To My Friends:

Please accept this note as personal, even though the address is to a group.

I need to tell you what God has done, and is doing in my life in the past few weeks. It is something which I wish to share, for it is very unique and very meaningful to me.  Bear with me, please, and try to overlook all the personal pronouns herein.

I came out of WWII, having been in the 509th Composite Bomb Group, Air Photo Unit, which dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan and also the larger atomic test bomb at Bikini. Thousands of folks were killed in a split second, mostly women and children; some 130,000 at Hiroshima alone.  I know that we had to drop those bombs and I know also that most of those killed, or would be killed, would be women and children.  This fact has lain on my mind and heart since WWII, and I came out of WWII with what is known now, as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) with 50% service-connected disability.  During my last months in the Army Air Corps, I spent several months in two hospitals in the Pacific and two in the States.

If you do not know how PTSD affects people, go to Google and type in those four letters.  One terrible effect of PTSD is horrible nightmares.  I have had them now for some sixty years. There is no "cure" for this malady, which I have known for many years.  After I got out of the Military during the years of 1944-1946 I went back to college and had a heck of a time trying to sleep at night.

It was a battle in which God allowed me to endure.  I just asked Him for grace to get through those awful nights in order to prepare for the Ministry. Through four college degrees I was plagued with eternal nightmares.  The same was true afterwards when I was pastor of The First Baptist Church, Watsontown, PA. and when I was Dean of a Bible College in Owatonna, MN, and later Principal of a large Christian High School in the Denver area. I kept all these nightmares a secret, except from my wife, for we had to learn to sleep in two different bedrooms for the nightmares would awaken her.  We have slept in two different bedrooms now for some thirty years.  I kept from my family the nightmares and attending effects of PTSD for I was embarrassed at the constancy of their reaction on me.

During those many years the nightmares became worse, and around the year 2000 the effects of them became so great that the long-kept secret had to surface.  I started going to the VA Center in Biloxi, MS for help, which I finally began to receive.  Psychologist and Psychiatrists did little to help. Medication, such as Paxil, did afford some amelioration, but not enough so as to begin to be a normal human being.

Now, here is the reason for this note to my friends!

Within the past three weeks, I have had almost no nightmares.  Allow me to explain!  My Boston Terrier, Muggsy has begun to sleep between my legs as I sit in my Power-Lift Chair (Can't lie down due to terrible back pain, even though I had surgery on the lower back, so have slept in such a chair for nine years).

Muggsy has learned, somehow, when a nightmare begins and he awakens me by standing on my chest and licking my face, and will not allow me to go back to sleep. I must get up and out of the chair for him to let up.  Since he awakens me when the nightmares begin, I have no recollection of the nightmare and can avoid the hour of time following a nightmare, the time in which it takes to  get on an even keel again!

Someone has been praying for the release of these nightmares in my life and God has used a four-legged dog to do what no Psychologist or Psychiatrist can do, and Muggsy never went to school, much less to get a degree in some Behavioral Science, at Harvard or Mississippi State or the University of Mississippi, or any other college!  For the first time in some sixty years, I have been released from the terrible Mares of the Night!!!!  You have no idea how my life has changed over the past three weeks.  I doubt if you can ever know the relief which a little dog, and a BIG GOD has brought to an old veteran's life. I stand amazed how God has brought about this miracle in the latter years of my life.  I had to share this personal miracle with my friends.  I can't keep it a secret, nor do I wish to do so.  Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!

It is my intention to share this with the folks at the VA Hospital, for some 16% of returning veterans from Iraq suffer from the same PTSD as military people from WWII, the Korean War, Viet Nam, and all the Gulf Wars.  I have never heard of a dog being able to do what Science cannot do, yet it is true.

You can bet that Muggsy gets the best food which money can buy and always plenty of good fresh cool water.  I talk to him about God and what God has done through him, but he shows no evidence of being able to understand.

Thus ends the saga of Doug and the Dog...the only difference between the two is one "U"!  Forgive me for all the personal pronouns.

"A true friend is one who reaches for your hand and touches your heart." So many of you have "touched my heart", and I am grateful!

Cares & Prayers,

Doug Caffey