“Macy sleeps on the bed with me. She sleeps towards my foot and when I have a nightmare she feels me moving around and she holds me down. And then I feel her move on me and jump on my chest and start licking me which I’m glad she does because it prevents me from turning over and thinking that my wife’s the enemy. So it protects her and protects me from doing any harm to anybody.

“Sometimes I get panic attacks. If I see an old Toyota pick-up truck, the ones that used to say ‘Toyota’ on the back – we encountered a lot of those in Somalia – that triggers it too. Macy will pick up on that, she’ll start looking at me. She’ll jump on me or she’ll give me her paw and she’ll get my focus on her, and try to bring me back down to reality.”