Veterans Struggling After Sexual Assault Increasingly Turn To Service Dogs
Editor's Note: This story contains descriptions of alleged sexual assault.
Guiding her cart down an aisle of a Virginia grocery store, Leigh Michel attracts more attention than the average shopper.
"Do you know where the dog food is?" one man asks her. This kind of attention makes her uneasy.
"No, I don't," Michel answers. "Sorry."
The man assumes Michel would know the answer because her service dog, an English black Labrador named Lizzy, is walking at her side.
He's not the only shopper watching Michel and Lizzy. Some skirt around them in the bread aisle ("Oh, she won't bite," Michel assures one woman), and others ignore the boundaries of typical service dog decorum near the condiments.
"Is she friendly?" a man asks, reaching out to pet Lizzy and launching into a story about his mother's service chihuahua.
Michel indulges him briefly, tells him to have a good day and moves on.
"Without [Lizzy], I wouldn't even be talking to the cashier," Michel says as she approaches the checkout. "So I guess she's actually kind of my trainer, getting me to talk to people."
Michel is a retired first sergeant in the U.S. Army, where she
