triggers,” says Sharpe. Vets, used to
IEDs, don’t like surprises. “We like to
see what’s coming at us.” Say a vet is
punching in his PIN at an AT M: “The
dog watches the rear while we watch
the front. It’s a team effort, like we do in
the military. If someone comes close,
the dog signals the vet. If the vet gets
startled, the dog nudges him with his
body and brings the vet back to reality.
He’s a reminder that you’re not over
there; you’re over here. You’re home.”
Travis Warren is one of more than
3,000 soldiers C4H has helped. His
two-year-old Plott hound, Cooper, “can
sense when you’re having a bad day,”
he says. And Warren has had his share.
A Marine, he served a stint in Ramadi,
Iraq, in 2006, when it was dubbed the
most dangerous city in the world. War-
ren escaped numerous firefights with-
out any physical wounds. “PTSD is
what I brought back with me,” he says.
It manifested itself in night terrors. “I’d
wake up in a dead sweat.”
Now Warren rests easy at night.
“Cooper sleeps in the bed with my wife
and me. He’s always touching me with
his paw or his back. And I feel a lot bet-
ter with him there. I have not had one
night terror since I’ve had him.”
Sharpe’s dog, Cheyenne, passed
away four years ago. Sharpe, who is
now married with two young children,
has a new dog, Darby—an Australian
shepherd/Australian cattle dog/Lab
mix. Like all C4H dogs, Darby is a res-
cue. The real question, of course, is:
Who rescued whom?A month later, he tried it again.
This time he made sure the door was
closed—with Cheyenne on the other
side—but not locked. He wanted to
make it easy to find his body. But
somehow Cheyenne managed to
climb back into Sharpe’s lap before
he could harm himself. “I got chills,”
he says. “How did she get the door
open?” That night, he put away the
pistol for good.
A staggering 16 veterans die by sui-
cide every day. An estimated 670,000
shelter dogs are euthanized each year.Given his experiences with Chey-
enne, Sharpe thought, Why not bring
troubled vets together with troubled
pets for their mutual benefit? In 2009,
four years after he left the service, he
started Companions for Heroes (C4H).
The idea was simple: Veterans suf-
fering from PTSD would find shelter
dogs, and C4H would reimburse all
adoption fees and have the dogs
professionally trained to assist with
stress inducers such as traffic and
crowds.
“Noises, car backfires, a glass
drops on a restaurant patio, those are“THE DOG WATCHES THE REAR
WHILE WE WATCH THE FRONT.
IT’S A TEAM EFFORT,LIKE WE DO IN THE MILITARY.”
74 june 2019
Reader’s Digest