Mr Gleadhill was prepared to take his own life, after post-traumatic stress disorder and battling the bureaucracy exhausted him. 

"Canem actually means we're having this conversation," Mr Gleadhill said, whilst tears filled his eyes. 

"One day I was sitting here, rock bottom, with a bottle of pills on the table. 

“He came and put his paw up on my leg and I thought, 'who's going to let him sleep in their big bed?'," he said. 

“I just thought, 'no mate', gave him a pat, [and] put the pills in the bin."

Mr Gleadhill, 67, said since he learnt how lifesaving an animal could be about six years ago, he decided to bequeath half his estate to Dogs’ Homes of Tasmania. 

He said the other half would go towards Big Ears Animal Sanctuary, after he read about owner operator Jacqui Steele's battle with terminal cancer. 

Mr Gleadhill said having to prove the war had mentally incapacitated him to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to receive entitlements had been demoralising. 

Mr Gleadhill served with the navy during the Vietnam War between 1970 and 1971.

The stint on the Royal Australian Navy vessel HMAS Perth irrevocably impacted his psychological well being, and his life. 

The war desensitised Mr Gleadhill and his colleagues to violent sensory experiences.

"The guns go day and night," Mr Gleadhill recalled. 

"If the guns stop all of a sudden and we know there's a night shoot on, everybody's awake and they listen.

"Then, bang, a gun will go off and you can actually hear them start to snore again."

As is the case for many veterans, the anxious attitude instilled during the war never left Mr Gleadhill.

He returned to Australia overwhelmed and on-edge.

He wasn't aware of it immediately, but he would be affected by post-traumatic stress disorder long after he arrived back in Australia. 

"The publicans thought I was great, I hit the bottle pretty bad," Mr Gleadhill said. 

"I wanted to stay in the navy until they threw me out because I was too old, but then they introduced pay scales," he said.

"There was a mass exodus...a lot of us were just straight off to the pubs."

Mr Gleadhill worked as a concreter, and spent every lunch hour at the pub, occasionally even making a morning dash for a drink. 

He had an epiphany, and realised his frequent excessive drinking was detrimental to his quality of life. 

"I walked into the hotel, 1pm, and one of the old barflies said, ‘we were going to send the cops out for you, you're two hours late,’,” Mr Gleadhill said.

“Eleven o'clock, I'm in the pub everyday...that's when I realised 'what can I do?'.”

Mr Gleadhill acquired his heavy vehicle license, which forced him to curb his alcohol consumption. 

Ten years ago Mr Gleadhill, who’s originally from the New South Wales South Coast, moved to Queenstown, Tasmania, and pursued his passion for model trains.

It was whilst living in Queenstown that he saw an advertisement for a puppy, Canem, in a shop window. 

The Australian shepherd kelpie cross will turn nine on Monday. 

Canem was the runt of the litter, and Mr Gleadhill knew the pair would be best mates. 

The duo go everywhere together, and Canem provides Mr Gleadhill strength.

The two of them live together at Mr Gleadhill’s Branxholm home.

"This little man here is my everything," Mr Gleadhill said. 

They moved to Branxholm five years ago, and Mr Gleadhill said he developed an appreciation for the sense of community. 

"I grew up in a town about the size of [Branxholm], and then it became popular...it went from 200 to 2000 people,” he said.

Mr Gleadhill recently joined Mates4Mates, a non-for-profit group that provides support and rehabilitation for current and former members of the defence force. 

Mr Gleadhill said the group would help him connect with other veterans, and could inspire new hobbies and interests.

"I've got the extensive model railway, and they're going to track down people in the area that are interested in that," Mr Gleadhill said. 

"With Mates4Mates...there's other things that I might be interested in too that I don't know about, that I could get involved with."

Mr Gleadhill is also a member of HMAS Perth Association and the Vietnam Veterans Federation of Australia, and he said mental health issues are pervasive among veterans.

"We get a lot of suicides...with a lot of it, it's not the war, it's after the war...there is the war and the PTSD,” Mr Gleadhill said.

He has never lost his sensitive reflexes, especially since a near-death incident at sea during the war, when a 35 kilogram shell fell near him while the HMAS Perth was ammunitioning. 

Mr Gleadhill was recently going through the supermarket checkout when someone knocked a box of lollies to the floor. 

"I screamed 'look out', ducked and ran for the door, and that was only a couple of months ago,” Mr Gleadhill said.

“[But] the incident was in 1970 so I felt a real goose."

These days, Mr Gleadhill is thankful for his salvation, Canem. 

He believes plenty more can be done to support veterans who are still impacted by mental and physical afflictions when the war is over. 

Lifeline: 13 11 14

The Sunday Examiner is currently examining veteran affairs in an ongoing series: Veteran compo clash