The US Navy’s Newest Stress Reliever Has Four Legs

Chandigarh: The US Navy (USN) has devised an unconventional response to the psychological strain imposed on sailors, Marines and fighter pilots during prolonged deployments at sea: it is basing ‘comfort’ or ‘therapy’ dogs aboard some of its major warships – most commonly Labradors – to offer onboard personnel companionship, relieve stress and, when necessary, encourage them to seek professional help.

This canine initiative has acquired particular relevance in recent years amid the service’s experience of exceptionally prolonged deployments in the Middle East.

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, for instance, which left San Diego in November 2025 and was subsequently diverted from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, has now been at sea for more than eight months. 

Over the past few weeks, media reports have emerged in which families of sailors aboard the carrier have described several incidents of personnel, amid the mounting pressures of their extended deployment, trying to jump overboard. In one case, a shipmate reportedly intervened to prevent a sailor from going over the side in an apparent suicide attempt following the cumulative pressures of months at sea.

Both the Pentagon and the USN acknowledge the exceptional psychological strain imposed by the deployment on those aboard Lincoln, but maintain that adequate support is available to address it. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth too has dismissed reports of worsening morale and mounting mental distress among the crew as “completely misrepresented”, as has Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao.

Against this backdrop, the USN’s shipboard canine programme looks considerably less whimsical than it might at first appear. The dogs are not there to guard ships, detect explosives or chase down an enemy, but to make life a little easier for the thousands of men and women living and working on these ships at sea.

The shipboard comfort-animal experiment began in May 2023 under the USN’s Expanded Operational Stress Control Canine pilot programme, when Sage, a three-year-old female yellow Labrador retriever, was deployed aboard the newly built 100,000-tonne nuclear-powered USS Gerald R. Ford, the lead ship of the USN’s newest class of aircraft carriers. Ike, a second Labrador, followed later that month aboard USS Wasp, a 40,000-tonne amphibious assault ship capable of operating helicopters, tilt-rotor aircraft and F-35B fighters.

Together, the two warships offered the dogs a potential audience of around 8,000 sailors and Marines – roughly 5,000 aboard Lincoln and some 3,100 normally assigned to Wasp. The results of Sage’s eight-month continuous deployment aboard Gerald R Ford became clearer in late 2024, when Stars and Stripes, the US military’s newspaper, reported that she had recorded more than 18,700 direct interactions with military personnel aboard the carrier.

Moreover, in 911 of those cases, the encounter with Sage was followed by many of these seeking additional mental-health support. Besides, sailors also requested Sage’s presence during more than 3,300 counselling sessions, suggesting that the Labrador had become an unusually effective bridge between sailors and professional counselling.

Online accounts of Ike’s deployment aboard the smaller platform offered further anecdotal evidence of the three-year-old Labrador’s therapeutic value. A July 2023 Defence Health Agency account reported that sailors appeared visibly less stressed after interacting with him, with one sailor saying he needed Ike’s non-judgemental comfort after a difficult day. His handler described him as a “crew stress reducer” and “common denominator”, noting that sailors often walked away in a more positive frame of mind after interacting with Ike. 

The encouraging experiences with Sage and Ike subsequently led the USN to extend the experiment to other warships. However, the service continues to treat the programme as a pilot project whose longer-term effectiveness is still being evaluated. Taking the initiative further, however, means more than simply putting a friendly Labrador aboard and letting it mingle with the crew, as considerable preparation goes into making these animals fit for life at sea.

Designated handlers look after the dogs and arrange their interactions with sailors, while the animals undergo extensive preparation for the peculiarities of shipboard life. 

They are trained to negotiate steep and vertical ladders, narrow passageways, watertight doors and metal decks, and to acclimatise to the noise, vibration, machinery, alarms and sudden movements routine aboard a warship. Ike, for instance, designated a lieutenant commander, was taught to negotiate Wasp’s ladder wells and become accustomed to its constant activity, and was equipped with goggles, ear protection, a life vest and booties. The dogs are also trained to remain calm around large crowds and aircraft operations and to respond reliably to their handlers amid the bustle of a carrier or amphibious assault ship.

Once aboard a warship, the dogs’ job is considerably simpler. 

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A sailor returning from a gruelling watch, a pilot climbing down from a demanding sortie or someone simply having a bad day can be brought within the dog’s orbit by a handler – or the dog can be taken to them. A few minutes of stroking the animal, throwing a ball or simply sitting beside it can provide an uncomplicated break from the relentless machinery, noise and demands of life at sea.

For pilots in particular, the transition from the concentration and adrenaline of an operational flight or mission to the quiet ritual of kneeling beside a dog can provide a remarkably effective form of decompression, experts said. They said that unlike humans, the animal offered neither advice nor judgement, only an eager tail, a wet nose and an uncomplicated interest in whoever happens to be in front of it. In that brief encounter, the warship can feel a little less like a fighting machine and a little more like home.

Online accounts of the dogs’ daily lives aboard these ships suggest that, so far, each participating ship has had just one Labrador, and on a carrier carrying several thousand personnel, that single animal can be surprisingly busy. It has no fixed office and certainly no conventional working day: it moves between mess decks, passageways, hangars, counselling spaces and, where appropriate, the flight deck, accompanied by its handlers and summoned when a sailor, pilot or even unit needs it.

Hence, over the course of a deployment, the dog can- and often does- end up becoming a celebrity – recognised by sailors it has never met, greeted by name in passageways and, occasionally, treated as though it were the ship’s most approachable senior officer. But between these encounters come walks, meals, grooming, exercise and training, with the dog’s routine carefully managed so that it remains healthy, rested and responsive.

The idea that dogs could serve this purpose, however, was developed long before the USN began taking them to sea. It dates back almost two decades to military medical work at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington, DC, where personnel discovered that dogs could have a striking effect on wounded and traumatised service members.

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As Janet A. Aker reported for the Defence Health Agency’s Health.mil in 2022, the US Defence Department’s first facility-dog programme began in 2005, when then-Army Sergeant Harvey Naranjo, working with injured Special Forces personnel in a therapeutic horse-riding programme, noticed how dramatically the soldiers responded to the dogs at the stable.

 “These tough guys,” Naranjo recalled, would suddenly relax, play with the animals and “put their guard down”. He saw a “true personality emerge” from service members who had previously been extremely reserved. “I thought of how much more I could do for them if I had a dog,” he told Aker.

The idea quickly became reality.

A hospital volunteer found Naranjo a chocolate Labrador named Deuce and, as Naranjo later recalled, “before I knew it, there was a dog in the clinic.” An earlier 2008 US Army account, by Elizabeth M. Lorge, independently recounts an episode in which a retired Army veterinary officer who overheard Naranjo’s suggestion helped make it happen. Deuce became the first therapy dog assigned to a US military hospital and went on to work directly with amputees and other wounded soldiers, helping them with mobility, prosthetic exercises and rehabilitation.

What began with one Labrador and Naranjo’s hunch gradually developed into a formal military facility-dog programme, with dogs becoming part of rehabilitation, physical and occupational therapy and behavioural-health care for wounded service members. 

By 2007, trained dogs were also being used alongside occupational therapists in deployed combat environments. They were not there as conventional military working dogs but as ‘co-therapists’, accompanying medical personnel and helping soldiers cope with battlefield stress. US Army accounts from the Iraq era too recorded an effect that was simple but striking: soldiers smiled, relaxed and began talking more openly when therapy dogs were brought into stress-management groups. The dogs did not replace professional treatment, but helped foster an environment in which treatment and conversation became easier.

That experience eventually found its way to sea.

In late 2022, Captain Chris Purcell, then executive officer of the USS Wasp, began working with the non-profit Mutts with a Mission to establish a facility-dog programme aboard the ship. Other Navy commands became interested, leading to the Expanded Operational Stress Control Canine pilot programme that produced the aforementioned Sage and Ike. 

For millennia, dogs have accompanied armies, serving as guards, trackers, messengers, sentries and, at times, combatants, their loyalty and instincts making them valued companions as well as useful military assets. From ancient armies to the trenches and battlefields of the modern era, they have guarded camps, carried messages, detected danger and searched for the wounded.

In recent decades, however, military medicine has gradually discovered another capability, harder to quantify but potentially just as valuable in a different context: a dog can change the way human beings behave around it.

That seemingly simple effect can be particularly valuable in the enclosed and intensely demanding environment of a warship, where thousands of personnel may spend months coping with the strains of an exceptionally prolonged deployment. A dog aboard cannot solve those complex problems, but it can offer a brief respite from them – and sometimes simply bring a badly-needed smile to those it encounters.

After all, for most of us, a tail wag, a proffered paw, a lick and a few minutes of uncomplicated companionship can go a surprisingly long way.

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