Ghosts of the Past - The Dogs of 9/11

Ghosts of the Past - The Dogs of 9/11

“We Need a Dog Over Here!”

I remember it very clearly. It was a mild, sunny Tuesday in early September. I was in my studio apartment on Second Avenue, near 70^th Street, eating breakfast and watching the morning news. My Dalmatian, Freddie, was in the bedroom, asleep in his crate, with the door open. Mike Sheehan—a former New York City cop, who’d since become a reporter for Fox 5 news— was stationed downtown outside City Hall covering the mayoral election. 

Suddenly a loud explosion came from behind him. The cameraman panned over to one of the towers at the World Trade Center, partially visible in the background. After a few tense moments, and some shaky camera work, Sheehan, who didn’t know what had happened, but was clearly shaken, threw it back to the newsroom.

The time was 8:46.

After a break, the Fox 5 anchors reported an unconfirmed rumor that a private commuter jet had apparently “lost its bearing” and accidentally crashed into one of the towers at the World Trade Center. My first thought was that it hadn’t been an accident, that the same crew of terrorists who’d tried to blow up one of the towers with a truck bomb in 1992 were back with what I felt had been their “Three Stooges act.”

I took Freddie out to meet Roarke (a boxer) and Cassie (a miniature schnauzer) for our morning play session. When I got to Cassie’s building on 57^th Street I learned that both towers had been hit, not by commuter jets, but by big airliners. There was also an unconfirmed rumor that another jet had crashed into the Pentagon and that the attacks had definitely been committed by Osama Bin Laden’s crew.

Still, I thought, the most damage they could have done was on a couple of floors. Yes, some unfortunate souls would have died. But everything would get back to normal soon, I thought.

The dogs and I played for a while in the red-dirt softball field under the 59^th Street Bridge (there were far fewer dog runs in 2002 then there are today). I took Cassie home, then Roark and Freddie and I headed back up Second Avenue.

By this time the traffic had jammed to a standstill. Police sirens were useless at getting the cars and taxis moving, so the cops were actually driving up on the sidewalks.

After we walked a few blocks, I saw a group of people gathering around the front window of a nail salon. So I stopped to see what was going on. There was a TV mounted on the back wall. The images on the screen showed the slow-motion collapse of one of the towers. I felt like I’d just had the wind knocked out me, my knees buckled, and I finally came to grips with the seriousness of what had happened.

Like everybody else in New York (and much of the rest of the world), I was glued to the TV for the rest of the day. Finally, at about 6 in the evening, I took Freddie out for his evening walk. We saw two long, very long lines of people as far as the eye could see in both directions—many covered in a coating of gray dust—walking single file, plodding along, zombie-like, headed uptown. The subways and buses were out of service; so were the taxis. These poor souls had to walk all the way from the lowest reaches of Manhattan to the Upper East Side, Spanish Harlem, and beyond. They seemed to be in shock, dead tired, or both.

Those are some of my personal recollection of 9/11/2001.
Then came the rescue efforts, the media coverage, endless footage of the dust clouds, slow-motion plane crashes, the constant news reports, conjectures, and a lingering feeling of chaos.

What Do Search-and-Rescue Dogs Do When There’s No One to Rescue?

It wasn’t long before dozens of search-and-rescue crews showed up at Ground Zero, eager yet serious teams of dogs and handlers from all over the country. Unfortunately, there was almost no one to rescue. There were, for the most part, only bodies or body parts to be found. So after three weeks or so of steadfast commitment, yielding little or no results, most of the 350+ search-and-rescue teams packed up their hopes and their equipment, and went home. 

As one press release put it: “The mettle shown by these dogs and their human halves has affected the world in a way that should not be underestimated.” No kidding.

Here are some heartfelt comments from people who worked with those amazing animals.

“The site is very difficult for the dogs. They’re crawling on their bellies and squeezing through things. It’s incredible to watch.”                  —Sharon Gattas, Riverside Urban Search and Rescue

“They will search endlessly for that scent [of a living person] until they are called off.” —Lori Mohr, National Disaster Search Dog Foundation

“All they really want to do is work hard and love you. How can that not raise the human spirit?”—Gerald Lauber, Suffolk County SPCA

“Some rescue workers couldn’t take it. They asked if they could play fetch with Thunder. But then they’d sneak off in a corner to just be with Thunder, or maybe to talk with him.”—Bob Sessions, FEMA

“They may not cry to their fellow firemen or police, but somehow they open up to their dogs.”—Laura LoPresti, Monroe, MO 

“These dogs have [also] been trained to pick up on people they perceive as being in a state of trauma. So they’ve been visiting a lot of firemen, police, and cleanup detail.”—Anonymous

“He kind of withdrew from everything,” said Mike Owens, of Southwestern Ohio K-9 Search and Rescue, speaking about his partner Whorf. “There was so much death there, it was emotional for the dogs.”  Whorf located the dead bodies of two missing firefighters on the first day; then, overwhelmed, he lay down and curled up on the spot. He began shedding profusely, quit eating and refused to play with the other dogs.

“Morale is important... So we set up a scenario that the dog can win at. We used a New York firefighter. He hid amongst the rubble, and we sent her on a search. She finds him. He plays with her real good. She’s real happy, and ready to go to work again.”—Mark Bogush 

“The dog seeks a live person in hopes the survivor will play with him. If he’s not finding a live person, there is no one to play with. So when I get home at night, I send my 12-year-old son to hide in the woods. Then Jax finds him and they play tug of war with a towel.”—Tom Fahy 

“He was a great, big guy, and he was just bawling. He was crying like a baby. He couldn’t talk, but he mouthed the words: ‘Thank you,’ and ‘thank the dog.’“—Louis Wardoup, volunteer, describing how his dog Insee unearthed  a firefighter buried under the rubble. 

“One of the things, the handler told us, that really yanked on his emotions was the gift he and his dog Ranger received from a child: a small ziplock bag with two dog biscuits and two Hershey kisses inside, with a note printed by the child: ‘Lassie would be so proud of you.’”—Terri Crisp, Director, Emergency Animal Rescue Service

***

New Yorkers felt an emotional bond with one another after the attacks. In fact, all Americans, and even people from other countries, all around the world, felt that connection. “We are all New Yorkers now” was a phrase often heard.

It wasn’t just the search-and-rescue dogs who were traumatized. Many people were also deeply affected by these events. Some sought counseling, others turned to drugs and alcohol or began overindulging in “comfort foods.” And speaking of comfort, as Laura LoPresti, one of the people quoted above says, “Just petting a dog provides comfort to those who need it.”

Not surprisingly, dog ownership began to increase in the years following 9/11, so much so that some in the industry called it an “explosion.” That’s because dogs may not know much about international politics or man’s inhumanity to man, but they do know how to guard us, protect us, make us smile, and comfort us with their presence and their wagging tails. 

“We need a dog over here!”—call often heard at the WTC site. 

All these years later, some of us still need a dog over here.

The Presence of the Past

Now, I’m not interested in re-awakening the ghosts of 9/11 without good reason. And the reason I think this is important is that global events have micro-effects. The devastation at the World Trade Center affected most of the dogs tasked to find living victims there. If a healthy dog like Whorf starts shedding profusely and refuses to eat, something has gone terribly wrong. And the culprit is deep inner stress. But it wasn’t just Whorf. Most of the 9/11 dogs left their tasks unfinished. They were trained to find the living, not the dead. 

In fact, when dogs are trained for search-and-rescue, human volunteers hide in make-believe disaster sites. Then, when the dog finds one, the victim acts happy and joyful and plays with the dog. That’s the dog’s “reward” for searching, that’s his emotional release. And that’s the feeling the dogs of 9/11 were searching for but weren’t getting because there were so few survivors.

So why did dogs like Whorf seem to develop symptoms of PTSD while others didn’t?

There are a number of reasons. But before going into them, it should be noted that with most working dogs there’s a very narrow parameter of breed types used for each particular job or set of jobs that the dogs are suited for. The German shepherd and Belgian Malinois are often used for police and military work. Beagles are good at finding drugs or other contraband at airports or border crossings. Dobermans and Rottweilers are favored for protection work. Bloodhounds, of course, are insanely good at tracking criminals through all sorts of terrain. And golden retrievers and Labs excel as seeing-eye dogs and therapy dogs because of their easy-going, good-natured temperaments.

Yet the multiplicity of different breeds found at a disaster site is a different story. You might easily find most if not all of the breeds mentioned above but you might also find Airedales, Jack Russell terriers, Australian blue heelers, elkhounds, Hungarian Viszlas, English setters, Dalmatians, dachshunds, schnauzers, poodles, even mutts. Nearly all breeds are welcome.

Why is that? Why would so many different breeds be so good at search-and-rescue work?

A dog’s desire to search for things—whether he’s searching a disaster site or playing a game of “find-the-toy”—is another ghost from the past, a behavioral tendency “inherited” from wolves. It’s part of what biologists called the predatory sequence, a specific set of hunting behaviors that play out when a pack of wolves goes on a hunting expedition, and does so in an exact, progressive pattern from one step to the next until the sequence is finished.

Here’s how it works. First the wolves leave their den to go out and search for prey animals like bison or elk. Then, when they find their prey, they stand still and stare at the animals in a posture similar to the way herding dogs, like border collies, stare at a flock of sheep. This is called the eye-stalk. Then the wolves try to isolate or cull the weakest member of the herd. To do this they have to get the herd moving, then they chase that weakest member, eventually confusing it and wearing it out. Then, once the prey animal is too tired or too confused to keep trying to escape, the members of the pack who are close enough, use what’s called the grab-bite to get a grip on the hide of the animal. This is followed by the kill-bite, where one or more wolves rip open the animal’s hide.  The final step is evisceration, where the wolves continue to pull back at the prey animal’s hide until its internal organs are on display.

One very interesting thing about this sequence is that once it’s set in motion the pack doesn’t stop. They don’t pause along the way to hunt rabbits or snack on road kill. They continue through the entire sequence until they’ve either eviscerated their prey or the prey escapes, in which case they go back to the den hungry and rest up for the next day’s expedition.

While this set of behaviors seems to be hard-wired—that is the wolves seem to be following a kind of stock script—these are drive behaviors, and are, thus, not related to instincts or reflexes.

What’s the difference?

Drives are more fluid and flexible; they allow for improvisation, they’re not purely mechanical and invariable as instincts and reflexes are. Plus, instincts are often about avoiding present or potential danger while drives are, for the most part, about putting oneself in danger or into a vulnerable position so as to attain a specific goal such as hunting or mating. Drives also tend to play out over longer, unspecified periods of time. And finally, drives have an almost magnetic kind of quality. Dogs in a state of drive feel magnetically attracted to the potential prey or potential mate while instinctive behaviors have more of an electric quality. This is a very important distinction to make so I’ll repeat it here: drives can be sustained for much longer periods of time than instinctive behaviors, they’re more variable and improvisational in nature, and they have a magnetic rather than electric quality. Instinctive behaviors aren’t generally sustainable over long periods of time, and there’s no room for spontaneity.

This brings us back to the search-and-rescue dogs of 9/11. 
The “search” aspect of how search-and-rescue dogs are trained is an analogue of the first step in the wolf’s predatory sequence. But dogs aren’t wolves. In fact, domesticated dogs don’t have the full predatory sequence that wolves do. Even dogs who’ve become feralized, and form groups in the wild or in cities like Detroit and Moscow, are incapable of hunting large prey together. They’ve lost the knack for it, primarily because dogs have been bred for thousands of years to only exhibit specific bits and pieces of the wolf’s prey drive. For instance, sight hounds and scent hounds tend to have more of the search behavior than other breeds, while pointers, setters, and herding breeds have more of the eye-stalk, though they also have a bit of the search as well. Retrievers are supposed to have a soft grab-bite so that they don’t bite down hard on quail, ducks, and other game birds. But, again, they also have a bit of the search built-in to their behavioral repertoire as well. Terriers, on the other hand, have a hard kill-bite, enabling them to successfully bite down hard on small vermin, dispatching them quickly. But again, most terriers also have a strong search component built into their behavioral patterns as well. In fact, searching seems to be hard-wired in most dog breeds, with few exceptions.

Another way of looking at this is that whenever you activate any aspect of a dog’s prey drive (even the eye-stalk) you’re energizing the dog. That’s what drives do. And when a dog feels energized or “magnetized,” she wants to move toward something, in fact I would say that she actually feels pulled toward that something, whether it’s a squirrel in the park , a Frisbee in flight, the sound of her owner’s key in the front door, or her dinner bowl. Thus the dog’s motive—which is a desire to connect physically with an object of attraction—and the dog’s movement toward that attractor—which is the kinetic and emotional process of completing that physical connection—are always synonymous in the dog’s mind. In other words, motivation and physical movement are inextricably linked. So drives are what motivate a dog to move toward a potential end-point, which is a mixture of a desire to make contact with an object of attraction and a subsequent (and sudden) release of that pent-up drive energy. So, in effect, the dog isn’t chasing the prey or potential mate as much as he’s trying to rid himself of a complex set of feelings and sensations churning around inside his body.

Teamwork in Dogs and Wolves

There’s another part of the search-and-rescue process, which, also, in a way reflects the way wolves hunt, and that’s the fact that wolves work together as a cohesive group. It takes a pack of wolves (or at least two or three) to tire and confuse a large prey animal. It’s rare for one wolf to be able to do that on his own. And, fittingly, search-and-rescue dogs, military dogs, police dogs, drug-enforcement dogs, and the like, don’t operate alone either. The dogs and their handlers work together as a team. And don’t forget the make-believe survivor, hiding in the rubble! She’s also part of the social dynamic, in fact, the most important part because, as I said earlier, finding the victim provides the feeling of release the dog is working for.

That’s why dogs act happy when they find a survivor in the rubble, or catch a Frisbee in mid-air. In some cases, it’s why dogs get wiggly when you come home. And it’s why some of the search-and-rescue dogs of 9/11 became stressed, despondent and depressed, and why some of them seemed to develop symptoms of PTSD as a result. Why? Because there was no one to connect to, no survivor acting happy and excited, and thus no emotional resolution for the dog. So when the dogs went back home to Connecticut or Indiana or Georgia or Ohio or Alabama, or wherever they were from, many of these dogs, perhaps most of them, weren’t the same happy campers who had been sent on what seemed like a wonderful adventure. They were left feeling like they hadn’t completed their task or finished their mission.

Not all of the dogs were anxious or troubled, at least not for long. Being back in familiar surroundings can be a tonic for dogs: the familiar bed, the water bowl, the well-worn chewie toys, that wonderful back yard with all those games to play. Plus, by the time they got home the weather had changed. The warmth of summer had given in to the first bite of autumn, another tonic for dogs. So, in all likelihood, most of them shook off the disappointment and stress they’d brought home with them and let it go, with tails a-waggin.’

But some didn’t. They couldn’t. They couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been left undone. And those feelings impacted the lives of their owners and handlers, perhaps in small ways, yes, but small things add up, especially when you’re dealing with wounded emotions. And believe me, there is a deep reservoir of emotion inside each and every dog, whether he’s a working dog or just a family pet. And those feelings, if not given an outlet, are like all the potential living victims that the dogs of 9/11/ couldn’t find. They stay stuck like phantoms in the dog’s mind and body as unresolved emotion and its byproduct, deep inner stress.

And so it is that acts of war—the terrible friction that develops between peoples and nations which take place on a grand stage—can have a trickle-down effect on our dogs. even though they’re not the main actors in the drama, they’re just standing in the wings.

Yet without question 9/11 changed the world for some dogs. Puppies who were being bred and raised in certain kennels were now being bred to be war dogs. Not all puppies of course. But the ones who’d been issued “draft cards” had far different lives in store for them than they would have had otherwise. Some would have been trained to sniff out bad guys in cities and towns, or chase perps at night across otherwise quiet lawns, or down dark, deserted alleyways. Some would have become guide dogs or therapy dogs. Some would have been raised as family pets. And some would have become search-and-rescue dogs.

Instead, many of these dogs, these young puppies, were destined to live in barracks, to learn how to sniff out land mines and I.E.D.s, and search for and find wounded and dying soldiers. And no matter how brave they were, and no matter how well they were trained, some of them couldn’t shake off their war time experiences as easily as they and their handlers would have liked. The noise and the chaos, the explosions, the persistent rocket fire, the human casualties all took their toll. The emotions of these brave dogs got “stuck,” left unresolved, and so they developed PTSD, which for these brave, dedicated animals was a double whammy: they couldn’t function, which meant they couldn’t do their jobs.

And these dogs love their jobs.

For the dogs of 9/11 that was the real tragedy, just as it’s a kind of crime that so many years later so many dogs are still being born and bred to be war dogs. These wonderful, amazing dogs may be perfectly trained but not all of them make it through our human war zones alive or unscathed. In fact, it’s a problem that goes far beyond the military.

Dr. Rachel Yehuda of The Mount Sinai School of Medicine, says that PTSD affects up to 10% of all men and up to 14% of all women.  And just as men and women—whether soldiers, rape victims, or those who’ve experienced other forms of terror, brutality, or trauma—can develop PTSD, so can dogs. 

In fact, many dogs—including those who’ve been treated severely by their owners or trainers, or those who’ve been abandoned in shelters, or those who’ve been traumatized by dog-on-dog aggression—can all develop PTSD. And they need our help.

Does PTSD Cause Brain Damage in Dogs?

How to Restore Brain Plasticity in Dogs With PTSD

Originally published at PsychologyToday.com on July 10, 2012. 

“PTSD, depression, and other psychiatric disorders cause what is called ‘negative neuroplasticity,’ including activation of abnormal circuitry in the brain, and strengthening of those circuits over time. They also cause shrinkage … and decreased connectivity between parts of the brain.”                        —David J. Hellerstein, M.D.

How Common Is PTSD in Pet Dogs?
Post traumatic stress disorder is probably much more common in dogs than most people realize. We tend to think that it’s only found in military service personnel, including canine members of the armed services. But deeply stressful events have a lasting negative effect on brain plasticity and learning even in pet dogs. This is often clear in dogs who’ve suffered physical abuse by their owners (or trainers), but can also be seen in some dogs who’ve suffered a serious illness during their fear or social developmental phases and had to be kept in a kennel at the vet’s office for an extended period, or dogs who’ve been traumatized by attacks from other dogs, etc. Stress is the common denominator, not necessarily exposure to violence or physical trauma.  

Of course, just as in humans, not all dogs experience stress in the same way. Some are more sensitive than others. But those that are more sensitive are deeply affected by stressful events, and can develop some symptoms that are quite similar to those found in human beings who suffer from PTSD, including neurological damage and memory loss.

One of the characteristics of PTSD is that the original trauma is continually re-experienced by the victim. And each time the stress response is triggered, or re-triggered, a cascade of hormones and neurochemicals are released into the bloodstream, causing oxidative stress resulting in brain damage. This damage to neural circuitry makes PTSD one of the most difficult psychological illnesses to treat.

Stress and Neuronal Toxicity
Neuroscientist J. Douglas Bremmer writes: “Stress in animals is associated with damage to neurons in the CA3 region of the hippocampus … and inhibition of neurogenesis [new cell growth].” Bremmer also says that high levels of glucocorticoids (via the body’s stress response) are also associated with deficits in new learning. [1]

Glucocorticoids—released during stress-related experiences—in turn cause an increase in glutamate, an amino acid that plays a key role in facilitating long-term connections between neurons, connections that are vital to learning and memory. This suggests that the more stress a dog experiences during a traumatic experience, the stronger his memory of a stressful event becomes and the more difficult it is to restore normal working memory, not to mention normal emotional and behavioral function. This is why it’s not only difficult to keep the dog who suffers from PTSD from over-reacting to certain triggers, it can also be difficult to teach him new behaviors as well.

Mind you, I’m paraphrasing and condensing some very complicated research into what I hope are easily understood bytes of information. But what essentially happens is that the fear circuits (connecting the amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus), which are normally capable of being inhibited to some degree by the impulse control centers in the prefrontal cortex, create a kind of semi-permanent loop, blocking the higher parts of the brain from exerting impulse control while decreasing the ability of the hippocampus to provide normal working memory.

The dog’s ability to control his behavior is reduced dramatically. He’s classified as a “reactive” dog, or out-of-control, or hyper-vigilant.

Exposure Therapy or Play Therapy?
It may seem strange but some human victims of PTSD—specifically military personnel—have had their symptoms moderated a great deal, and in some cases apparently cured, by playing violent, virtual reality video games like Halo.

Some in the field believe that these games act as a form of “exposure therapy,” where the patient confronts a feared thought, image or memory associated with a past traumatic event. I’m not convinced that that’s true. I think what’s needed is research on whether these games can also facilitate healing in cases of PTSD that don’t involve combat, such as victims of sexual abuse, or witnesses of a major tragedy, etc.

Another possible way of determining if it's the content of the game or the act of playing that has a moderating effect on PTSD symptoms would be to have military or ex-military personnel play violent virtual reality games set in a make-believe world of sword and sorcery, as in the Warcraft series.

Play of any kind, and in any species, always has an element of aggression built into it. This is as true of a game of chase at the dog run as it is of working the controls of a violent video game. What differentiates play from actual aggression is the lack of real danger to the players: the moment fear enters the equation, the fun stops.

Another aspect of play is the mostly unconscious process of pattern recognition, a process that also tends to release dopamine, one of the brain’s “feel-good” chemicals. The more complicated the game (up to a point), the more dopamine is released and the better it feels to play. Plus, generally speaking, the more playful a dog is the more resilient and adaptable he is as well.

When working with dogs who have PTSD I’ve found that play is an essential part of the healing process. In some cases it can be play with other dogs, but the most important type involves the owner or trainer playing games like fetch and tug-of-war, where the dog gets to bite a toy, preferably as hard as he can. The harder a dog can bite a toy in play, the more pleasurable, and the more therapeutic it is for him.

There are caveats, of course. The dog has to “know it’s a game.” If the dog takes things too seriously, it’s only a matter of time before he flips over into real aggression. So if your dog doesn’t know it’s just a game, DON’T PLAY until you can get him to relax. The way to recognize the difference is in how tense or relaxed the dog’s body seems during play.

How do you do get a tense dog to relax?

You have to work very slowly, never act in a threatening manner toward the dog (this includes things like scolding or correcting the dog physically). You also have to find ways to gently activate the dog’s urge to play without reaching or even coming near his threshold. This means you work in small increments. Very small.

It also means that you can’t take things too seriously yourself. You have to relax as well. Long, protracted moments of just being with the dog, and deep tissue massage of a dog’s shoulders and haunches can be very therapeutic. So can Tellington Touch techniques.

It’s also important to remember that in cases of PTSD, the dog’s “fear circuits” are capable of overriding his “pleasure circuits” in a heartbeat. But if you can generate a feeling of trust, and a deep emotional bond with the dog, he’ll slowly gravitate more and more toward wanting to feel pleasure than to re-live his old fears.

There’s another important feature built into play; it requires high levels of impulse control. And finally, rough-and-tumble outdoor play tends to release tremendous amounts of BDNFs—brain-derived neurotrophic factors—associated with brain plasticity. Depending on how much trauma the dog has experienced, I believe it’s possible that just by getting a dog with PTSD to play with you outdoors, you can begin to reverse some of the brain damage and cognitive deficits that might otherwise make the dog’s recovery seemingly impossible.

Is that all there is to it?

No, there are a few other tricks I find helpful.

Transitional Objects, Fear, and Impulse Control
Always remember that the dog with PTSD doesn’t have the same capacity for impulse control, or for learning new behaviors, as a dog who hasn’t been traumatized. That doesn’t mean he can’t learn impulse control. It just means you have to take things more slowly.

When my dog Freddie was having panic attacks I found two strategies that helped him with his symptoms during the period where I was slowly working on getting him to play with me, and teaching him impulse control tasks. One was barking on command (fighting the fear), and the other was carrying a pacifier in his mouth on our walks.

Whenever Freddie went into his panic state—which could be triggered by any number of noises—I would tell him to “Speak!” As soon as he barked he went from being a terrified pooch—ears back, shoulders down, tail tucked, trying to run off in any direction—to his usual self.

This works better in cases of fear than it does with dogs whose PTSD manifests as aggression. But it still works.

The other tactic I took was having him carry a toy of some sort in his mouth. I got the idea from seeing how some dogs I knew tended to seem less anxious when their owners let them carry a tennis ball or other object around in their mouths. It worked wonders for Freddie, and many other dogs as well.

I’ve found that by using these strategies—taking things slowly, earning the dog’s trust, teaching the dog to play, using transitional objects, and teaching impulse control—I seem to have been able to reverse symptoms of PTSD in some dogs completely.

I hope these ideas can help your dog as well.

LCK
“Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?”

1) "Traumatic stress: effects on the brain," J. Douglas Bremmer, MD; Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, December, 2006.

Free Workshop on Diagnosing and Treating Canine PTSD

The next free workshop on diagnosing and treating Canine PTSD will be held on Sunday, November 26th, 2017, at Whiskers Holistic Pet Care, 235 East 9th Street, New York, NY, from 2 - 5 P.M.

Oxytocin & PTSD

How Oxytocin Has an Adverse Effect on Dogs With PTSD

What Is Oxytocin?

You may have heard about oxytocin, a neuropeptide that facilitates social bonding in mammals. For instance, some studies show that when we pet our dogs it increases blood-serum levels of oxytocin in both the dog and owner. Oxytocin is also released when dogs and dog owners make eye contact. Other studies show that reducing levels of oxytocin causes normally monogamous prairie voles, who usually mate for life, to become promiscuous, while increasing oxytocin levels cause normally promiscuous prairie voles to become faithful companions. Oxytocin has also been connected with feelings of trust and generosity.

Oxytocin is a neuro-chemical, a hormone found in mammals, which is released in both males and females. But women have a stronger response to its effects because oxytocin is enhanced by estrogen. The corollary of oxytocin in men is vasopressin. Its primary functions are water retention and constriction of blood vessels. It also has an influence on male sexual and social behaviors as well as paternal feelings.

Oxytocin also facilitates childbirth by causing the uterus to contract and helps shrink the uterus after delivery. Oxytocin is also released when a newborn suckles at his mother’s breast. It also promotes the emotional bond that takes place between mother and child. For instance, female rats generally dislike newly born rat pups. But after they’ve given birth, they develop strong feelings of attachment for them.

When a child is born, the interactions between mommy and baby cause an increase in the infant’s levels of the hormone, creating a kind of oxytocin glow, ensuring that mother and child will form a deep and lasting bonds.

Oxytocin levels go up five-fold during sex. In men, however, they drop almost immediately afterwards while vasopressin levels go up, which explains why men often feel a sudden sense of separateness from their partners after sex.

The Dark Side of Oxytocin

In the summer of 2013 the owners of a dog I had been working with for several years had a baby. Early in his life, this dog developed PTSD as a result of serious abuse by his original owner (a male). Before the birth of their child the dog had been very careful not to exhibit any aggression toward the husband, but was biting the wife, his dog walkers, and me. Strangely enough after the baby was born, the dog began acting in a very, though obsessively “loving” manner toward the wife and baby, but became guarded and aggressive toward the husband, a complete turnaround.

Before the baby was born the couple expressed their concerns that the dog might want to bite the baby. I told them I didn’t think that would happen because, as far as I knew, oxytocin would probably have a calming effect.

Within a few weeks, though, a strange thing happened, one that I hadn’t anticipated. The dog developed a kind of obsession for mother and baby. He couldn’t be separated from them. If left alone he would whine and cry. When he was with them, he was constantly trying to lick the baby’s toes and skin and fingers. This suggested to me that oxytocin was at work, creating a bond between dog, mother and child. However, it wasn’t a healthy kind of bond at all. Like I said, the dog seemed obsessed.

Then another strange thing took place. Whenever the husband was home, especially when he was interacting with mommy and baby the dog became extremely agitated and began growling and snarling at him, something he’d never done before. They thought he was “protecting” the baby. Strangely enough (or perhaps not so strangely), the dog was fine when he was alone with the husband. They got along very well. The dog only became agitated when the four or them were together: mommy, daddy, baby and doggie.

I suggested that they keep the dog crated when the husband was home with the baby. And that the husband should take the dog on long walks, play fetch and tug with him outdoors, and work on getting him to hold a long down/stay.

Then, a week or so later I came across a study showing that oxytocin can sometimes re-awaken and even strengthen memories of past abuse. (“Fear-enhancing effects of septal oxytocin receptors;” Nature Neuroscience, 2013.)   

“Oxytocin is usually considered a stress-reducing agent based on decades of research,” said Yomayra Guzman, the study's lead author. “With this novel animal model, we showed how it enhances fear rather than reducing it, and where the molecular changes are occurring in our central nervous system.”

“So that’s what’s going on,” I thought. The poor dog’s PTSD has come back to haunt him. He’s like the war veteran who hears the sounds made by a local news helicopter, and, in his mind, he’s instantly transported back to the battlefield. This dog felt he was back in his original home with his original, abusive owner. He didn’t see the husband coming home to hurt the baby. He didn’t see the husband at all, at least not while he was near the mother and baby. All he saw was his original attacker coming to attack him.

This is a very important point, because dogs form basic templates in their minds based primarily on emotional valences. This is why, for instance, a very smart border collie featured in a famous Youtube video (above), keeps dropping a stick at the feet of a statue of Alan Turing, hoping to get the statue to throw the stick for him to chase. He doesn’t see the statue, he sees a template of a human being (or humanoid) sitting in a position that indicates he’s ready to play with the dog. For dogs, deeply emotional past experiences—positive or negative—outweigh present circumstances.

Aftermath

The dog's owners decided that the dog needed to stay with me for a while, so that I could work out some of the emotional kinks in his system. They were right. As long as the memories of past abuse were constantly being re-triggered in the now-moment by the oxytocin—which dissipates within a few months after child birth—it would be a losing battle.

So I began doing the 5 Core Exercises with him again, deliberately putting the dog in stressful situations, initially just mildly stressful. Then I steadily and gradually started injecting more and more stress into the mix so as to increase his carrying capacity.

He’s fine now, by the way, a much different dog. We’ll see if that changes if his owners decide to have another child. 

But I don’t think it will.

Lee Charles Kelley

“Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?”

Update: They had a baby girl in November, 2017. And everything is fine with the dog, mommy, daddy, and the now 4-year old boy. 

Is It Possible to Cure Canine PTSD? Yes!

Why Do Veterinary Behaviorists Believe That Canine PTSD Can’t Be Cured?

The Dogs of War 
If you’re interested in understanding or learning more about Canine PTSD, there’s a wonderful film about post-traumatic stress in military dogs called The Dogs of War, produced and directed in 2013 by Kristen Kiraly. Kiraly was a student filmmaker at the time and she did a fabulous job. You should definitely take the time to watch it. [1] 

Two things stood out for me when I watched the film. The first is that the main dog profiled—a retired military detection dog named Bix—seemed to always be carrying a tennis ball around in his mouth. [2] According to his adoptive owner, this helped calm his nerves. 

The other thing that stuck out was that the military’s top expert on PTSD in dogs, Dr. Walter Burghardt, former chief of behavioral medicine and military working dog studies at Holland Air Force Base in Lackland Texas (now retired) says that PTSD in dogs can only be treated, it can’t be cured.

In a December 1, 2011 New York Times article Dr. Nicholas Dodman said the same thing to reporter James Dao. “Asked if the disorder could be cured, Dr. Dodman said probably not. ‘It is more management,’ he said. ‘Dogs never forget.’” 

Or do they? 

Aggression Cures Fear 
My first experience with treating Canine PTSD came in 1994 when my Dalmatian Freddie began having panic attacks about a week or so following a series of deeply traumatic events, triggered initially by the loud sound of a store gate being pulled down right next to where he was standing with me on the sidewalk, and ending with him running from Second Avenue all the way to Central Park. He hid out there for three nights until a woman walking her dog found him early on a Sunday morning and called me after seeing one of the flyers I’d put up.

With the kind generosity of Kevin Behan—creator of Natural Dog Training—and a few tricks I discovered on my own (based on my understanding of Behan’s philosophy) and a little help from a Sheltie named Duncan—I was able to manage Freddie’s symptoms, though like Drs. Dodman and Burghardt I wasn’t able to totally cure Fred.

The cure came when Behan suggested a technique similar to one I’d come across before, in a book on SchutzHund, where the dog is fasted overnight and kept in his crate about 4 hours before an obedience trial. This is done to increase the dog’s drive. Kevin’s idea was a bit more extreme. He suggested that I fast Freddie for two days, then tie him to a post or a fence while a helper and I threw a ball or toy back and forth, right in front of his nose, until he became highly motivated to bite the ball. Once he was fixated on biting the ball, Kevin said I should release him from the fence, then throw the ball for him to chase and bite.

Once I got over my reluctance to fast Fred, and finally did the exercise, he never had another panic attack for as long as he lived and he was 15 when he passed away in 1997.

The reason this worked is because of three simple psychological principles and one principle of physics. The first is what Behan calls “Pavlovian Equivalencies,” the fact that there’s virtually no difference between physical and emotional memory. Pavlov’s dogs didn’t salivate as a conscious response to external stimuli, they responded through gut feelings. The second principle is the Freudian concept of repressed emotion (referred to by Behan as unresolved emotion). The third is the idea that a full release of unresolved emotion requires a level of intensity similar to that of the precipitating event (or catharsis). And the fourth is the principle that energy (in this case emotional energy) always has to go to ground.

So in Freddie’s case you have a dog whose physical/emotional memories of a traumatic event—one he couldn’t fight back against—were being re-triggered on a daily basis by a constant cacophony of street noises. Some of the techniques I used to prevent this from happening—having him bark at the noises, having him carry a toy on our walks—worked amazingly well, but didn’t t resolve the problem entirely; it was management, not resolution.

Since Fred was unable to bite or bark at the actual thing that originally scared him, the energy of that event stayed stuck in his body and mind. However, the hunger he felt when he’d been fasted for two days, and the sight of the ball being thrown past him, over and over, increased the intensity of his desire to bite it. Once he was unchained and allowed to bite the ball with all the force available to him, it a) provided a catharsis and b) allowed his unresolved emotions to run to ground.

Of course I felt terrible about fasting Freddie for two days. And he was very stressed during the exercise. But afterwards he was totally and completely cured of all his fears and anxieties. Totally. Nothing ever threw him off balance for the rest of his life. So those 5 minutes of intense stress had a positive effect that lasted for 14 years. 

The Positive Effects of Stress, New Technologies 
You’re unlikely to find any of these concepts, principles, or techniques in the veterinary behaviorist’s manual for treating behavioral problems, which is why Dodman and Burghardt believe that PTSD can’t be cured.

However, in human subjects two new methods have been shown to have an amazing ability to cure PTSD completely, at least in human subjects: EMDR (eye-movement desensitization and re-processing) and, believe it or not, the computer game, Tetris! EMDR was controversial at first but it’s now known that it can be very effective at treating PTSD. As for Tetris, researchers at Oxford University found that playing this simple video game didn’t cure PTSD completely in human subjects, but it seriously reduced the frequency of flashbacks.

Of course, you can’t do EMDR with dogs or get them to play video games. But if you can get them to play tug-of-war, in such a way that they’re totally committed to the game, and are biting down on the tug toy as hard as possible, what usually happens is that a lot of the internal stress they’re still holding on to, due to negative experiences, can be fully (or almost fully) released.

Stress is what prevents dogs from a full recovery. It’s also what causes dogs like Bix to carry a tennis ball around in their mouth. As long as they’re gripping that ball, they feel safe. 

The primary hallmark of PTSD is that the original trauma is continually re-experienced by the victim. When dogs don’t have a way of releasing their unresolved emotions, each time the stress response is triggered, or re-triggered, a cascade of hormones and neurochemicals are released into the bloodstream, often resulting in actual lasting brain damage. This is what makes PTSD one of the most difficult psychological illnesses to treat.    

However, new research shows that a little stress can actually enhance learning. “According to an idea in psychology called the Yerekes-Dodson law,” says researcher Emily Bray, “a little stress can be a good thing, but only up to a point. A task that isn’t demanding or challenging enough can make it hard [for a dog] to stay engaged… but when the pressure becomes too much to handle, performance is likely to suffer again.” (“Increasing arousal enhances inhibitory control in calm but not excitable dogs,” Animal Cognition, 2015.)

Dog trainer and natural philosopher Kevin Behan writes, “My theory is that stress, or Unresolved Emotion, forms when Emotion meets with resistance.” He goes on to say that unresolved emotions are stored in the body (via Pavlovian conditioning) as a kind of energy reserve, which Behan refers to as an “emotional battery.” When it’s triggered, it can cause a dog to re-experience a traumatic event as if it were happening again for the first time, which is exactly how people with PTSD describe their experiences.

Meanwhile, a study published in June of 2012 (“Axiomatic Development of Human Psychophysiological Stress Indices Using Thermodynamics”) re-capitulates this connection between body, mind, stress and unresolved emotion. In it the authors write, “When we look at the human psychophysiological (mind/body) system from a thermodynamic perspective, the dichotomy between mind and body states cease to exist and they become one energy system governed by the law of entropy.” A system they say behaves “like a magneto-electro-mechanical system.”

Behan writes that the biological connection he sees between thermodynamics, emotion and stress “is the only model that can smoothly encompass the phenomena of learning, sexuality, personality, memory, neoteny, evolution and domestication [in dogs].”

That’s a pretty big statement. But I believe Behan can back it up. 

Do these ideas lie outside the normal way of seeing behavior and learning? Yes, but remember, those concepts aren’t based on science, per se, but rather on statistics and how quickly a behavior is produced in relation to a previous stimulus. In other words, behavioral science doesn’t describe how learning actually takes place, it only deals in statistical probabilities and temporal contiguities. That’s why the current view of veterinary behaviorists is that Canine PTSD can’t be cured, it can only be treated. And the reason they believe that is because they’re either unaware of or uninterested in trying alternative methods that lie outside the ken of behavioral science. 

Taking Things to the Next Level 
My dog Fred’s problem was resolved a long time ago. The Natural Dog Training technology and philosophy have become much more advanced since then. That’s why I think it’s important for all dog trainers and veterinary behaviorists to investigate, test and perhaps even study The 5 Core Exercises of Natural Dog Training. 

What are they? 

1) Pushing for Food,

2) Barking on Command,  

3) Collecting,

4) Suppling (massaging the dog’s back and shoulders), and most important,

5) Playing Tug-of-War and Fetch (also called “Bite-and-Carry”).

(You can find videos of these exercises on my website; for more info see Behan’s explanation of these exercises on this blog.) 

These exercises work. They’re very effective at solving all sorts of behavior problems in dogs, not just PTSD. Behan—whose father was a famous dog trainer in the 1950s, and who has spent his entire life focused on dogs and dog training—has a reputation as America’s premier trainer when it comes to solving behavior problems in dogs. His techniques never fail to bring results. The problem for most veterinary behaviorists (and even dog trainers who use behavioral science techniques) is that none of these exercises can be explained through the philosophy behind learning theory. They can only be explained through the laws of physics, specifically, thermodynamics and Pavlovian equivalencies.

Lee Charles Kelley 
“Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?” 

Footnotes: 

1) I have a personal connection to The Dogs of War. The filmmaker, Kristen Karaly interviewed me to get my thoughts on treating PTSD in pet dogs. But while she felt my input was valuable it didn’t relate to military dogs, so all my footage ended up on the cutting room floor. (Interestingly, Kevin Behan’s father, who trained dogs for the military during World War II, wrote a best-selling book about his experiences: it was also titled The Dogs of War.)

2) If you recall, up top I mentioned that Bix, one of the dogs featured in The Dogs of War, was often seen carrying a tennis ball around in his mouth. And as long as he had that “pacifier” available, the less likely he was to have a “flashback” moment. Gripping the ball with his teeth made him feel physically and emotionally stable. As I also mentioned in passing this was one thing that helped Freddie with his panic attacks. As long as he had a favorite prey object in his mouth, he was never thrown off-balance emotionally by street noises.