Loyal Companion Helps a Veteran With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder By Sarah Kramer and Meaghan Looram A Companion for the Journey: Tori Stitt, a former Navy officer who did a tour in northern Iraq, relies on the companionship of her golden retriever to aid her recovery. SAN DIEGO - The hovering aircraft was just a plain-vanilla traffic chopper, a benignly common species to Southern California skies. But its mere presence overhead was enough to make Tori Stitt stiffen. More than a year ago, Ms. Stitt, a former Navy officer who did a tour in northern Iraq, might have made a beeline for her car, ducked under a table or broken down in panic merely from the chopping of rotors - a sound she still associates with combat casualties. But this time, she remained outwardly calm, breathing deep, while silently and strenuously massaging the ears of the service dog at her feet. The moment was one more small victory in Ms. Stitt's road back from war. Medications and therapy have helped her cope with, though not overcome, the depression, sleeplessness and anxiety caused by post-traumatic stress disorder. But nothing has been more important to her recovery, she says, than Devon, the amiable golden retriever that has become her constant companion. "It doesn't matter what bad things are going on, I can pet Devon, give him a hug, and they turn around 180 degrees," Ms. Stitt said. Ms. Stitt is among the many thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan whose P.T.S.D. cases are considered chronic: so severe that treating the disorder into remission through standard practices - usually prescription medications and cognitive or exposure therapy - is expected to take many years. It is not surprising, then, that many of those veterans are turning to alternative treatments like yoga, acupuncture, herbal remedies and massage therapy to relieve symptoms enough so that they can return to work, maintain relationships or simply function day to day. None have proved more popular than service dogs. Organizations have sprouted up in many military towns to provide dogs at little or no cost to veterans with P.T.S.D. or traumatic brain injury. Businesses and nonprofit groups created to train dogs for the blind or autistic have shifted into veterans services. And Congress has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs to study the effectiveness of service dogs as P.T.S.D. therapy, with some lawmakers looking to require the government to help finance training, which can cost more than $15,000 a dog. "America wants to take care of its veterans," said Lu Picard, founder of East Coast Assistance Dogs, which trains service dogs. So it can be easier to raise money for a veteran than for a man who has a spinal injury from a car accident. There is little scientific data showing that dogs relieve the symptoms of P.T.S.D., though several research projects are under way. And skeptics say that dogs cannot possibly treat the underlying disorder, where memories of traumatic events trigger potentially debilitating symptoms. But many P.T.S.D. experts say that there is much anecdotal evidence that dogs make veterans feel better - and that may be enough. "If the point is to treat a person into remission, we have no evidence that service dogs can do that," said Alan L. Peterson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and director of Strong Star, a research consortium on P.T.S.D. "But in terms of just coping, they might help." Ms. Stitt, 31, grew up in Florida, attended Norwich University in Vermont on an R.O.T.C. scholarship and was commissioned as a Navy officer in 2002. While working on a guided-missile destroyer, she was recruited to join an Army engineering battalion in Iraq because she was familiar with sophisticated electronic equipment. Her job would be to oversee the operation and maintenance of devices used to detect or jam remotely detonated roadside bombs. She was excited by the prospect of joining a unit that would bring her as close to combat as a woman could get. But her very first mission outside the wire, in 2006, proved disastrous. Her unit was returning from a patrol when a bomb exploded beneath a vehicle, injuring several soldiers. A firefight broke out, and within minutes helicopters swarmed overhead. Confused and terrified, Lieutenant Stitt froze, unable to react to orders or even get out of her vehicle when the fighting was over. "The Navy did not prepare me to see that," she said. I was completely ineffective in that mission. I couldn't do anything. I was powerless. She asked to be sent home, but her commanders said no. So for the next several months, she went on bomb-searching patrols almost daily. By the end of her tour, she felt toughened. But she had also seen more casualties. And she was racked by guilt and shame for having failed to prevent bombs from exploding and for breaking down emotionally in combat. "I blamed myself a lot in theater for things that happened," she said. Even if I had no control over it.