Our canine companions offer many of us an endless source of fond memories and amusing anecdotes. But for some of us they offer so much more.
Of the 60,000 registered veterans in our country, approximately 10 per cent suffer from PTSD, and of those 6,000, about 600 would qualify for a service dog.
The demand for service dogs across the country exceeds the supply, despite the tremendous work being done by groups like the Vancouver Island Compassion Dog Society (VICD).
On Aug. 19 at 3 p.m., a town hall on the topic of service dogs for veterans will be held at the Stan Hagen Theatre at North Island College in Courtenay.
The event will be hosted by the Courtenay-Alberni Federal Liberal Electoral District Association, in conjunction with the North Island-Powell River EDA.
Presentations will be made by Barb Ashmead from VICD, Jan McNeill, a registered clinician specializing in trauma and addiction, and Brian and Trooper, Brian’s service dog.
“We hope that this town hall will help draw attention within our riding to the exceptional work being done by VICD. We also want to inform citizens how they can participate in the process that makes further support for this initiative a policy of the governing party of our country,” says Scott Harrison, chair for the Courtenay-Alberni EDA.
The riding association has created a policy proposal for the government to invest a modest amount of funds to improve access to service dogs for veterans suffering from PTSD across the country.
For more information, go to http://bit.ly/2vAjCSh