W
Operation Freedom Paws
How Training Dogs Helps Veterans Heal
Written By Jordan Rosenfeld
hen retired
former
Army
veteran,
Mary Cortani, a resident of San Martin,
found herself let go from a job in high
tech for the first time ever in 2001, she
decided to reinvent herself by drawing
upon her years training dogs in the ser-
vice and offer basic obedience training
to owners. When a struggling marine
called her up, desperate, searching for
a service dog and someone to help him
train it, Mary cautiously offered to help.
“I could tell in his voice that if some-
body didn’t step up and help him, he
probably wouldn’t be here today,” she
told
TODAY.
That first offer turned into several
more through word of mouth and
within less than two years she’d trained
39 veterans and started the seed of
Operation Freedom Paws, a non-
profit organization that pairs dogs and
military veterans with varying forms
of PTSD; teaching them how to train
their own dogs. She has been officially
licensed as a non-profit organization
since 2011. In 2012, Cortani was
gmh
34
awarded a Top 10 Heroes award from the
CNN Heroes program, which “celebrates
ordinary people making extraordinary
contributions to improve the lives of
others,” according to the website.
The Psychological Scars of War
Military veterans often return from
deployment with deep psychological
wounds as well as physical injuries.
Symptoms of post traumatic stress
disorder, or PTSD, can range from
depression, anxiety, and panic attacks to
nightmares, which can lead to isolating
from important relationships and
secluding themselves in their homes.
Veterans, as well as law enforcement
and first responders like fire fighters and
EMTs, experience “a moral injury,” Cortani
said. “The soul has been damaged from
having to make a conscious choice to pull
the trigger or to do something that goes
against your moral compass. It causes
harm on a deeper level.”
These psychological injuries have
long-lasting, life-altering effects that
even therapy or medication alone cannot
always heal. At Operation Freedom Paws’
compound in San Martin, Cortani and her
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
JULY/AUGUST 2017
staff pull dogs from shelters and rescue
centers after a thirty-step assessment, and
match them to veterans through a process
her assistant calls “alchemy.” Cortani
insists it’s just basic reading of people
through body language, deep listening,
and compassion.
Service dogs are typically trained by
giving them tasks they can alert to, such
as guiding a person who can’t see, or
helping balance a person with mobility
issues. Cortani was convinced she could
find a task for the dogs related to PTSD.
“I thought, if we can teach dogs to
smell drugs and explosives, then why
can’t we train them for the human
chemistry?”
In fact, they could. In a person
with PTSD, normal everyday sights,
sounds, and smells can trigger a flash-
back, wrenching them from the present
moment and dropping them back into
the event of their trauma. “As that sight
or sound is occurring, the chemistry
in their body shifts,” Cortani said. And
before it becomes a full blown crisis,
the dogs can alert their person to help
break the cycle. Dogs can help guide
their people away from a crowd that
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