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| Medric and Thai |
Terri Perrin
InfoStream Staff Writer
The 2014 Urban Animal Regional Conferences presented the second annual Innovation Showcases. Across the continent, 20 local Innovators were given the opportunity to share their stories and successes with Urban Animal subscribers. From those, eight were selected to present at the 2014 Summit for Urban Animal Strategies,
October 22–25 in beautiful Lake Louise, Alberta.
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staff writer Terri Perrin
spoke with the winning presenters to get feedback on their Regional
Conference experience, their respective ‘Pet Experiences’ and what we can expect
from them at the Summit this fall. Terri tracked down retired Canadian Air
Force Captain Medric Cousineau – known to friends and family as ‘Cous’ – at his
home in Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia, to talk about his important work matching
service dogs with retired military personnel.
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(IS): Before we get started with your ‘Summit Experience’, we’d love to know
how your personal life and ‘Pet Experiences’ lead you to be an a champion for
service dogs and soldiers. Tell us a little about your journey, including how
(and when) you were partnered with your service dog ‘Thai’.
Medric
Cousineau (MC): My life was punctuated by having dogs in our home
while I was growing up. As an adult, I consider myself a ‘dog person’ and my
wife Jocelyn a ‘cat person’. Due to an illness in the family, from 2001 to 2012
we didn’t have a dog but had four cats. The move towards getting a dog again
stems from the fact that I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) … a
result of search and rescue work done in the military. I received the ‘Star of
Courage’ for one particular incident and ironically, it was this incident that
precipitated my downward spiral with PTSD.
In 2012, a friend learned how badly I was struggling. Her son had a hearing
assist dog and the school he got the dog from also trained PTSD dogs. I was
desperate. Something had to give. We decided to give it a whirl. It’s the best
thing decision I ever made!
IS: Tell us
about your first experience meeting Thai at CARES.
It was ‘love at first sight’... according to Thai! While all of the other
dogs were wandering around the room kind of nonchalant, the second that Thai
laid eyes on me she broke from her handler and rushed across the room. She was
at my side, licking my face and on me like white on rice! This is what she had been trained to do. She
was aware of my physiological issues literally from the instant that she was brought into the room … and she’s been
doing her ‘job’ ever since.
IS: Can you
give an example of how she helps you?
MC: One of
her jobs is night terror intervention. It only took a few days for her to get
into the swing of things and start waking me up during these episodes. A few
weeks after I first got her, I woke up one morning and realized I hadn’t had a
night terror … and I had a panic attack about that! (Laughs.) Thai helped me
through that episode, too!
IS: How did you
come up with the idea for the Paws Fur Thought Program?
MC: I knew
within a couple of months that Thai was making dramatic changes in my life.
Just after Christmas 2012, Jocelyn and
I were out waking Thai. We decided that
we had to do something to help others. To ensure accountability with funds
raised, we approached the Nova Scotia Nunavut Command of the Royal Canadian
Legion. They established the foundation and they administer all funds and
provide tax receipts, as well as allocate the money to veterans so they can
acquire dogs from accredited facilities. The name – Paws Fur Thought – is a
play on words … basically meaning ‘dogs helping with mental issues’.
IS: How is it
funded?
MC: We put
together a ‘Walk to Sanity’ that started on August 1st, 2013. Thai
and I averaged a ½ marathon every single day for 50 days. We walked across Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec ... raising money and awareness along
the way. We covered 1,065 kilometres and raised about $90,000 from that. Other community partners have come
on board. Global Pet Foods HRM’s, Lucie Larochelle, for example, heard one of
our interviews on CBC. She named us the company’s ‘Show Us Your Heart’ chosen
charity. Petcurean came on board as a result of Lucie’s participation and, from
that, it is just starting to snowball!
We have a half dozen fundraising events coming up in the next few
months.
IS:
How is it that you came to be a presenter at the Atlantic Regional Summit?
MC: I was shocked ... and pleasantly surprised … when PetLynx actually
contacted me! Somebody had heard my story and said ‘Here’s a guy you need to
listen to.’ I didn’t even realize the implications of what I had agreed to, in
terms of the potential opportunities that would arise from it. When I learned that
I would be going to Lake Louise, as an Innovation Showcase winner, it was like
a dream come true! I get to tell people exactly what it is that we are trying
to do. God smiled and said, “Go there and tell ‘em your story.” It could be
being held anywhere in the world and I would be happy to go.
IS:
Was this your first Summit for Urban Animal Strategies. What did you think
about it?
MC: For me, the networking was very important. Talking about
animal sourcing and hearing some of the challenges within the industry was very
interesting because it was something I’d never thought about before. A lot of
what happens in the urban animal industry is about animal rescue. We were a
little bit different in that we were using animals to rescue humans. I would
rate the experience totally PAWsome!
IS:
What do you hope to achieve by being an Innovation Showcase presenter at the
national Summit in October?
MC: While Paws Fur Thought is primarily focused on the
military but the need for psychological service dogs covers what a group of
communities. There are all kinds of places where PTSD can rear its ugly head. I
like to refer to what I call ‘Red, White and Blue, A and A’. This represents
fire fighters, emergency responders and RCMP (police), as well as assault and
abuse survivors. I’m just one guy … a smashed up guy with serious mental health
issues at that … and I know that I can’t do this all on my own. At the National
Summit I am going to make an effort to find people who want to do what I have
done. I will give the blueprint to repeat what we have done, so that they can
go home and champion their own cause in their own communities.
During the interview, InfoStream learned that Cous and his service dog
The Human Animal Bond Research Initiative (HABRI) Foundation published a systematic literature review on Animal-Assisted Intervention (AAI) for trauma in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. The findings demonstrated that the animals helped ease anxiety, reduce depression, and mitigate symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
