What You Need To Know About The PAWS Act

President Joe Biden signed the PAWS (Puppies Assisting Wounded Servicemembers) Act in August 2021. According to the Veterans Health Administration, the Act will be beneficial to those who served in the military and have been “struggling with mental health conditions.” The 5-year pilot program will pair veterans with service dogs, who “are trained to assist people with PTSD, panic disorder, anxiety disorders, depression and other conditions.” These pups will be able to perform a plethora of tasks, including contacting the authorities in case of an emergency and “help[ing] with emotional overload.” 

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Over five years ago, the current Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis began pushing for the Act to be passed in Congress. While speaking to Fox News in March 2016, DeSantis discussed why he believed veterans needed to have free access to service dogs. He shared that these trained animals “actually make [the veterans] situation better.” 

During an August 2021 interview with Scripps National News, Rory Diamond, the CEO of K95 for Warriors, a nonprofit dedicated to helping veterans, discussed how the PAWS Act will benefit servicepeople. 

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“The downward spiral of post-traumatic stress is terrible, depression, isolation and keeping at home a service dog just opens up the world again. I've seen it hundreds of times now. We see a warrior start going back to school or going back to work they start to be a good mom or good dad again, go to their kids school. It’s unbelievable. They start to become the people they used to be before they went off to war,” explained Diamond. 

Leanne Nieforth, a Ph.D. candidate at Purdue College of Veterinary Medicine, also discussed her findings regarding how veterans may benefit from service dogs. 

“We found that veterans with service dogs had a cortisol awakening response, so that’s the response of cortisol when you wake up in the morning, similar to individuals without PTSD. So service dogs are trained to alert a veteran when they are having an anxiety attack and this task is actually the most used in a day and it helps with the most PTSD symptoms,” said the grad student. 

Photo Credit: Unsplash/Artem Labunsky