Army veteran Brad Schwarz uses a service dog, Panzer, to help him cope with issues related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) he has experienced since returning from a 2008 tour in Iraq. In addition to suffering from PTSD, Schwarz has memory loss related to Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and he must walk with a cane because of vertebrae and nerve damage in his back and legs. Ten days before he was scheduled to rotate home from a 15-month deployment in Iraq, his second, the Humvee in which he was riding was struck by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). Of the 5 soldiers riding in the vehicle, which caught fire after the explosion, Shwarz was the only one to survive.
