I always like to reframe ptsd as post traumatic sane display. Okay the acronym doesn't translate exactly but the problem is that ptsd is generally a sane response to an insane situation or behavior by another so immoral it is not understandable to most of us. This hit me when a friend of mine characterized his parents, concentration camp survivors as suffering from ptsd. It occurred to me that the survivors of a concentration camp should not be the ones considered ill, the perps should, and yet we just considered them, um well, normal and too many to face criminal conviction each and everyone, hit the big dogs and f*ck with the survivors...maybe if W. and Dick Cheney had to go through mandatory weekly therapy, sign the confidentiality release and such, and all soldiers got huge lifetime pensions and secret service body guards, war wouldn't happen quite so much...

meanwhile, at least the combat ptsd sufferers get pets. Perhaps this will make one of my pet projects, making it illegal for section 8 housing to ban pets, more popular.

Cool stuff. You know, it's always fascinated me why PTSD is seemingly so much more prevalent since Viet Nam. I mean, I know it had to have strongly existed in World War II and Korea, but it didn't seem to be as big an issue. Or maybe it was just more of a closet issue. Anyone, what's the diff over the past forty years or so?

I saw a story on TV a while back about a similar program and it was amazingly moving. The vet in the show had a head injury and severe PTSD after being hit by a bomb (or right near a bomb) and had a dog that could bring him out of the catatonic state he would go into when he heard something that reminded him of bomb going off. It was incredible. The man's wife said even she could not break him out of that state but the dog could by licking his face. Animals are so healing on a level that goes way deeper than verbal communication.

Rumor has it that one of the major pharmaceutical giants has mixed activated dog saliva with an anti-psychotic to form a brand new block buster drug.

Though it is still in early stage clinical trials; insiders say it's going to be called sero-drool.

Sally,
As a person with PTSD, thank you, although part and parcel with that diagnosis is the knowledge--at last--that you are NOT crazy. Which is kind of crazy of the mental health system, I suppose. No one I know, even in my unenlightened state, who has that diagnosis has not heard about PTSD being "a normal response to abnormal trauma." For me, at least, the traumatic basis of it was the first time anyone ever acknowledged the fact that I was actually *reacting* to something.

Bill White,
I remember my mother telling me stories of the WWII vets she knew with "combat fatigue." These men were never the same. The most poignant tale was of a woman who ended up divorcing her husband because he repeatedly tried to strangle her in his sleep (or perhaps during unacknowledged night time flashbacks, who knows?).

The trauma of war hasn't changed much, I think. So yes, I vote for a "closet" diagnosis. We incest survivors have the Viet Nam vets to thank for PTSD coming out into the open. I was working in rehab in the late 70's-early 80's. The VA was drugging the crap out of these guys. But they refused to go away, refused to shut up. They eventually gave up on the VA and started their own rap centers. They brought trauma-based stuff out into the open and provided the rest of us a fine example of what you can do when you depend on yourself and refuse to shut up and take what society dishes out.

This is an interesting posting to me. I am very connected to dogs, often it seems more than to people. Abuse of dogs gets to me in a way nothing else does and I know it's connected to my own abuse issues.

Not to sound allover shallow or anything, but I have been caring for a traumatized chicken this past week. She is the sole survivor of a weasel attack. Weasels are vicious killers, very bloody and kill everything in sight. (Mink do the same, but stack the bodies neatly for some reason.)

The owner of this hen must be totally clueless. She left the poor thing in the same hen house for 3 days after the attack! Birds have very acute senses of smell and I cannot imagine what it was like for her to be surrounded by all that blood, waiting for the weasel to return. And they always do so I don't know how she's still alive, really.

A woman my sweetie works with badgered the owner into giving us the hen, who hadn't eaten or drunk anything since the attack. The outlook was grim. I put her in a large wire dog kennel, consulted with my vet and other chicken people. I dribbled water into her beak with a pipette, then took to dipping her beak into a cup of water to get some into her.

She somehow stayed alive. The general consensus was that she was traumatized or perhaps had some internal injury, but the former was more likely. She behaved like no other chicken I've ever seen--just stood in one place, displayed no interest in anything on the ground, didn't bend over or peck (hens usually peck ceaselessly), ate nothing. She really did have a 1000-yard stare. It all seemed pretty hopeless. It was almost as if she'd forgotten how to be a chicken.

She did get mad at me for forcing the water but she also looked surprised when she took her first drink, as if she'd forgotten how good it feels to have some water. I decided any emotion was good. I got so desperate I brought another hen in for a day from the coop in hopes it would remind her of her roots. Since she wouldn't bend over to peck I elevated her food--tried everything, including milk and Scotch broth. A friend gave me some fat from a pig they'd just slaughtered--no sale there.

She finally took two bites of a leaf of lettuce I offered her. The look on her face was amazing, again as if she'd forgotten how good food could be.

Last night we came home and the hen was no where to be found. I'd left the top off the dog crate, since she never moved. I finally found her comfortably ensconced on top of Mr. Duck's desk! She'd eaten the bit of elevated scratch food I'd left her, also hopped up on a nearby card table and knocked over a spare bowl of scratch. I put her back in the crate and she proceeded to drink, eat more scratch and (drum roll, please) *bend down* to peck at some layer pellets on the floor of her crate!

She's not terribly animated today, but I do believe she's going to make it. The thing I find so uplifting about all this is that for decades I've known that what I need when I get off kilter is to be left along to "right" myself. At some point I decided that since I could do nothing much to help this bird directly, I would provide her with the time, space and whatever physical care I could think of so she could heal herself.

She's a barred rock, a pretty black-and-white striped breed with great personalities. I hope she gets to peck at bugs in the grass in the sunshine this summer.