Dogs suffer in combat same as humans do and that’s not just from wounds and fatigue, it’s from battle shock too: from post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the dogs in the US Marine’s 58 strong dog team has got canine post-traumatic-stress disorder according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

As bomb-sniffers the job is very high adrenaline and very high stress, and one, Gunner has completely cracked under the conditions in Afghanistan. Like with humans, some can take it, some can’t.

Gunner is a yellow Labrador and he doesn’t want to go outside. He is “combat-ineffective”. While he could cope with gun-fire in the training camps, the steady rumble of artillery and gunfire in the combat zones turned his mind pretty quickly and the dog became skittish and incapable of doing the job that he had been sent out for .. shaking and cowering at loud noises – a disability that renders him incapable of working.

Other flashpoints for dogs include the breakdown of a dog called Zoom who stopped trusting humans and responding to orders after he saw a Marine shoot a local dog. Zoom has been coaxed back to service, but it shows how psychological factors are big for dogs just like they are for humans.

And that while dogs might in peak physical condition and intelligent enough to cope with anything thrown their way, sometimes they’re not psychologically strong enough to take it.

Salute to the forces human and canine fighting wars…