From Baghdad To America (11 page)

“Compared to initial screening upon returning from the Iraq war, U.S. soldiers report increased mental health concerns and needs several months after their return for problems such as
post-traumatic stress disorder
and depression, according to a study in the November 14 [2007] issue of
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
.”

—
JAMA

Routine and exercise help keep me sane,
but I know that my experiences in Iraq have changed me. When I first got back, and Lava was enduring one private training session after another, I would just watch him and Graham Bloem, who'd helped with Lava's first day in the United States. Graham is a terrific trainer who could somehow get Lava to listen to him without ever raising his voice. He'd angle his body sideways so he looked less aggressive. He worked on what he called “resource guarding,” when a dog will guard anything that he perceives as having value. It's often food, but with Lava it was also me, then Pam and Sean and Mattox. The process of coaxing Lava away from his neuroses was sort of what I imagined therapy to be like. Dog-training manuals are always big on the idea that the owner had to be trained as much as the dog, and I don't think Graham was any different. Part two of that is that I don't think I made it easy for him. He once told me, “I've worked with a lot of Marines, and it's not easy to tell a lieutenant colonel how to handle his dog, no matter what the situation.”

Sometimes during the training I'd start talking about the war. Real detailed stuff. Graham would be teaching Lava to sit and stay and I'd say something about an Iraqi soldier who died. It freaked him out. He told my editor, “He'd get very intense, and sometimes I would just think,
You've seen things that no one should have to see.
” I guess if it were up to him, he'd recommend that I get myself some help. Practicing sit and stay sounds a lot easier than therapy, though. Shall we examine Lava, then?

From the outset, Lava lived a tenuous existence, having to fend for himself amid the chaos and terror of the combat around him. His need to overprotect started in Iraq. Once Lava finally made it to Baghdad to live with Anne Garrels and the folks from National Public Radio in the Red Zone (bad-guy territory), it was as though he felt some sort of obligation for their safety (especially Annie's). He took it upon himself to be not only the sounder of reveille every morning, but also everyone's vocal protector; that is, he'd be up and at 'em at the slightest provocation, and this included a thorough episode of howling every single morning during the guards' shift change—at 0500.

He never knew when, or if, he'd eat again. And when he got that opportunity, what would be his meal? I remember how he went wild when he got his first tastes of MREs. Among his favorites was the Country Captain Chicken with Buttered Noodles. It's a barely edible rehydrated “chicken patty” served with these god-awful noodles slick with a kind of wax-like coating that they try to pass off as butter. You can warm the package with a special flameless heater: Just add water and some bizarre chemical reaction makes that little pouch hot. Slip it into the bigger pouch and you've got your dinner at two hundred piping degrees. Lava didn't mind it cold—he'd faced the possibility of eating the fetid flesh of another dog or cat or the face of an insurgent recently dispatched to the great beyond by coalition forces, so spaghetti with a side of snack bread and cheese spread, topped off by blueberry-cherry cobbler, must have seemed a feast fit for a king.

He's a dog, I know, so maybe one hunk of meat is the same as another. But really, how can a human being reconcile the idea that dogs are routinely killed during war for a combination of offenses including (1) being a source of emotional support to the troops, (2) scavenging food from the bodies of dead insurgents, and (3) existing? How is that okay? When does reality become just nightmares, and when do the nightmares become your reality? There's a very fine line, I believe, and it's easily crossed with just a slight nudge. Or worse, it's completely obliterated or obscured by the fog of war, so that you come to accept the hellish life to which you've been relegated as normal.

If anyone suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, it's got to be Lava. He can't deny it, either, like most of us humans are wont to do. I've done some reading up on this, and the fact is, most military guys will do anything to avoid going to medical. It's a fate worse than death to admit weakness. Then, on top of that, you've got to miss action. No way. Far easier to self-medicate with drugs (
prescribed or over-the-counter
) or booze. Warriors are meant to fight, not to talk or hide in bed. “WTF” is the common response to hearing that someone's gone to the doctor. In fact, pilots call the logbook they have to sign when they go to a doctor the “snivel log.” Now, what red-blooded American fighting man is going to voluntarily sign that thing?

Lava, on the other hand, is nothing but an empty vessel waiting for my analysis. And I've decided. He's got it, and he's got it bad. According to Steven R. Lindsay in
The Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training:

Hmm, sounds familiar. Let's look at Lava a little more closely, shall we, and examine which (or, more accurately, how many) of these symptoms he exhibits on a regular basis. He's got the opener, “unpredictable life-threatening trauma,” covered: Fallujah, combat zone, shooting, bombs, even a near-fatal run-in with a Land Rover in the suburbs of La Jolla.

And I've already mentioned some of Lava's overprotective behavior and his tendency to go berserk when he hears the FedEx truck coming up the street. But let's take each of the above points individually and determine its merit when placed in the context of Lava's behavior:

1. Increased sensitivity to startle/disproportionate levels of generalized or irrational fear:
Lava most certainly displays these traits on a near-daily basis. The UPS driver within the vicinity of our front door? Lava is going absolutely ape-shit, barking, hair up on his neck, all of that. He is hyper-vigilant and prone to overprotectiveness and has what I feel is a completely irrational fear of the ocean. He trembles at the prospect of being within two hundred yards of the ocean—not ideal considering where we live. It's really not that much of a stretch to imagine where his fear originated, but I keep thinking he'll realize it's just water.

2. Increased irritability and hyper-reactivity:
The most innocuous and routine occurrences—children calling to one another at the park—can turn Lava into a stark raving lunatic. Enough said.

3. A tendency to behave in impulsive and explosive ways in association with increased affective liability (mood swings):
I've observed Lava on numerous occasions when he's relaxed and napping on the floor or my stepson's bed. Life's a bowl of cherries, right? Wrong. Without warning or apparent provocation, he's going ballistic. Why? What's causing this? Who knows what evil lurks in the mind of Lava? What demons are still there? For example, Lava will be lying on the living room floor, at peace, it would seem, and one of Sean's friends knocks on the door. Innocent enough, you'd think. But Lava goes stark raving berserk. Is he reliving the experience of hearing someone knock on a door just before an RPG hit the building where he was living? I don't know what triggers these reactions, but I can assure you they're very unsettling, and it's all I can do to calm him.

4. The presence of hyperactivity:
Hyper? Who? Lava?

5. A tendency to behave aggressively under minimal provocation:
Would this be Lava running up to the first dog he sees at the park and accosting him for no reason? You and I would be locked away for some of the things Lava's done to other dogs without
any
provocation whatsoever.

The final three symptoms—(6) non-social; (7) no pain, no pleasure; and (8) depression—don't resonate with my view of Lava. He's actually pretty social, he seems to enjoy the pleasures of life (though he's tough as shit, and has a pretty impressive pain threshold), and he's not really depressed per se. But he's still scoring above 50 percent, and considering that just one or two symptoms would be problematic, I think we can safely say he's got PTSD. Like I said, his vet was convinced he needed medication, one that's made for dogs with “high levels of separation anxiety.” When I asked if there would be problems for Lava on this medication, the vet replied, “Hey, a few million people can't be wrong
.”
Let's hope he's right.

If you're still not convinced by a dog expert's analysis, let's look at what the Army has to say about PTSD:

So I guess we can check yes to all that. Does he have the symptoms of it? Again, going to the experts, we learn there are four types of symptoms:

1. Reliving the event (also called reexperiencing symptoms):
Can be triggered by sight or sound.
Check. The ocean waves crashing on the rocks at the beach take Lava right back to his unhappy place. You'd think he was going to have a seizure on the spot.

2. Avoiding situations that remind you of it:
Not sure how to measure this with a dog. My guess is that he'd prefer not to spend time in a fifty-five-gallon drum in the middle of incoming enemy fire. He's never said so, but . . . Funny, though, how this is actually the opposite of what many of us Marines might admit. After all, what are we avoiding? War? Most of us have signed up for more than one combat tour, so you can cross that off my list. In fact, even if a Marine or a grunt or whoever doesn't go back in an official capacity, many return to do other jobs. After all, how can “real life” compare to the excitement of being part of death and destruction day after day?

3. Feeling numb:
Lava is anything but numb. That's my absolute favorite thing about Lava. No matter what happens, no matter what is going on, Lava is fully engaged.

4. Feeling keyed up:
Always on the alert and lookout for danger. You can suddenly become angry or irritable, have a hard time sleeping, have trouble concentrating, fear for your safety and always feel on guard, feel very startled when someone surprises you.
They've hit the jackpot here. Check, check, and double check.

When we first got Lava back to the States, he couldn't sit still. He was always on guard, always protecting me. Later, when I started dating my wife, Lava took over protection of her son, Sean. He wouldn't leave his side. When we got married he slept in Sean's bed and continues to do so today. He's even gone after my mother because he thought she was invading the sanctity of Sean's room.

Lava barks at the smallest of noises. He goes crazy when our neighbors leave their house because he thinks they're walking too close to ours. I'm not talking about your garden-variety barking, either. This is a spine-tingling, from-the-gut, wounded-animal howl that he can keep going for what seems an eternity. As Graham describes it, “Lava has the most unbelievably unique bark. It's like a coyote. He uses it to scare people away from him. They always walk away, so that reinforces his behavior and he uses it again and again.” It disrupts the entire house. The baby cries, I yell and chase Lava, and my wife gets pissed off like no one's business, as if this entire lunatic episode is my fault. Which, I suppose, it is.

Lava lives to torment more placid dogs at the park, even if they're more than twice his size. For example, he'll introduce his
get-the-fuck-outta-my-way
bark into any dog social that might wind up with a golden retriever coming over to check us out. Lava will leap into the park, make a beeline for a new dog, and is soon barking and bouncing on his front legs as if he's got a hydraulically assisted front end. In a way it's funny to watch, but it can get embarrassing, too, and I often find myself apologizing to some poor schmuck who doesn't know Lava's story and thinks he's Cujo incarnate. Lava simply sees everyone—dogs included—as the enemy and a threat to
yours truly
, his savior and best friend (even if he thinks I'm a moron he can outsmart on most days).