This Air Force officer is the reason dogs are being used to heal veterans’ PTSD
"Every kid has a dream to be an astronaut," Air Force veteran Molly Potter said. "But by college, these dreams become less and less important for most. That was not so for me."
Potter attended Embry-Riddle to major in Space Physics and Space Engineering. While there she tried to start a military career in Army ROTC, but soon found it was not for her. Many of her friends were in Air Force ROTC. She liked the mentality and decided it was the best way to get to where she wanted to be.
"I was a 13-Week Wonder," Potter says. "I loved it and a quickly did my best to be come a stellar officer."
She and her then-husband were "poster airmen" at Eglin Air Force Base. He was an AC-130 navigator who deployed all the time; she was a weapons specialist, awarded Company Grade Officer of the Year in her first year. By the time she was promoted to first lieutenant, she had caught SOCOM's eye.
Going from her desk job to deploying to Southwest Asia with the US Special Operations Command was far from Potter's comfort zone.
"They gave me a gun and a backpack and basically told me to go," Potter recalls. "I was essentially a one-person band out there with the Army and Marines. I didn't realize what I was experiencing."
And she experienced a lot, even for a munitions specialist.
"Afghanistan was the place I felt most respected on all levels," Potter says. "The men in JSOC and SOCOM were utmost professionals. They only cared that I did my job, and they needed me to save their asses on occasion. I had the same respect they had for me."
One night, as the sun went down, a rocket attack knocked Potter out. A cement barrier saved her life, protecting her from the frag.
Like many veterans of recent conflicts, the blast caused her traumatic brain injury. Little was known then about the effects of blasts on the brain, and she was sent home without a diagnosis.
After her deployment, she was assigned as a flight test engineer with test pilots, the next step in her path to becoming what she wanted since childhood. She attempted to numb herself from the emotional turmoil.
Her role was quick-turnaround acquisitions for special operations missions. Watching the munitions she procured from the airplanes or from monitors and how they killed combatants on the ground, even seeing what she calls 'the Faces of Death,' coupled with seeing her own life flash before her eyes changed the way she saw her role in the war. Her whole life was dedicated to becoming an astronaut, but here she was engineering ways to make killing more efficient.
"They were supposed to be getting this star officer," Potter remembers. "Instead, they got a struggling officer, fresh from Afghanistan, who wasn't sleeping or eating, and whose marriage was falling apart." She refused to take leave yet struggled with this difficult program, full of the world's best pilots.
Her memory started to fade, and she couldn't even get through a day's work. It hit her one day when she was driving home from after flying military aircraft on military orders, but suddenly couldn't remember how to get home.
"I realized then I needed help," Potter says. "But I didn't want to lose my clearance, my career. But my commanding officers started to notice there was something wrong with me. I wasn't really there." It all came crashing down in 2013, when a motorcyclist ran into her car in Las Vegas and Potter suffered a total mental breakdown. Her leadership realized what was happening.
"I was lucky my command realized I had a problem," Potter says. "Instead of disciplining me, they told me 'the Air Force broke you and the Air Force is going to put you back together.'" Recovery soon became her full time job.
"I was a high suicide risk," Potter admits. "Therapy was very tough for me. Halfway through, I started to stall. I was having nightmares. Even with my mom there, things were not going well. I was suppressing all this awful shit and having horrible nightmares. That's when I got Bella."
Bella is Potter's "100 percent American Mutt." When Potter experienced intense Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and refused to leave the house, it was Bella who forced her to go outside. She had to be walked, after all. Bella also had to be fed, watered, petted, and cleaned. She became Molly Potter's reason to get out of bed, to get out of the house.
"She slowly started bringing my life back," Potter says. "I started realizing she was waking me up in the middle of the night when I was having nightmares. She prevented my panic attacks and my night terrors. I started progressing with my therapy and becoming myself again." Bella's effect on Potter was so strong, her therapist suggested she train Bella as a service dog, and that's exactly what she did.
In the meantime, the Air Force began to wonder what to do with Potter. She did lose her clearance and could no longer fly, but she didn't have disciplinary issues, so her command wanted to work with her to help her find a new Air Force role or help her transition to the civilian world.
In her preparation to leave the service, she started to work at the Airmen and Family Readiness Center at Nellis Air Force Base, to help troubled Airmen and families or help those who were also transitioning. Bella would come with her, to keep her calm and bring her back in case of a panic attack or breakdown. The families visiting the AFRC loved her, but not everyone was a fan of Bella in the workplace.
"I got a lot of pushback for this service dog," Potter says. "There was no regulation for service dogs and uniformed personnel."
A potentially troubling situation took a turn for the best one evening, as Potter brought Bella to an Air Force Association Symposium in Washington, DC. She happened to run into Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh and then-Secretary of the Air Force Eric Fanning.
She told the senior leaders how great her therapy was and how the Air Force PTSD therapy helped her. Then she told them about her concern for regulations regarding service dogs and that one should be written. They both agreed. Now active duty Airmen and Soldiers on PTSD therapy can use working dogs to help them cope as an accepted practice.
"Bella saved my life," Potter says. "She changed the tide of my therapy and gave me the confidence to be Captain Potter again."
The CSAF and the SECAF gave their full support and attention to this issue and Potter now uses her story with Bella as a way to help promote getting help while in the military.
"It's not the only way, but it was my way," Potter remarked. "I was anorexic, divorced, and suicidal. Five month changed my life. I had horrible experience in Afghanistan, but by the time I left the military, I was happy, sleeping and had a support network to start a new life."
Potter now lives and works in Austin, Texas. In her spare time, she volunteers with the Air Force Association and works to match service dogs to other veterans facing the struggles she once faced.
"I still think women on the battlefields is a positive thing," she said. "War isn't in the trenches anymore and women bring a more creative, sometimes necessary softer tone to the fight. In the future, critical thinking could be crucial to winning and I think women in these roles bring new solutions to the problems surrounding war."
