“Whenever there’s a dog missing it pulls at our hearts that a dog has gone away and we’re going to find that dog,” said Marianne Ponce, a volunteer helping search for Therapy Dog Nahla, who went missing.

Nahla’s reassuring smile helps her handler/owner Hernando Quandt manage his post-traumatic stress after serving four years in the military. The dog helps Quandt cope with his post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in the Marine Corps and without her he’s lost.

“We really miss her,” said Quandt. “She is an emotional support animal. I am a veteran of the Marine Corps. We didn’t get her for that reason, but we realized what a benefit she was.”

“It’s almost like she could sense when I’m kind of in the middle of one of these episodes and she’d lick me or come and make the physical contact she made with me (that) kind of pulled me back,” he said.

Nahla disappeared from the owner’s Chula Vista, CA home last December while the couple was out of town visiting a sick family member.

“…She’s not just a pet to us. If she was just a dog to us, we’d just go get another dog,” wife Vivian Quandt said.

Source: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Local-Marine-Holds-Vigil-for-Lost-Therapy-Dog-300599241.html#ixzz3Y4TnHC6P