there.

John

Absolutely.

Brian

Way too often, I’ve seen people who are at the pit. They aren’t actively clawing out of the pit, and they think that
this dog is going to come in there, grab them, and drag them out.

John

That is the number one thing I see. We have to do this on the phone most of the time when we’re interviewing them, if we
can see them in person, but reality is we deal with people across Canada. For me, in my own journey, I look at how I
went through this. I try to emulate the way I was brought into this program through my late friend, George Leonard. I
try to emulate what he has done.

You’re right. The time to interject a dog into a person who is disabled, likely is not when they are at rock bottom.
That is the biggest mistake people make. They’re at rock bottom. They call and they want a dog. That is not the time to
give them a dog because that’s going to create more stress, more pressure to perform, to test. That dog has to be
introduced at the right time, and you have to be in treatment.

If you’re not in treatment, the first question I would ask is, “What is the dog going to do for you? How do you know if
the dog is even working for you?” Only your doctor should be able to tell you. You may have a sense that the dog is
fixing you or helping you, but the reality is it’s the doctor who will say, “I think you’re doing a little better.”
Maybe not mountains, and that’s how you want to just move that ball down the field one yard at a time, right?

Now, I’ve had a dog. I’m on my third dog. I can now go out without a dog. I trust myself to go out. In this journey of
having a service animal, the dog has assisted me in my treatment to a point where I can go out without the dog for short
periods of time, et cetera. I don’t need to rely on the dog so much because it’s now got to me in a place of my
treatment where I don’t.

Laryssa

We had a conversation before, John, about this. We had a really long conversation. We covered lots of ground. It was
essentially about the fact that, let’s say, a Veteran is triggered or is having a nightmare or a flashback, and the dog
does whatever behaviour it’s trained to do. That doesn’t fix the Veteran in that moment.

John

That’s right.

Laryssa

I don’t think I’m articulating this very well. Essentially, what we were talking about was the dog is flagging you,
“Hey, I’m nudging you.” It’s to snap the person out of that. Then it’s basically the indicator for the Veteran to go,
“Oh, whoops, here I go. I need to pull on the skillset or the coping mechanism that I learned through treatment in this
moment.” The dog is there as the tool to help you through the process.

Brian

It is not the therapy.

Laryssa

Right.

John

I call it in the treatment world that I’m exposed to, I can’t speak for other people, I do what
they call SRT therapy, self-regulation therapy. That’s what I find the dog — you can be doing EMDR, all these other
treatments they offer — where the dog is really valuable is when you have a trigger. The dog indicates to you you’re
having a trigger because, a lot of times, we don’t know what’s happening.

That’s your cue to regulate. You’ve got to either break away from whatever’s happening, move away somewhere quiet, and
regulate. The dog’s not going to teach you how to do that. The doctor has to teach you how to regulate. The dog is
there. It’s just like a seizure dog. “Oh, I’m going to warn you. You’re going to have a seizure.” When you have a
trigger, the dog comes in.

Usually, it’s through a change in your breath. Once the dog is bonded with you and your forebrain, I’m not a doctor, but
the rear part of your brain sends signals to the front where you process it as a thought. That takes a few minutes. A
dog that’s dialed in will be picking up on those scents when they’re in the back of your brain. Before you even know
it’s coming, the dog should know. That’s your cue to go, “Okay, I’m going to go over here and regulate.”

An example would be when I was working, and I’m in a meeting, and someone was just boiling my blood, like it happens
very easily, and my dog would start jumping on me. I would use that as a cue to regulate. I would say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I
need to break away for a minute. My dog needs to go to the bathroom.” I would use that to exit that scenario so that I
could regulate. Yes, the dog has to come at you at the right time. Otherwise, it could actually regress your treatment.
Yes, sorry, Brian.

Brian

Now, I want to ask you a couple of things here because you are patient with the dog. You are also someone heavily
involved in dogs. When you’re talking to the other people in someone’s life, not the Veteran but the Family and friends
around them, what would you explain to them, the differences in how they can approach that dog, vest on versus vest off?
Let’s be fair. Any right-minded person loves dogs. Dogs are awesome.

John

Yes, and especially today, everyone’s dog has a vest even if it’s not a service dog. They become an advertising
billboard, right? We try to promote that in our program that the dog is not an advertising billboard for your disability
or your trauma.

Brian

The fishing derby you won or whatever the word —

John

That’s right. You want to just put, “Service dog. Do not pet.” That’s it. Other people, they just plaster it with stuff.
They don’t realize that that’s why people are petting their dog by the time they get to the message that says, “Do not
pet.” You’re right. When you go out in public, you have to train people how to interact with those people, right?

Brian

If my brother is getting a service dog, what should I be doing when I’m around that dog, and it is vest on?

John

You just ignore it. You don’t even make eye contact. You just treat it like it’s a wheelchair. If a guy came up to you
in a wheelchair, you wouldn’t go and say, “Hey, can I take your chair for a spin?” We wouldn’t do that, or we wouldn’t,
“Can I sit in your chair? Can I pet your chair?” We don’t do that. It’s the same thing. Most people today, they respect
that. The younger generation truly does.

It’s usually your older people that are a little more forgetful for that. It’s going to happen. What I tell people is
people are going to touch your dog even when you don’t want them to, and it’s a double-edged sword. I use those moments
as a positive. I look at it as a victory, not a negative. When someone pets my dog, and they’re not supposed to, I say,
“Sorry, please don’t pet her. She’s working.” That’s all I say.

The reason you want to say something and not make a big deal out of it is it’s good for people to touch your dog,
because if they don’t touch them, what ends up happening over time is the dog starts to become skittish of people.
“Whoa, why are you touching me? Whoa, whoa, whoa.” The more people that interact on the odd occasion brings that part of
the dog’s stimulus down. I always look at it as a victory over a negative.

Brian

You’ve come home from shopping. Now, you take the vest off. Now, what happens in the house?

John

It’s a dog. Once the vest comes off, then you could treat it like a dog. The dog is still going to be a service dog, and
it’s going to still probably work. It may even work other people in the house. Here’s the risk you have, though. If
there’s a lot of people in the house interacting with that dog, giving it treats, giving it food, et cetera, when you as
the service dog handler, at some point in your life, go down the hole and you become unstable, then that dog’s done with
you. “I don’t need to go to him. I’ve got this person in the house.”

They’re just going to start ignoring you, and then it’s going to become their dog. This is why it’s important for people
to understand that. It’s hard when you have children to say to the kids, “Don’t touch the dog.” I would never do that. I
have two children. When I got my dog, they were allowed to interact with that dog all they wanted, even my wife. When
the vest went on, they respected that, and the dog was working. Then the dog starts to understand that lane as well.

It’s hard because the kids want to pet the dog, and they want to touch it. I just had a Family over here the other day.
I was handing over a dog to someone, and I had to say, “You can’t let them do that. They are not allowed to do that.”
The biggest mistake people make is, “I’ll get the kids to take the dog for a walk,” so they feel like they’re
contributing or something, but that’s not the purpose of this dog. Now, they’re treating the dog like it’s a pet. It’s a
Family pet, but it’s not.

Laryssa

There’s so much more to this, I think, than people take at face value. You talked about your Family a little bit, your
kids. I’m going to ask you a personal question, and you go where you’re comfortable with it. It’s a two-parter. In tough
moments, I’m curious how the dog supports you in ways that your Family can’t. Then the second part is, how does your
Family support you in ways the dog can’t?

John

Well, the dog helps me a lot when I’m alone. Just to cut to the chase, most of my bullshit happens when I’m alone and my
brain starts thinking too much. It’s like a TV screen. It just goes on a loop. Where the dog provides value to me mostly
is through its company, and it gives me what I call “tactile stimulation.” Right now, you can’t see it. The dog is
under, and it’s got its foot resting over my foot. It’s touching me. She always touches me. It brings you back into the
moment.

Jester, my current service dog, where her value comes to me is in her emotional disruption. I just drop an F-bomb, and
this dog is all over me. I’m talking all over me. I cross my arms, I touch my face. This dog will be all over me. The
benefit for me, to go back to Brian’s previous question when you were talking about nightmares, the whole intent is you
get mad. You say, 1 out of 10, I’m at about an 8. You go, “Oh, I’ve got to calm down,” but you can’t because you’ve now
said something or done something.

The dog cues to you when you’re at about a 2 or a 3, so that you can separate and regulate, so that you don’t go to an 8
or a 10. This works for nightmares the same way. A lot of people that try to train their dog, they’ll say, “Oh, my dog
wakes me up when I’m having a nightmare,” which is good. The idea behind the nightmare disruption is the dog’s got to be
able to sense your heart rate accelerating so that he wakes you up before you get all the way into that dream. Like
Brian was saying, I’m starting my foot patrol. Dog wakes me up, “Oh, we don’t want to go there. I can now go back to
sleep instead of waiting for your heart rate to be so high that you can’t go back to sleep now.”

The other aspect of nightmare disruption is you almost need two people to train that. You need a partner to say, “What
are you doing when you’re having that nightmare?” A lot of people think they’re fighting and they’re failing. The
reality is they’re just laying there doing nothing, and it’s their brain that’s going through this nightmare. That’s why
the dog has to be able to detect your heart rate, not so much your mimicked motions.

Brian

Well, it’s an interesting thought that you’re putting out there because it’s so reminiscent of what I went through. I
really wanted to ask you, almost like the quintessential “aha” moment, because there’s so much work. I think back to
where I was going through therapy and, yes, things were helping, but not to the degree I wanted. I was on a lot of
medication, but some of those medications needed medications to counter them. There was the sleep, but the grogginess.
There was the tempering down of the emotions, but then feeling nothing.

Then you bring in this dog, and this dog brought all this extra work, and it’s ramping up and up. There was a moment for
me where the dog reacted in a situation. I needed it to just to warn me exactly as what you’re saying of, like, “Brian,
you are starting to ramp up here.” That was this moment for me where I realized this is working. What was that like for
you when you reached that peak of, “I’m putting in a lot of effort here, I don’t know if this is going to work,” and
then it works? What happened then?

John

For me, that reality came to fruition during a moment of trauma. I experienced a moment of trauma, I’ll explain what
happened. I was running my dog. I used to road-run her down at this empty, dead-end range road, and she cut her leg on a
bottle in the snow. When she came to the truck, she was screaming. When I rolled the window down, I thought, “What’s
going on?” Already, the size of a picnic table was full of blood. She severed everything in her leg, veins, nerves,
arteries, tendons, everything.

I jumped out of the truck, and she had arterial spray coming out of her leg, and then I wasn’t there. I was somewhere
else. I was working on a guy in Croatia. That guy expired on me. I’m thinking, “She’s going to die. She’s going to die.”
Last time I seen blood squirting out like a hose like that, the guy was dead. Literally, about a minute and a half, he
was dead. I thought she was going to die. That dog stopped crying and started fucking working me right there on the side
of the road. I’m crying, telling her, “You’ve got to stop, I’ve got to work.” I tourniquet her leg, and we got her in
the truck.

She ended up having to be removed from service because of that injury. I would tell this story because that’s where it
first hit me. Part of your treatment is to how to manage things to keep yourself from being triggered, but they do come.
That was probably when I first got my dog. That was about a year later after I first got the dog, I had a true trigger,
I guess. I wasn’t even there. That’s where I knew that dog worked. I was like, “Wow. That dog is mortally injured, and
it’s working me.” I can’t without crying. It’s very powerful. Do you know what I mean, when that kind of stuff happens?

Brian

That dedication.

John

I just reversed it. That dog couldn’t go up the stairs. I slept on the floor in my living room with that dog for eight
months because she couldn’t go up the stairs. [laughs]

Brian

If we were actually having an interview, a podcast with your wife and not with you, and we were to say to her, “What’s
the number one time that you see this dog help John?” what do you think she would tell us?

John

I think my wife would probably tell you, the benefit for me is the interaction with the dogs, all of them. I guess I
have more than just a service dog now. I have a pack. This is what gives me purpose because there’s pros and cons doing
what I do. If I would have told my wife 25 years ago when we got married, “Hey, one day you’re going to have 22 dogs
living in the house with you,” that might have been a no-show breakup right there.

Having this many dogs brings a certain level of stress and tension to the relationship as well. There’s pros and cons. I
guess you would have to ask her. I’ve never asked her, “What do you see different?” In some ways, I think the dog has
helped. In other ways, it’s created more work, I guess, because you have another tool in your toolbox that needs
managing or feeding. I don’t know if that even answers your question. You would have to ask my wife. [laughs]

Brian

It’s one of the reasons we wanted to speak to you because you’re not going out there saying, “Hey, everyone, get a dog.
This is the magic medicine for everybody.” The message I’m getting from you is it’s going to work for some people. Most
of it is actually training the person.

John

I would say that’s all it is. Training the dog is the easiest part. It would be nice if somehow all the charities could
just fall under one umbrella and got money. I guess it doesn’t work that way.

Then again, there’s no standards in Canada. There is a standard, but it’s not being enforced. That’s why we have
Cadillacs, and we have Pintos. Like in British Columbia right now, the test to be a service dog, that’s the test
Courageous Companions administers its puppies to start training. We have a three-day test and a five-day test. Five-day
test is for an off-leash certification.

We’re debating whether we’re going to stick with that off-leash certification. I have a dog that’s off-leash-certified.
The reasoning behind the off-leash certification is depending on the volatility of the individual and how quick they go
off. When the dog is off-leash in public, that person has to spend 100% of their time in public focused on that dog
because it’s off-leash. By doing so, they don’t pay attention to everything else going on around them. That’s how that
is supposed to work.

The problem I’m finding right now is because once you have a qualification like that or a certification, everybody wants
it, and all for the wrong reasons. They just want it because they don’t want to put a leash on the dog. They want to
look like a cool guy walking around with an off-leash dog. That’s not the purpose of that, right? A lot of them don’t
understand. That has to be prescribed by the doctor. We don’t just let you choose. You can’t self-prescribe that. The
doctor has to prescribe that.

We have two tests. That off-leash test with us is five days of testing. In that entire five days, that dog cannot go any
further than six feet away from you. When I did my test, the test just didn’t stop in the mall because I had to live
with the tester for five days. Even in the house that he’s watching, “Okay, that dog’s moving away from me.” In the
house, they would allow the dog to go up to 10 feet away from you in case they had to go to the bathroom or get a drink
of water or something.

It’s a very stringent test. We don’t do a lot of those. We tend to focus more on the three-day leashed certification
test. The reason we have a three-day test is when you do the government test and you have a 20-minute test, what happens
if the dog has a bad day? Then you fail. With our test, if you have a bad day, well, you come back the next day and we
just add on. We can tell if the dog had a bad day or whatever.

It is a bit of the Wild West out there.

Laryssa

I’ve been learning a lot in these conversations with you, John, and I can’t believe how fast our time has gone. I think
one of the things that I’ve heard from a couple of different levels, and, for me it’s one of my goals for the podcast,
is to bring information to Veterans and Families so that they can become educated and make the best decisions for
themselves. One of the things that I’m hearing from you, and I hope people can pull from this conversation from you, is
to encourage them to do research on whether the dog is the right thing at the right time for them, and also to do some
research in organizations, understand the training programs, and things like that. For me, I just really appreciate what
you brought here.

John

What I would add to that is if anyone is listening to this and they’re going to go down this path of pursuing a service
dog, you’ve got to start talking to your psychiatrist or your psychologist. The way it worked with me is I talked to a
psychologist, who referred me to a psychiatrist, who referred the dog, and then I got a prescription from my doctor. I
got three prescriptions. One from a psychologist, one from a doctor, and one from a psychiatrist. I got three just to
cover myself, right? All of them supported it, but you need to start talking to your health professional so that they
can research it as well.

The next thing, if you’re going to look at an organization, I’m not saying you need to go with us. I think it was as of
April last year, there was over 90 service dog providers in Canada. That number may change quite frequently but it’s
pretty high. There’s a lot of organizations out there. The problem is you’re dealing with low-budget dog training
facilities and high-end dog training facilities, so there’s really quite the spread in the quality of what you’re
getting.

When you’re out there doing your research to pick a provider, if you’re going to go through a charity, the first thing
you should ask is, “Are you insured?” Are they insured so that when you’re out training with that dog that they give you
and it bites somebody, it’s covered under their insurance, not under you? If you’re just going to go to Bob’s Dog
Training, well, you can do that, but you’re going to roll the dice when you start having problems with that dog. Most
people don’t realize that a provider’s insurance only works when they’re in the class with the dog.

Once you leave with that dog and go somewhere else by yourself, you’re under your own insurance now. You want to make
sure they’re insured. The second question you want to ask is, “How many dogs did you successfully place last year?” You
want to ask that. If they don’t answer that question, I would be really hesitant to go to them because a lot of these
charities today, they’re pulling in millions of dollars in donations, and then you follow their audited financial
records and they’re paying out $900,000 in salaries.

That left them $80,000 to train dogs with a million bucks. How many dogs did you place? A lot of them won’t tell you
because they’re not placing any. They’re just taking people’s money and paying their staff. They might have the odd dog
squeak through, but each organization should be able to tell you how many dogs they placed. Third thing you want to do
is you want to see some of these dogs. You want to go and you want to meet some of them. I’ve often thought of that,
putting a spreadsheet together on process for getting a dog.

Brian

Without getting down the policy rabbit hole too much, there are differences throughout the country. Every province or
territory has their own. In one place, you might see a specific law on dogs. On another, you might see it as part of
human rights or accessibility acts. You can see actual guide dog acts and then psychiatric dogs being a part of that.
It’s up to the organizations, but also up to the person, to make sure that you know what the laws are in your own
province because there’s a lot of bad information out there.

At the end of the day, I admire you, and I admire what you’re doing because as far as I can tell, you’re telling it like
it is through your own experience. This is yet another tool out there that, quite frankly, I want doctors and service
providers to go and do their research to and learn more about. This isn’t for everybody, but it was a significant part
of my healing. I really appreciate what you’re doing.

John

There’s more than enough people out there that need dogs. We don’t need to advertise that. That’ll happen. It’s the
people prescribing the dogs.

I think there needs to be a better understanding on their behalf whether a dog can help that person.

Laryssa

I just really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks for reaching back out to me when I connected with you, John, and
being willing to have this conversation with us today.

John

Yes, I’d be happy to provide anything. If you guys want to bring me back again at some point, let me know.

Brian

It’s been good again, Laryssa, as usual, to join you. John, I want to thank you for all the work that you do in the
Veteran community. This has been another episode of Mind Beyond the Mission.

John

Thank you for having me.

[music]

Brian

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mind Beyond the Mission.

Laryssa

If this conversation resonated with you or helped you in any way, I encourage you to subscribe to Mind Beyond the
Mission wherever you listen to your podcasts, so you’ll be the first to know when our next episode comes out.

Brian

If you know someone who might relate to what we’ve shared or could find it helpful, please feel free to send it their
way. We’re all on the same team.

Laryssa

Plus, we’d love to hear what other topics you’d be interested in us exploring in future episodes. Brian and I have a lot
of ideas and subjects we plan to dive into, but you, the listener, have probably experienced or thought of topics that
haven’t crossed our minds yet.

Brian

Please reach out if this is the case. We’re on social media @atlasveteransca on most platforms. Please feel free to
tweet at us, send us a message, or leave a review on this episode, and let us know what else you’d like to hear us talk
about.

Laryssa

Brian, it’s always a pleasure having these important conversations with you. Looking forward to next time.

Brian

You bet, Laryssa. Take it easy.