--- title: How Dogs Help Veterans Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress | TIME description: Struggling with post-traumatic stress, veteran David Sharpe says he found a dog at a shelter that saved his life. Now, with a group called P2V, he pairs other vets with rescued pets. canonical: https://time.com/video/8gW0ZGsw/ og:title: How Dogs Help Veterans Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress og:description: Struggling with post-traumatic stress, veteran David Sharpe says he found a dog at a shelter that saved his life. Now, with a group called P2V, he pairs other vets with rescued pets. og:url: https://time.com/video/8gW0ZGsw/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/8gW0ZGsw/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Dogs Help Veterans Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress twitter:description: Struggling with post-traumatic stress, veteran David Sharpe says he found a dog at a shelter that saved his life. Now, with a group called P2V, he pairs other vets with rescued pets. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/8gW0ZGsw/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # How Dogs Help Veterans Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: How Dogs Help Veterans Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress [Watch (HLS stream): How Dogs Help Veterans Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/8gW0ZGsw.m3u8) (5:11)  _Published 2010-11-11. Struggling with post-traumatic stress, veteran David Sharpe says he found a dog at a shelter that saved his life. Now, with a group called P2V, he pairs other vets with rescued pets._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:07 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Dogs Mirror Stress Levels of Their Owners](/video/IaflIOh2/) ### Dogs Mirror Stress Levels of Their Owners [Marine Vet Priscilla Juan Empowers Post-9/11 Veterans](/video/dLoG5vv3/) ### Marine Vet Priscilla Juan Empowers Post-9/11 Veterans [The Mouth Guard That May Help You Cope with Stress](/video/vPDmx9Mz/) ### The Mouth Guard That May Help You Cope with Stress --- ## Transcript >> Cheyenne is my savior. She is the love of my life. She has always been there for me through thick and thin. Oh, I woke you up. Oh, now, you're up. Uh- huh. My name is David Sharpe, and I served for six years in the United States Air Force, Security Forces. It all started right after 9 / 11 when we got forward deployed again to Uzbekistan, and a couple of our buddies didn't make it back. And so, I went-- I came back home finally in March of 2002 and I pretty much segregated myself from my family and friends. My friends-- We would go out, they would say, " Hey, Dave, do you want a beer ?" I'm like, " No, I'm good. I'm gonna cruise around this bar and when I look at-- the first guy who looks at me longer than two seconds, I'm gonna pop him ." They said, " We can't hang out with you anymore, Dave. You're out of control ." I was like, " Fine, I don't need you any ways ." So, my friend came over, and he said, " Let's check out this Pit Bull Rescue ." I said, " Oh, yeah. I want a-- I'm a fighter. I want a fighting dog ." I go down there, and there's this one puppy that's not paying me any mind, but all the others are all around me. And then I remember, she came over to me and she, like, licked my hand, sniffed it, and left. And then she came-- just laid back down in the dirt in the opposite side of that pen, and I said, " I'm gonna get her ." Cheyenne, you remember that? Come here. Come here. Come here. Come here. You bum! You're a bum. You are a bum. She's a baby. This is a baby! Big baby. This is her. I brought her home, and about a couple weeks later, she witnessed me punching the holes in the walls and beating up the refrigerator door, and this was normal for me during this time. I see this little tail, out of the corner of my eye, and I look down at her, and she's looking at me, you know, doing this back to-- waving her head back and-- back and forth, and I looked down at her, and I just picked her up and took her back to my bed and just started crying and talking about everything that happened, what I experienced, what I'm going through. And it felt like a 10, 000- pound weight was lifted off my chest. It literally did. >> When I first got back from my deployment, I remember we were sitting in a coffee shop, and I just felt like everything was closing in on me, and I just wheeled myself out of the coffee shop as soon as possible, and I just sat back and waited for it to blow up. I was having flashbacks. These were crazy. I'm like cut down little-- I ended up picking up Zapper from the P2V foundation. There are certain things that, you know, I only talk to Zapper about. Not that I don't think my family understands or wanna hear. Come here. Come here. It's just that, you know, you always have that thing, " Will they judge me over this or not ?" -[ unk ] over there? >> Yeah. A little bit. >> You know, you just really don't want to tell your story to somebody. You got these doctors who've not-- you know, they've heard it, they haven't seen it, you know. So, you just talk to your dog, man. Talking to Zapper, he just lets me get it off my chest and get it out there. >> Eighteen veterans commit suicide each day in this country. Eighteen. Also, on the other end of this spectrum, there's 4 million animals, sheltered animals, killed in this country every year. So, that's what we do. We take 4 million, and we pair them up with 6, 500 per year. It's kind of like a Match. com between a shelter pet and a veteran or emergency first responder. This little guy was used for fighting. He was a toy for other dogs to beat up on and they don't have a choice. And right of the-- Sorry. What a better companion to have than a veteran, like us, or a firefighter or a police officer to help this little guy out, right? He has the physical scars on the outside, but we have the mental scars on the inside, so that's where we heal each other and meet in the middle of the road, you know? I could share anything and everything with her, unconditional love. And so, really, like, I got a good family that loves me, friends that love me-- I love you -- and I got her. Come here. Sit. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"How Dogs Help Veterans Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress","description":"Struggling with post-traumatic stress, veteran David Sharpe says he found a dog at a shelter that saved his life. 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