T
he US Army has implemented a new policy that places many new requirements for a soldier to have a service dog. This is at a time when a veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes and active duty soldiers are killing themselves at an all time high rate of one per day. See this Huffington Post’s “The Daily Rundown” from June 7th of this year.
The new policy is apparently in response to a 6-year boy being killed by an alleged service dog owned by a soldier at Fort Campbell. Obviously that was not a real service dog and there is a problem in the military and in the VA with bogus animals being passed off as fully trained service dogs. Guidelines are needed for the dogs and as this article makes clear, education is needed for the base commanders that allow harassment of soldiers with PTSD who need service dogs. Learn more about this controversial Army policy from this US News feature story.
These men and women should be commended for their determination to continue serving in spite of their injuries. Continuing to deploy them into combat however does not make sense to me.
