Thank you very much, Crystal.

Let me add a couple of things. First of all, it is true that having a psychiatric service dog does not in any way have the evidence behind it to call this a treatment or a therapy, in fact. We consider it more as what we might call an adjunctive treatment or a complementary treatment to the evidence-based treatments for PTSD, major depression or whatever condition the dog is helping the veteran with. I think that's the first important point.

The second point I want to make, though, is that this issue is complex. It is not a benign issue. Let me tell you one anecdote that happened. When I was still in uniform back in 2014, I was given the service dog file, and I started contacting the service dog organizations in Canada to find out what they were doing and to talk to them a little bit about their programs.

One of the workers I spoke to told me a story. They had trained a service dog for a veteran or a serving member. A person had taken that service dog home, and they usually do follow-ups for a while to see how the person is doing. When they went to the person's home, they found that the service dog had not been fed and that the person was very incapacitated. I wonder if it was a major depression. The person was not able to get out of bed. They weren't taking care of themselves very well, and they weren't able to care for this dog. I asked, “What did you do?” She said, “We took the dog back.” Of course, my next question was, “What happened to that person who was left there in the home?” That, I don't know; she wasn't able to tell me that.

I think it just illustrates that this is not a simple issue. Having a dog also means that the person has to be in a stage of recovery where they can also take care of a dog, take care of that responsibility. I think there are a number of well-being issues that sometimes veterans have that may compromise their ability to do this. It's not a benign procedure to give somebody a dog. I think there are a lot of issues to be considered here.

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