Have you been in a car accident with your dog? Is your dog now acting weird, like refusing to go into the car again? Fido may be suffering from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Scoff if you will, but this diagnosis for dogs, especially those shell-shocked from military duty, is becoming, if not all the rage, at least more commonly accepted by military veterinarians as real. It’s not some quirky, quack description for what ails your pet.

Military Dog PTSD has only been detailed and described as a possible affliction for canines in the last year and a half or so – but it might make eminent sense. After all, if humans go bonkers dealing with snipers, improvised explosive devices, and buses and buildings having been blown to smithereens, why wouldn’t the trained dogs thrust into all of that go a little batty too?

5%.

That’s the percentage of the 650 military dogs used by the US military that may be developing PTSD. The German shepherd, Labrador retriever and Belgian Malinois are most commonly used as Military Working Dogs (MWD).

What can possibly cure PTSD? Rest and recuperation. Anti-depressant drugs, or anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax.  Retirement. Re-training and counter-conditioning. This latter one, frankly, sounds too cruel for words though the experts, theoretically, know what they are doing. Basically if a dog becomes “gun shy” after hearing a loud bang it is slowly brought back to deal with the noise from a great distance away, and at a low level of volume. If the dog doesn’t head for the hills, a reward is given. And the procedure is repeated within closer distances and higher volumes – you get the idea.

If the dog doesn’t get the idea and flinches – he is put out to pasture. Nobody wants to mess with these dogs’ heads absolutely more than humanely necessary.

The whole dog PTSD-thing made the news back in 2010 with Gina. When the well schooled German shepherd returned from a tour in Asia she was frightened and didn’t want to deal with anything or anybody. Thus began a slow rehabilitation to bring her back to snuff. As luck, skill, and patience would have it, Gina was approved to serve again.

It may seem over the top to try to bring a dog back – but their deeds are so invaluable, and save so many lives – and if they are on their game they can give around 10 years of service – that the military feels an onus to save their investment. Dogs like this don’t grow on trees – every dog counts. It takes about 14 weeks for a dog to learn to smell a new odor. It costs between $20,000 to $60,000 to train a dog. “In the eyes of the Air Force, the dogs are considered valuable property, like an F-16 Fighting Falcon…”

But count on this. The military knows the military working dogs that have been scared silly quite possibly will take years of careful conditioning therapy to recover, for the frontlines say, if they recover at all. If they can’t make it all the way back to the jobs they did before, they can hold jobs in less pressure packed areas, like military bases back home.

No matter where the military dogs are, army vets monitor their health and sanity weekly. If the dogs are working in (metaphorically and literally) hotspots like Iraq, they have special cooling packs to wear when temperatures soar.

These dogs are versatile, when on their game, away or at home. Take Nero. Nero usually hangs at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. But the German shepherd was pressed into duty with the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. Nero zeroed in on 25+ pounds of cocaine in a hidden compartment under the backseat of a car on the US-Mexican border.

Score.

Full bore: terrorists are vicious, not vacuous. They don’t like to mess with these dogs. Small wonder. These dogs have a crushing bite, exerting a pressure of up to 400 pounds of pressure per square inch. So the bad guys flinch and use bombs instead.

Which brings us back to dogs with PTSD. If anybody knows about this phenomenon it’s  Dr. Walter F. Burghardt Jr., chief of behavioral medicine at the Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dog Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base.

Lackland trains, and sends out for duty, about 500 dogs every year. But when troubles arise on the front Dr. Burghardt’s diagnostics come via Skype or email. He can’t be everywhere at once. But he must be prepared for every kind of canine-reaction to stress for these animals, like humans, will show unique repercussions to the mayhem and madness of battle.

It’s too bad dogs can’t kick back, relax, and bark the breeze, woofing and bragging about their exploits. Sure would like to be a fly on the wall when the dogs that helped track down and kill Osama Bin Laden retold their tale of triumph.

They’ll likely retell their heroics from the age of 1 to 2 years, when they were selected to be Military Working Dogs. They’ll recall their times in Texas at the Lackland Air Force Base, where they spent 2 to 3 months of training “to detect and to deter” via controlled aggression.

With dogs like this that old saw: Dog is Man’s Best Friend should be turned around. Man should be lucky to be a dog’s best friend. All MWD handlers would agree with this. Their work together is more than a finely honed and tuned symphony under chaotic, frantic situations, it is a bonding of shared experiences and training that have them working, if things are working smoothly, as one.

The one and only K9 or K-9, anyway you spell it, is fine.