NEW START

We’ve always known that dogs are a man’s (or a woman’s) best friend but the Defence Community Dog (DCD) program is taking steps further and saving lives too.

Working alongside the Bathurst Correctional Centre, the Defence Community Dogs program is teaching inmates to train dogs to enable the dogs to become Companion Dogs for Australian War Veterans who are suffering from combat induced Post-traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD), as well as other mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. All the dogs in the program are rescued from local shelters and pounds.

PTSD is a pervasive and incapacitating condition, affecting many of our returned service men and women.

Often experienced as unbearable emotional pain, debilitating depression and overwhelming and paralysing anxiety involving terrifying flashbacks and nightmares, research indicates that 30 per cent of troops deployed for