[Music]
in terms of psychological therapy
there's still a massive treatment Gap in
Ukraine as well as there being NGS
offering more traditional trauma therapy
methods there are some that offer
alternative methods we're here to meet
Hero's companion that trains service
dogs to pair with veterans to help them
with their
[Music]
trauma this is Vladimir and his dog G
Vladimir is a psychologist and worked
special needs children before the war
but now he's uh training gar to work as
a service dog to help himself and the
plan is to train other dogs to help
other Veterans as
[Music]
well
[Music]
after your deployment finished how did
Gara help you with what you went
through
[Music]
so what's Vladimir doing with G now so
right now vet is doing some um obedience
training so it's very important that the
dog is um obedient to the veteran that
she's trained for so right now he gives
her a treat every time she she looks him
in the eyes all right because you want
to train the dog that it's good and
they'll get praise and they'll get
positive reinforcement if they look if
they're constantly looking at him in the
eyes and this is very important because
for a veteran for example with PTSD
anything can set him off at any time so
you want the dog to constantly be
watching and assessing the veteran to
see how he's doing and to see if they
the dog would need to react so if say a
veteran was having a ptsc flashback or
whatever it was how does the dog react
once it realizes that there's a problem
okay so uh there's a few things that the
dog can do if he's walking in public
let's say and there's uh in a park and
there's a lot of unknown people around
and he starts getting a panic attack
anxiety attack the dog can actually be
trained to uh if the veteran says Exit
then the dog does the thinking takes
over the thinking and it finds a way
away out away from uh the crowd of
people it's quite incredible that dogs
can do that and notice the the sort of
the minute I guess in some cases changes
to the to the veterans Behavior right
and that's why it's so important to have
to do basic obedience training very well
so that the dog can pick up and read you
like a book they say so how did Hero's
companions start working in Ukraine uh
well basically um I was following the
situation on the front very closely and
I started noticing more and more story
surfacing and picture surfacing of
battalions adopting stray dogs on the
front and um at the same time I was
working on a a rehabilitation project
it's con project here in Ukraine and I
was very acutely aware of the need for
not only physical rehabilitation but
psychological have you found it uh
genuinely that in Ukraine veterans and
soldiers are a little bit adverse to
kind of opening up about any
psychological trauma issues yeah so in
Ukraine um the idea is that the man has
to be very strong and he can't show any
signs of weakness so it's very difficult
initially especially for many veterans
to open up and say look something's
going on and I think an even bigger
problem is that they themselves don't
know what's going on I mean up until the
War Began PTSD was a foreign Concept in
Ukraine not many people knew about it
and still many people don't know what it
entails and um uh how to deal with it so
um the dog essentially breaks down
barriers we've seen and it helps
automatically calms everyone down and
it's a really good way to start
conversation with someone it builds a
bond and trust with them a lot faster
than it would happen without the
[Music]
dog