Power of Puppies: Advocates Promote Canine Care to Treat Veterans' Mental Health Conditions

Rick Yount remembers meeting a veteran with severe post-traumatic stress disorder who wouldn't leave the safe confines of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he was being treated. Yount, founder of Warrior Canine Connection, a nonprofit that supplies service dogs to veterans, handed over a puppy to train.

From that day forward, the service member would need to take the young golden retriever everywhere -- stores, crowds and Washington, D.C.'s Metro transit system, with its steep escalators that frighten even the most docile dogs.

"He was teaching the dog that the world was a safe place and the only way he could teach the dog ... he had to convince himself at the same time. It changed everything," Yount said.