Riding Shotgun

You know it's serious when the dog is riding shotgun twitter.com/SEALofHonor/st…
— SEALofHonor (@SEALofHonor) April 26, 2013

Help get our Miss " Sandy " Stateside........

Hope all had a good Easter Sunday -

Here is the mission - The pup that we have here in Afghanistan will be heading to her new home in Seattle. She was abandoned here on the side of the road in Kandahar but was taken in by the staff at the camp where we stay near KAF

 

The staff here named her " Xena " but I preferred to call her "Sandy"

 

She's with NOWZAD Dogs  ( www.nowzad.com ) and is in Kabul preparing to head home once she is medically cleared and they have her ready.

 

YOU can help my making a small donation to help with the $4000 it will cost to get her stateside.

 

Any amount is appreciated, no matter how much as I know $$$ is tight these days.

 

You can donate at http://www.gofundme.com/nowzad-xena

 

The website is paypal and it allows you to make a donation securely.

 

She's a great pup and deserves the life that she will have living in the US.

 

I appreciate all who assist and I rarely (if ever) ask for people to donate $$ but this is one little pup who is well worth it.

 

Thanks again.  With many hands lifting, this little girl will get a chance to live a " dog's life " with a family who will love her always.

 

 

 



Sandy needs a home in the USA

I have found a new friend here in Kandahar and she is a real cutie.  Sandy is a fat little ball of fur and very loving.

What I would like to see is if there is someone there in the states who would like to give her a forever home in the US?  I have some help stateside who will work with us along with Nowzad Dogs www.nowzad.com to get her stateside.

The main thing would be to have a family who will want to give her a home.  We need a family who will want Sandy and give her a chance for a better life.  That will also help with the process of getting her to the US.  She needs a family who wants her first and foremost.

The cost is between $4000-5000 and would need to be raised via donations.  I know that no one person would be able to provide the full price but if you would like to help Sandy, many others will also donate to help.  I have a few dog rescue groups who have offered to assist with the fundraising also.

So here is what we need - what can you do to help??  IF you can help or have a home for Sandy, send me a message.  I know that there is someone out there who would like to help.  If you give her a chance, she will work her way into your heart.

Again, send me a note via US NAVY JEEP and hopefully there is a family for Sandy out there.

Maria Goodavage pens a tribute to our K9 Warriors - "Soldier Dogs"

Here's a book that should be on the reading list of all who value the special relationship we share with man's best friends, our K9 companions.

WAR DOGS - an amazing tribute to man's best friends in peace and in war. Bravo Zulu to our troops and their 4 legged shipmates.

An excerpt from Maria Goodavage's book "Soldier Dogs"

By Morning Joe Staff

-

Fri Mar 16, 2012 8:26 AM EDT

7 a. m., just north of the town of Safar, Afghanistan, and Fenji M675 is already panting. Her thick, black German shepherd coat glistens in the hot August sun. Fenji is out in front of ten marines, leashed to a D-ring that’s attached to the body armor of her handler, Corporal Max Donahue. He’s six feet behind her and holds his rifle ready.

Fenji leads the marines down the flat dirt road, past the trees and lush vegetation in this oasis amid the deserts of southern Afghanistan. She ignores the usual temptations; a pile of dung, a wrapper from a candy bar. Her mission doesn’t include these perks. Her nose is what may keep them all alive today, and she can’t distract it with the trivial: Coalition forces have been sweeping Safar of insurgents and their bombs, allowing the Safar Bazaar marketplace to reopen and locals to start living normally again. The Taliban had to go somewhere else. So they headed north. And they planted improvised explosive devices (IEDs) like seedlings, among the poppy fields and grape fields and off to the sides of roads, under thick weeds.

Around here, any step you take could be your last.

---

And that’s why Fenji is in the lead, walking point. IEDs are the top killer in Afghanistan— even with the highest technology, the best mine- sweeping devices, the most sophisticated bomb- jamming equipment, and the study of “pattern of life” activities being observed from remote piloted aircraft. But there is one response that the Taliban has no answer for: the soldier dog, with his most basic sense— smell— and his deepest desire— some praise, and a toy to chew.

“Seek!” Donahue tells Fenji, and they continue down the road, leading the men from the 3/ 1, (Third Battalion First Marines). She walks with a bounce to her step, tail up and bobbing gently as she half trots down the road. Every so often she stops and sniffs a spot of interest and, when she doesn’t find what she’s seeking, moves on. She almost looks like a dog out on a morning stroll in a park. Donahue, in full combat gear— some eighty pounds of it, including water for his dog— keeps up with her.

Fenji stops at a spot just a foot off the side of the road. She’s found something of great interest. Without taking her eyes off the spot, she sniffs around it swiftly and her tail starts to wag. Suddenly she goes from standing up to lying down, staring the entire time at the spot. The men have stopped walking and are watching her. Her wagging tail kicks up some dust. Everything is silent now. No more sniffing, no crunching of boots.

Suddenly a hushed, enthusiastic voice cuts through the dead quiet. “Fenjiii! That’s my girl!” In training exercises, Donahue is a lot more effusive, but out of the respect for the bomb, he makes his initial praise short and quick, calls her back, and they “un-ass” from the area. It could be the kind of IED someone sets off from a distance, not the type that goes off when you step on it. One of the marines marks it with a chartreuse glow stick, and they move on.

Within the next hour, Fenji alerts to three more roadside bombs. Donahue lavishes her with quiet praise every time. Twice after her finds, shortly after they get away from the bombs, he tosses a black Kong toy to his dog and she easily catches it. She stands there chewing it, reveling in the sound of Donahue’s praise and the feel of the hard rubber between her teeth and the gloved hand of her best pal stroking her head. Life doesn’t get much better than this for a military working dog. These are the moments they live for, when all the years of training, all the hard work, come together.

“I’m proud of you!” Donahue tells her, and he means it, and she wags hard. She knows she’s done well. She’s been with him for seven months now, and she has a great fondness for Donahue, her first handler, and he dotes on “my sweet girl.” She liked him from the moment they met at Camp Pendleton back in February. Nearly everyone who meets Donahue reacts the same way. There’s something about his big personality, his love of life, his dry humor, the way he looks after you. Fenji fell right in with him, and he immediately took to her. She was young, bright, eager to learn from him, and he swears she has a sense of humor. He once said that she gets his jokes before his friends do.

That’s probably because she tends to wag in his presence regardless of jokes. She’s just happy to be near him. She’s three, he’s twenty- three, and together they’re a formidable bomb- finding force.
Their bond might contribute to their success on missions. She sleeps at the foot of Donahue’s cot every night out here; she joins him for card games with the other marines; she eats next to him at the patrol base where they’ve been stationed during this mission.

He lets her have some of his food “because my girl deserves it.”

The explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) technicians usually accompany the squad but had been called to another spot this morning. They’re on their way back to investigate the IEDs and defuse them. Donahue and the other marines go into action to protect the EOD techs in case of an ambush. They take positions to secure the area.

Donahue finds a great spot for his sector of fire, at a Y in the road. Its wide open here, and he can see a few hundred meters around him. He fills Fenji’s portable bowl with water from his CamelBak. As she laps it up, he lies belly down, propped up on his elbows, and positions his rifle. He’s facing away from the field where some of the other marines are. He’s got a tiny village about two hundred meters away in his sights. If there’s trouble, that’s where it could start. A quenched Fenji lies down beside him a few feet away, and they wait.

The EOD techs arrive and get to work, carefully digging up the first IED, about one hundred meters from Donahue. One wrong move and they’re done for, and the Taliban adds another tally mark to its scorecard. One of the techs extracts the bomb from its hiding place and bends over it to take a look. Down the road, Donahue adjusts himself slightly to get more comfortable.

Three klicks south, in Safar, Corporal Andrei Idriceanu hears a terrible explosion as he and his dog sweep a building for explosives. “That could not be good,” he thinks, but he tries not to think about it too much.

Excerpt from SOLDIER DOGS © by Maria Goodavage. Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Loyal K9 attends church every day waiting owner's return after her death

There is no greater love & devotion than that of our 4 legged friends.

I would like to be able to give this pup a hug as he deserves many, many hugs.

Loyal dog attends mass every day at church where owner's funeral was held, waiting for her to return

• Tommy, a German shepherd, had been adopted by Maria Lochi as a stray
• He would accompany her to church everyday and sit at her feet

By Nick Pisa
PUBLISHED:15:50 GMT, 16 January 2013 - UK MAIL

 

A heartbroken dog whose owner died two months ago is missing her so much he is attending services at the Italian church where her funeral was held patiently waiting for her to return.
Loyal Tommy, a seven-year-old German Shepherd, belonged to Maria Margherita Lochi, 57, and had been her faithful companion after she adopted him when she found him abandoned in fields close to her home.
Mrs Lochi adopted several strays she found but friends said she developed a particular close affection for Tommy and would walk to church with him from her home every day - where the priest would allow him to sit patiently by her feet.

Pining: Tommy the German Shepherd waits faithfully during Mass at the church where his owner Maria Margherita Lochi's funeral was held

 

Following her death at San Donaci near Brindisi, a funeral service was held at which Tommy joined mourners and since then he has been a regular at the church arriving on time when the bells ring out to mark the start of services.

 

Father Donato Panna said:''He's there every time I celebrate Mass and is very well behaved - he doesn't make a sound, I've not heard one bark from him in all the time he has been coming in.

'He used to come to Mass with Maria and he was obviously devoted to her - I let him stay inside as he was always so well behaved and none of the other parishoners ever complained to me.
'He's still coming to Mass even after Maria's funeral, he waits patiently by the side of the altar and just sits there quietly. I didn't have the heart to throw him out - I've just recently lost my own dog so I leave him there until Mass finishes and then I let him out.

Sad: Heartbroken Tommy, a seven year old German shepherd, had been adopted by Maria Margherita Lochi, 57, after she found him wandering fields behind her house in San Donaci near Brindisi, Italy

Routine: Tommy and Maria would walk to church together every day - where the priest would allow him to sit patiently by her feet

 

'Tommy's been adopted by everyone in the village now and he is everybody's friend. Everyone looks out for him and leaves food for him - although it would be nice to find a proper home for him.'

The story of Tommy is similar to the 2009 Hollywood blockbuster Hachi starring Richard Gere which told of how a faithful Akita dog waits patiently for his master after he also dies.
It was based on the true story of a Japanese Akita called Hachiko, whose owner died in 1925 but for the next nine years he waited patiently at a railway station for his owner from where they regularly caught a train

Man's Best Freinds......

Tessa

We lost our heart today.

Our dog Tessa had to be put to sleep as she had Canine Myelopathy. It is a nerve disorder similar to ALS in humans. She was a bright and smart girl but had lost the ability to move her hind legs and all her muscles from the middle of her body had stopped working. This in turn effected her bowels, and that made it time for the most difficult decision.

She is in heaven as all dogs go to heaven. She is there with our other dogs and enjoying the ability to run across endless fields....she loved to run and was one of the best dogs anyone could ever have.

In tribute, the enclosed poem is how I will remember her. A strong and smart companion that was the smartest and most loved dog we could ever imagine.

JUST MY DOG

She is my other eyes that can see above the clouds;
My other ears that hear above the winds.
She is the part of me that reaches out into the sea.

She has told me a thousand times over that I'm
her reason for being.
by the way she rests against my leg;
by the way she thumps her tail at my smallest smile;
by the way she shows her hurt when I leave
without taking her.

I think it makes her worry when she is not along
to care for me.

When I am wrong, she is delighted to forgive.
When I am angry, she clowns to make me smile.
When I am happy, she is joy unbounded.
When I am a fool, she ignores it.
When I succeed, she brags.

Without her, I am only another person.
With her, I am all powerful.
She is loyalty itself.
She has taught me the meaning of devotion.

With her, I know a secret comfort and a private peace.
She has brought me understanding where before I was ignorant.
Her head on my knee can heal my human hurts.
Her presence by my side is protection against my fears of dark and unknown things.

She has promised to wait for me, whenever, wherever in case I need her.
And I expect I will, as I always have.

She is my dog.

Know Your Labs...

Barrowed from another fine blogger and too funny not to share with you...

I Love My Black Lab " Dale "...He is a cool dog who just goes along with life and who loves his tennis ball and/or squeaky toys.

Marines and Dogs.....Semper Fidos

Marines love Dogs. The USMC are the best fighting force devised by man but most of them have a real soft spot when it comes to our 4 legged friends.

Case in point - A small puppy wandered up to U.S. Marines from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion 6th Marines, in Marjah, Afghanistan. After following the Marines numerous miles, a soft hearted Marine picked the puppy up and carried the puppy in his drop pouch.

I can understand and while it is against regulations for the Marine to have the puppy, Command turns a blind eye to this as at places like Marjah, having a dog there provides both security and something to give the Marines a touch of home.

Caring for a small pup gives each Marine in that Battalion something to warm their heart. To see the caring this pup will get shows that our Marines care for those who need them the most.

Semper Fidos to the U.S. Marines from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion 6th Marines, in Marjah, Afghanistan. Take care of that pup.

Man & Dog have been together a lot longer than we ever imagined....

By all accounts, man & dog have been living together for about 15000 years, since the end of the last ice age. Man has altered dogs to serve our needs and due to man, the dog is the most genetically altered species in the world. We have bred dogs to serve the needs of hunting, farm duties and for vanity.

Now, researchers have found that the partnership between man & dog may go back as far as 33,000 years ago based on new evidence found in cave dwellings in France.

All I know is our lives would not be the same without our 4 legged friends. I am glad to say that the three that reside with my family are valued for their companionship, attentiveness and that they make sure no one comes near our home without us knowing about it.


From the Cave to the Kennel

What the evolutionary history of the dog tells us about another animal: ourselves. From a cave in France, a new picture has emerged of canines as our prehistoric soulmates.
By Mark Derr - Wall Street Journal

Chauvet Cave in southern France houses the oldest representational paintings ever discovered. Created some 32,000 years ago, the 400-plus images of large grazing animals and the predators who hunted them form a multi-chambered Paleolithic bestiary. Many scholars believe that these paintings mark the emergence of a recognizably modern human consciousness. We feel that we know their creators, even though they are from a time and place as alien as another planet.

What most intrigues many people about the cave, however, is not the artwork but a set of markings at once more human and more mysterious: the bare footprints of an 8- to 10-year-old torch-bearing boy left in the mud of a back chamber some 26,000 years ago—and, alongside one of them, the paw print of his traveling companion, variously identified as a wolf or a large dog.

Attributing that paw print to a dog or even to a socialized wolf has been controversial since it was first proposed a decade ago. It would push back by some 12,000 years the oldest dog on record. More than that: Along with a cascade of other new scientific findings, it could totally rewrite the story of man and dog and what they mean to each other.

For decades, the story told by science has been that today's dogs are the offspring of scavenger wolves who wandered into the villages established by early humans at the end of the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago. This view emphasizes simple biological drive—to feed on human garbage, the scavenging wolf had to behave in a docile fashion toward humans. And—being human—we responded in kind, seeking out dogs for their obsequiousness and unconditional devotion.

As the story goes, these tame wolves bred with other tame wolves and became juvenilized. Think of them as wolves-lite, diminished in strength, stamina and brains. They resembled young wolves, with piebald coats, floppy ears and shorter, weaker jaws. Pleading whiners, they drowned their human marks in slavish devotion and unconditional love. Along the way, they lost their ability to kill and consume their prey.

But it was never clear, in this old account, just how we got from the scavenging wolf to the remarkable spectrum of dogs who have existed over time, from fell beasts trained to terrorize and kill people to creatures so timid that they flee their own shadows. The standard explanation was that once the dump-diver became a dog, humans took charge of its evolution through selective breeding, choosing those with desired traits and culling those who came up short.

This account is now falling apart in the face of new genetic analyses and recently discovered fossils. The emerging story sees humans and proto-dogs evolving together: We chose them, to be sure, but they chose us too, and our shared characteristics may well account for our seemingly unshakable mutual intimacy.

Dogs and humans are social beings who depend on cooperation for their survival and have an uncanny ability to understand each other in order to work together. Both wolves and humans brought unique, complementary talents to a relationship that was based not on subservience and intimidation but on mutual respect.

It seems that wolves and humans met on the trail of the large grazing animals that they both hunted, and the most social members of both species gravitated toward each other. Several scholars have even suggested that humans learned to hunt from wolves. At the least, camps with wolf sentinels had a competitive advantage over those without. And people whose socialized wolves would carry packs had an even greater advantage, since they could transport more supplies. Wolves benefited as well by gaining some relief from pup rearing, protection for themselves and their offspring, and a steadier food supply.

The relationship between dogs and humans has been so mutually beneficial and enduring that some scholars have suggested that we—dog and human—influenced each other's evolution.

The Chauvet Cave "dogwolf"—the term I use for a doglike, or highly socialized, wolf who kept company with humans—is controversial, but it cannot easily be dismissed. Over the past three years, it has been grouped convincingly with a number of similar animals that have been identified in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and the Altai Mountains in Southern Siberia, dating from 33,000 to 16,000 years ago.

Identification of these early dogs, combined with recent genetic evidence and a growing understanding of animals not as stimulus-response machines but as sentient beings, has broken the consensus model of dog domestication—leaving intact little more than the recognition of the grey wolf, Canis lupus, as progenitor of the dog. Everything else, it seems, is up for grabs.

According to the old view, the dog arose around 15,000 years ago in the Middle East. (Or in China, south of the Yangtze River, an alternate possible origin point added in the last decade in an attempt to reconcile archaeological evidence with emerging DNA evidence.)

The first major challenge to the consensus came in 1997, when an international team of biologists published a paper in the journal Science placing the origin of the dog as early as 135,000 years ago. Their date was based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on to offspring through females and is believed to change little from generation to generation; it allows scientists to calculate the time when populations or species separated genetically. This analysis suggested that wolves could have become dogs wherever in Eurasia they associated closely with early humans, and that even after the split was made, dogs and wolves continued to interbreed.

In short, because of their natural affinities, wherever and whenever wolves and humans met on the trail, some of them began to keep company. Often, when socialized wolves died, there were no others immediately available to replace them. But sometimes several socialized wolves would mate or a socialized female would mate with a "wild" wolf and then have her litter near the human camp. The pups would stay or go, according to their natures. This kind of arrangement could have continued for a considerable period. Any number of them could ultimately have produced dogwolves or dogs. Most of those lines would have vanished over time.

The DNA evidence remained controversial for years, even as most major studies placed the genetic separation of wolf and dog at earlier dates than those favored by archaeologists. Hard proof was slow to appear. The Chauvet Cave paw print once provided the only physical evidence for the existence of dogs before 15,000 years ago—and it was, at best, an indirect piece of support.

Then in 2008, Mietje Germonpré, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science and the leader of an international team of scientists, re-examined fossil material excavated from Goyet Cave in Belgium in the late 19th century and announced the identification of a 31,700-year-old dog, a large and powerful animal who ate reindeer, musk oxen and horses. The dogwolf from Goyet Cave was a creature of the Aurignacian culture that had produced the art in Chauvet Cave.

Last July, another international team identified the remains of a 33,000-year-old "incipient dog" from the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia. This month, Ms. Germonpré confirmed another find, this one in the Czech Republic, of the remains of a 26,000- to 27,000-year-old dog that had been buried with a bone in its mouth—perhaps to fuel it as it accompanied its human companion to the afterlife.

While the old consensus model held that the first dogs were small, these and other recently identified early dogs are large animals, often with shorter noses and broader faces than today's wolves. These early dogs appear in the camps of hunters of horses, reindeer, mammoths and other big game. From all appearances, they were pack animals, guards, hunters and companions. They are perhaps best viewed as the offspring of highly socialized wolves who had begun breeding in or near human camps.

Our view of domestication as a process has also begun to change, with recent research showing that, in dogs, alterations in only a small number of genes can have large effects in terms of size, shape and behavior. Far from being a product of the process of domestication, the mutations that separated early dogs from wolves may have arisen naturally in one or more small populations; the mutations were then perpetuated by humans through directed breeding. Geneticists have identified, for instance, a mutation in a single gene that appears to be responsible for smallness in dogs, and they have shown that the gene itself probably came from Middle Eastern wolves.

All of this suggests that it was common for highly socialized wolves and people to form alliances. It also leads logically to the conclusion that the first dogs were born on the move with bands of hunter-gatherers—not around semi-permanent pre-agricultural settlements. This may explain why it has proven so difficult to identify a time and place of domestication.

Taken together, these recent discoveries have led some scientists to conclude that the dog became an evolutionary inevitability as soon as humans met wolves. Highly social wolves and highly social humans started walking, playing and hunting together and never stopped. The dog is literally the wolf who stayed, who traded wolf society for human society.

Humans did wield a significant influence over dogs, of course, by using breeding to perpetuate mutations affecting their shape, size and physical abilities. Recent studies suggest that the dog has unique abilities among animals to follow human directions and that its capacity for understanding words can approach that of a two-year-old child. To various degrees, humans appear to have concentrated those and other characteristics and traits through selective breeding.

Since the advent of scientific breeding in the late 18th century, humans have altered the look and temperament of the dog more than they had over thousands of preceding years. A team of gene-sequencers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimated that the dog lost 4% of its genetic diversity during its initial separation from the wolf. Much greater losses have occurred as a result of modern breed formation, one result of which is the more than 400 inheritable diseases to which purebreds are uniquely vulnerable.

Recent genetic evidence has confirmed that certain basic types—pariah dogs, sight hounds, mastiffs, spitz-type dogs and small dogs—arose very early in the transformation of wolf to dog. These dogs adapted to their homelands and often had special talents as hunters, guards and eventually herders. These characteristics were often perpetuated over time.

Scientific breeders believed they could improve on nature by consolidating several similar types into one breed or isolating a few prize specimens from a larger population. In both cases, they relied on inbreeding to create and perpetuate the look and talents they wanted. With the advent of kennel clubs in the mid-19th century, the pace of breed creation picked up.

Breeders began to create dogs to fit the needs of the wealthy—from sporting dogs that could point and retrieve fowl, to little puppy-like lap dogs. The dog proved to be a wonderful animal for testing the skill of breeders, since it could be stretched in size from two to 200 pounds.

Purebred dogs were expensive commodities until after World War II, when they became symbols of arrival in the middle class. Increased demand led to increased breeding, often in puppy mills. The resulting dogs had health and behavior problems from bad breeding and the poor care of pregnant females and newborn puppies.

In some cases, the traits that breeders desire are inherited along with unwanted, debilitating conditions—such as when blindness and epilepsy accompany particular coat styles and eye colors. In many regards, the original, naturally occurring breeds were healthier and better at their appointed tasks than their purebred heirs.

But this is just the most recent chapter of a long tale. The tableau in the mud of Chauvet Cave is a stark reminder that dogs and humans have traveled together for tens of thousands of years, from ancient hunting camps to farms, ranches cities and suburbs—from the tropics to the poles. The relationship has endured not because dogs are juvenilized wolves but because they are dogs—our faithful companions.

—Mr. Derr's most recent book is "How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends."

Help the US Marines Bring " Bill " Home

Marines have a soft spot for dogs, especially when they find one in need of help. In this case, it was the only surviving pup of a litter of 6 found in Afghanistan. I have enclosed the website address if you are able to donate and help them.

Bravo Zulu and SEMPER FI to these Marines for making the effort to bring " Bill " home.

Please go to their website to donate -

http://www.getbilltotheball.org/


TOUGH PUP: Houston-based Marines found Bill while on patrol in Afghanistan, the lone survivor of a litter of six.

Pup adopted by Marines bound for Houston ball
By RENÉE C. LEE, HOUSTON CHRONICLE

An orphaned puppy turned Marine mascot soon will make his way from Afghanistan to the United States to be reunited with his platoon - just in time for the Marine Corps ball in November.

Bill, a mutt, was rescued by the Houston-based 1st Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment, while 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, was on patrol. He was the lone survivor of a litter of six puppies when the reservists adopted him July 13.

Bill was just 9 days old. His eyes were still shut.

Marine Reserve Sgt. Jon Staffen made it his mission to raise the necessary funds to bring Bill to Staffen's home in Dayton, in Liberty County. Staffen and his platoon returned to Houston on Saturday after a seven-month combat tour.

Staffen said he and the other Marines kept Bill in a box that had held ready-to-eat meals, and had a 24-hour rotation to care for and feed the frail pup. They used a medical syringe and the finger of a plastic glove to feed him cow's milk, the sergeant said.

"It was really comical at times," Staffen admitted. "We got caught up in taking care of him. Here we are, Marine grunts, cheering when he took his first steps."

They didn't want to leave Bill behind at the end of their deployment, but there were military rules against taking him home.

CBS correspondent Lara Logan offered to help them out, and flew the dog via military air to Kabul, where he's been staying in a rescue shelter.

Staffen said he has raised more than the $3,500 he'll need to get Bill to the United States. He's now working on Bill's travel arrangements.

The goal is to get the dog transported in time for the Nov. 5 ball in Houston, where Bill is expected to be the guest of honor.

renee.lee@chron.com

Big Dog

Now that's one big dog !! Marmaduke's sister maybe ?

Take a bow-wow-wow: Nova the Great Dane is recognised as world's tallest female dog

'Super' Nova munches on 30lb of food a week
By Wil Longbottom - 20th September 2011 - UK Mail

This Great Dane is a real canine super star after officially being recognised as the world's tallest female dog - standing 5ft 11in on her hind legs.

Weighing more than 11 stone 'Super' Nova, who lives with owner Ann Suplee in Addison, Illinois, was only recently given the title by the Guinness Book of Records.

Taking her place in the record books after the previous record holder died, Nova still sleeps in Mrs Suplee's queen-sized bed like a young puppy.

Four inches taller than her father and eight inches taller than her mother, Nova eats up to 30lbs of food a week.

Mrs Suplee said: 'It took a lot of paperwork and a lot of footwork to secure the record, but it was all totally worth it and great fun.

'I wanted to get Nova this recognition, because she's such a good dog and she deserves it.
'Now when people comment on her height, I get to reply, "Yes, you're right, she's the world's tallest female dog!'

Inspired to go for the record after the number of comments the dog received in the park from fellow pet owners, she said she was proud of her prized pooch.

'I call her Super-Nova and I even dressed her up in a Superman cape during the last pet parade in Addison.

'Nova knows her own size, but with a simple "excuse me" she will move out of the way, and is very careful around my three-year-old grandson who's now at eye-level with her tail.'
Mrs Suplee feeds her dog watermelon as a treat. The gentle giant often gets scared by smaller dogs barking at her in fright.

'We don't know whether it was the good food we fed Nova when she was a puppy, or some throwback genes, but I think it's all the love and affection we've given her through the years that made her so big.'

The Dogs of 09/11

Man's Best Friends helped on 09/11. Their service in assisting the searchers at the Pentagon & Ground Zero was critical. Our K-9 companions showing again why the Dog is our best friend always.

The 9/11 rescue dogs: Portraits of the last surviving animals who scoured Ground Zero one decade on
By Anna Edwards UK MAIL

During the chaos of the 9/11 attacks, where almost 3,000 people died, nearly 100 loyal search and rescue dogs and their brave owners scoured Ground Zero for survivors.

Now, ten years on, just 12 of these heroic canines survive, and they have been commemorated in a touching series of portraits entitled 'Retrieved'.

The dogs worked tirelessly to search for anyone trapped alive in the rubble, along with countless emergency service workers and members of the public.

Travelling across nine states in the U.S. from Texas to Maryland, Dutch photographer Charlotte Dumas, 34, captured the remaining dogs in their twilight years in their homes where they still live with their handlers, a full decade on from 9/11.

Their stories have now been compiled in a book, called Retrieved, which is published on Friday, the tenth anniversary of the attacks.

Noted for her touching portraits of animals, especially dogs, Charlotte wanted 'Retrieved' to mark not only the anniversary of the September 2001 attacks, but also as recognition for some of the first responders and their dogs.

'I felt this was a turning point, especially for the dogs, who although are not forgotten, are not as prominent as the human stories involved,' explained Charlotte, who splits her time between New York and Amsterdam.

'They speak to us as a different species and animals are greatly important for our sense of empathy and to put things into perspective.'

Most of the search and rescue dogs are Labradors or Golden Retrievers and Charlotte feels that the title works across many aspects of the story.

'I found the dogs, I retrieved them, they were there to retrieve the victims, it is nicely rounded,' explained Charlotte whose work is being exhibited at the Julie Saul Gallery NYC opening on September 8, in time for the anniversary.

After working on a project about police canines and other working dogs, she was inspired to concentrate on the animals that played such a huge part in seeking survivors.

Contacting the NYPD, the New York Fire Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Charlotte discovered that out of the nearly 100 dogs among the first responders deployed by FEMA, there were in fact only 15 still alive last year.

'They were there for the first few weeks, they were trained to find people alive, although that is ultimately not what happened,' said Charlotte, who will hold a fundraiser for the First Responder Alliance at Clic Bookstore in New York on September 29.

'I traveled across the United States to meet with the owners and portray the dogs. They are all retired and I spent time with each of their handlers learning about their experiences.

'It was moving talking to Denise Corliss, who is the handler and owner of Bretagne, one of the Golden Retrievers.

'She told me a touching story of one fireman who was there in the rubble, and how taken he was with Bretagne who comforted him as he sat down to catch his breath.

'Years later at a Remembrance Ceremony, the same fireman recognised Bretagne and her handler and they had a touching reunion.

'It developed that even though the dogs couldn't find people still alive, they could provide comfort for the brave firemen and rescue workers of the emergency services.'

Wishing to tell the other side of heroism from 9/11, each of Charlotte's encounters with dogs such as Gabriel and Orion and Scout stayed with her.

'The dogs are now old and they will soon pass away. Even during the time it has taken since my first work on the 'Retrieved' portraits to now, three of the final 15 have died,' said Charlotte.

'These portraits are about how time passes, and how these dogs and their portraits are offering us a way to deal with the things that happened as well as relying on them for comfort.'

The Luckiest Hobo - British War Hero K-9 is back on duty after suffering life-threatening injuries in a Taliban attack

Our K-9 Heroes do not worry about themselves, but rather our safety. We are lucky to have good pups like HOBO out there to protect the troops.

As HOBO is with our good friends the BRITS, we send along a hearty " GOOD SHOW " to HOBO and his mates. His actions are " brilliant, just brilliant " as our allies from the UK would say.


Back on duty: The plucky bomb-hunting dog of war the Taliban couldn't kill
By Christopher Leake
30th July 2011 - UK MAIL

An army dog which suffered life-threatening injuries in a Taliban attack less than two weeks ago will be celebrating his third birthday back on the frontline tomorrow.

Hobo, a bomb-hunting black labrador with A Company, 2nd Battalion Royal Gurkha Rifles, was badly wounded when a patrol came under heavy fire in Helmand Province ten days ago.

As enemy grenades were hurled at the patrol’s position, Hobo was hit three times by shrapnel in his neck, abdomen and body. Comrades saved his life by giving first aid to stem the bleeding until he was taken by helicopter to the safety of Camp Bastion along with wounded soldiers.

The labrador is now being considered for the Dickin Medal, the highest animal award for bravery.

Nicknamed ‘The Luckiest Hobo’, he began serving in Afghanistan two months ago and is thought to have saved the lives of many soldiers by sniffing out the roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that have taken such a toll on the Army.

Captain George Shipman, 28, of 29 Commando Royal Artillery was with the patrol. He said: ‘Hobo was hit and bleeding heavily. He remained really calm and just stood there while we treated him.

"Hobo’s become one of us, bounding around the patrol base all the time. We’re very fond of him."

After receiving further treatment at Camp Bastion, Hobo had all but recovered within two days and now is due to return to service.

Private Patrick Medhurst-Feeny, 22, a veterinary technician who helped treat Hobo, said: ‘We met him off the helicopter and put him straight on to fluids because of the huge blood loss. He’s recovered fantastically well.’

Having been ‘battle inoculated’ by training against explosions, Hobo is unlikely to suffer trauma from the attack. He is due to return to the UK in November to begin a new role as an Army demonstration dog

Going to the Dogs.....How Service Dogs are helping more people

My MILBLOG seems to be going to the Dogs !!!!

As the casual reader might guess, I am keenly devoted to our four-legged friends and all that they can do for us.....

They are "devotion on 4 legs" and only worried about us....they live in the moment and show no concern for their own welfare, only that of their human companions.

I would like to work with organizations that increase the ability to utilize dogs for areas where people need assistance and where the K-9's physical abilities of smell, hearing, sight and presence can aid those who need a 24 hour a day companion. The Dog is a noble creature and one we can count on, just as he has counted on us for many centuries.

latimes.com
Service dogs are beyond fetching

Their use is growing. They help guide the blind, perform tasks for the physically disabled and may even help people with epilepsy and autism.
By Karen Ravn, Special to the Los Angeles Times
July 18, 2011

One moment 15-year-old Glen Gregos was a happy-go-lucky kid riding a motorcycle. The next he was the lucky-to-be-alive victim of a terrible accident, paralyzed from the chest down.

Now 54 and a resident of Woodland Hills, Gregos has built a rewarding life — college, marriage, a successful banking career, a daughter who just graduated from college.

Still, for decades after the accident, Gregos faced challenges every day from simple things most of us take for granted — going to the grocery store, going out the front door. And then six years ago, his life took another dramatic turn. He met Beulah — a.k.a. Miss Bo — a black Labrador retriever who has been at his side, 24/7, ever since — to open doors, carry bags, pull his wheelchair, pick up anything he drops on the floor and cheer up any black mood he falls into.

"It's hard to put into words everything these dogs do for you," he says. "It's physical. It's emotional. It's all-encompassing. You probably have to live it to understand it."

Miss Bo is not considered a pet. She's a service dog, a concept first introduced with guide (or seeing-eye) dogs for the blind, perhaps as far back as the 16th century, though it wasn't until 1929 that the first guide dog training school in the U.S. opened up. By the 1970s, people had started training dogs to help with other disabilities, and that trend has continued.

Service dogs now include dogs that can open cupboards and drawers, alert someone to a ringing telephone, assist someone during a disorienting seizure, help someone keep their balance or get back up after a fall, not to mention dogs that can sniff allergens in the air or low blood sugar on someone's breath.

"Here in the U.S. we have a highly individualistic culture — creative, experimental," says Lynette Hart, director of the Center for Animals in Society at UC Davis. "It's like a caldron for coming up with new things that dogs can do for us. And dogs love to work. It's a very natural marriage for them to help people."

This has been a boon for many who, like Gregos, have had their lives changed by some extraordinary dogs. But potential pitfalls abound. "There's almost no regulation," Hart says. "And everyone wants to do what they want to do."

Sometimes people want to call their dogs service dogs even though they're really not. And sometimes people want to believe dogs can do things even though there's no real proof they can.

Many dogs have a natural knack for providing comfort, companionship and emotional support to their people, who often consider that a pretty big service. But it doesn't make those dogs service dogs. Neither does a capacity for warding off crime by looking or sounding formidable. According to the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act and new regulations put in place in March, a service dog must be trained to perform a service for a person with a disability that is directly related to the person's disability — turning lights on and off for someone who's paralyzed, for example, or alerting someone who's deaf that a smoke alarm is blaring.

Many organizations train one or more kinds of service dogs, and in general their programs follow a pattern set by the early guide dog training organizations: careful breeding followed by puppy-raising by volunteers who begin the basics of obedience and socialization, and finally intensive training by professionals. (Potential human recipients also are carefully screened, trained and matched to dogs.)

Guide Dogs for the Blind, the first guide dog training school on the West Coast, relies solely on Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers and crosses of the two. Training organizations for other types of service dogs often do too. "They have wonderful temperaments," says Katie Malatino, public relations coordinator for one such organization, Canine Companions for Independence, headquartered in Santa Rosa. "They're a good size for the tasks they have to do, and they have an instinct to retrieve, which comes in handy for picking things up off the floor."

Canine Companions for Independence provided Miss Bo to Gregos in November 2005. These days she is always on call if Gregos needs her, which is not to say that she never has any fun. "She has toys," he says. "We play ball. But once she gets vested up" — wearing the vest that identifies her as a service dog — "she knows, 'OK, I'm ready to work.' " (And people who see the vest should should know and respect that too.)

Like any good service dog, when she's working, Miss Bo is unperturbed by loud or unexpected noises ("bomb proof," Malatino calls it) and undistracted by other animals or people — unless Gregos gives her special dispensation. Which he often does.

"I put her in a 'sit' and let people pet her," he says. "I want to create more awareness about these special dogs. I wasn't aware of them myself for a long time. I'd think, 'What can a dog do for a guy in a wheelchair?' "

The Americans With Disabilities Act says service dogs get to go wherever their people go: grocery stores, restaurants, libraries, amusement parks, boats, buses, trains, planes and no-pets-allowed hotels. New regulations issued this spring establish two exceptions (which would surely never apply to Miss Bo): Service dogs can be banished if they get out of control or if they transact certain business indoors that should have been seen to outside.

Not everyone knows the rules. Gregos once spent several hours convincing officials at a hotel with a no-pets policy that they were obligated to let Miss Bo in. "One side of me thought, 'I don't want to stay here anyway,'" he says. "But the other part thought, 'They've got to be educated.' "

Even beyond the issue of ignorance, service dog use is not without controversy. One problem is cheaters.

"A lot of people try to skirt the system," Gregos says. "I see it all the time." Some will claim that their pet dogs are service dogs that help them with disabilities they don't really have — and they can get away with that, because the law doesn't require people to present proof of their own disability or their dog's capacity to deal with it. (It doesn't help that service dog vests are readily available online.) Proprietors may deny entrance to dogs that arouse their skepticism, and that's fine if they're right. If they're wrong, it can lead to a fine of a very different kind.

Another problem is that there are no industry-wide standards for trainers or dogs, leaving disabled people on their own to determine how much they should trust an organization's claims. "Guide Dogs for the Blind — they're very reputable," says Dr. Melissa Bain, chief of the Behavior Service at the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. "If they graduate a dog, OK, I trust it." But not every organization has the same long history of success.

Of course, some claims are easier to validate than others. It's easy to see if a dog can pull a wheelchair or open a refrigerator door. But seizure prediction? "The trouble," Bain adds, "is if people rely on the dog and nothing else, that could be dangerous."

Sometimes the question isn't whether a particular dog can perform a task but whether some tasks are even canine-ly possible. Take seizure detection again. "Is that legitimate?" Bain says. "Maybe."

In 1999, a British epilepsy specialist and a behavioral scientist/animal trainer reported that by giving dogs a reward every time their owners had seizures, they had been able to train some dogs to warn of oncoming seizures as much as 15 to 45 minutes before the seizures occurred. Their paper in the journal Seizure inspired a demand for such dogs.

Today, the Epilepsy Foundation says on its website, "while some people have been very pleased with their new canine friends, others have been disappointed." The foundation "recommends that people take great care in reviewing trainer claims and results, especially when thousands of dollars are involved."

More questions arose in 2007 when four of the seven seizure-alert dogs in a study in the journal Neurology were found to be warning people of psychological, not epileptic, seizures. Psychological seizures, caused by mental stress, can often be eliminated through counseling — without drugs — making warnings beside the point. And in one case in that study, a dog's "warning behaviors" were found to set the seizures off.

Service dogs for children with autism have inspired a debate all their own, with some districts reluctant to allow the dogs into their schools because, they argue, the dogs cause too much trouble — other children may be scared or allergic; child and dog may require extra supervision.

But, in fact, the value of service dogs to children with autism is less controversial than it is for seizures. "One of the main things our dogs do is provide safety," says Kati Rule-Witco, executive director and placement specialist for Autism Service Dogs of America, a training organization founded in 2002 that's based in Lake Oswego, Ore. "Often children with autism will run off. Parents have trouble just going to the grocery store. Our dogs provide a way for families to go out safely."

A 2008 study in the journal Qualitative Health Research looked at what happened when service dogs were brought into 10 families with children with autism and found that they did, indeed, enhance safety and facilitate public outings. When the child and dog go out into the community together, the dog is tethered to the child but also connected to the adult caregiver since that's who holds the dog's leash. Autism service dogs are also trained to keep their cool no matter what their young charges do (hug, squeeze, lie on top of the dog) and to take positive steps to cope with negative behavior (nudge or lean against the child, maybe even stop the child from hurting himself).

All of this costs money, a lot of it. That's true for training any service dog. Some organizations — like Guide Dogs for the Blind and Canine Companions — can operate on donations alone. But not all. Autism Service Dogs of America says the average cost for breeding, raising, training and placing one of their dogs is $20,000, $13,500 of which families are required to pay before they are placed on the waiting list for the next available dog.

The website for Autism Service Dogs of America has testimonials from 10 satisfied families who use words like "awesome" and "miracle" to describe their dogs and the jobs they do. They firmly believe that their money was well spent. But not everyone is convinced.

Bain notes that research so far has not compared service dogs to ordinary family dogs, and she suggests the latter might do just about as well. "Maybe a child feels better sitting next to the dog," she says. "There's no way to tell if special training does any good."

Gregos has no such questions about the good that Miss Bo's special training has done for him. But she'll be 8 in August, and the time is coming when she'll need to retire and he'll need to get a new service dog. Then Miss Bo will change from service dog to pet dog and spend the rest of her days with the man who says that having her has been "magical since Day One."

Puppies galore.....

Awwwwww......That's all I got.... " awwwwwwww "

Forget 101 Dalmatians, 16 are driving me dotty! Meet the unruly brood and the human and canine mothers looking after them
By David Leafe
UK Daily Mail 16th July 2011

As the July sun sets over a Shropshire smallholding, sheep graze quietly in the fields, horses doze contentedly in their stables, and hawks circle majestically in the skies above.

This rural scene is like something out of a painting by Turner or Constable, but suddenly it erupts into chaos more reminiscent of the Keystone Kops.

Around the corner of a barn appear 16 frisky dalmatian puppies, tumbling and scampering in every direction as they are pursued by their owner, 21-year-old Becky Elvins.

As quickly as she can scoop them up and place them in their large wicker basket, they spill out again, darting between her legs, nipping at her wellingtons and endlessly disappearing and reappearing in a polka-dot whirl. I feel exhausted just watching the bedtime bedlam which has been part of Becky's routine for the past seven weeks.

As a trainee teacher, she spends her day handling classes of primary school children — but that's nothing compared to looking after this brood, born to her much-loved dalmatian Milly at the end of May.

So numerous are Milly's litter that the Kennel Club demanded a letter from the Elvins' vet confirming they were all from the same litter, as the average number of pups born to dalmatians is eight. And Milly herself was one of a litter of 16.
As one of the puppies hurdles past my left shoe in a dash for freedom, Becky says: 'I don't know the odds against a coincidence like that but this lot certainly came as a bit of a surprise.'

I gently replace the squirming escapee in the basket. 'That's Tilly! She's one of the naughtiest. You can recognise her because she has two black ears. She loves to run away and hide behind the greenhouse.'

To me, these doggy doppelgangers are impossible to tell apart but Becky's love and knowledge of the breed goes back to her childhood, when she was captivated by the Disney cartoon 101 Dalmatians.

At 15, she decided she wanted her own dog to join the family labrador and the two Jack Russells owned by her sisters Lucy and Sarah.

She saved up £500 by waitressing at a hotel, and when she saw newspaper reports about the birth of Milly and her 15 siblings in a nearby village, she begged her mother to let her visit them.

'Mum said we could go just to have a look — but of course I fell in love with Milly the minute I saw her,' she says.

The feeling was reciprocated. Originally bred to run alongside horse-drawn carriages, dalmatians are well-known for their loyalty. Whenever Becky rode her pony, Casper, Milly followed faithfully behind.

She has since learnt to recognise the sound of Becky's car as she bumps along the long country lane leading to their house, near the market town of Church Stretton.

'As soon as I pull into the drive, she's there, trotting along beside the rear left-hand wheel,' says Becky.

Two years ago, it was time for Milly to become a mother and Becky set about the business of canine love-matching via the internet. This eventually led her to Coventry, the home of a spotty suitor named Dexter.

'He had a really good pedigree with loads of champions in his blood-line,' explains Becky.
The first litter resulted in 11 pups, but nothing prepared the family for the fruits of Dexter's return visit earlier this year.

'We took Milly to the vet for a scan and he could see only four pups,' says Becky. 'Milly was much bigger than she had been before so I thought there must be more, but I had no idea she was carrying that many.'

When Milly had failed to go into labour two days after her due date, the vet decided to perform a caesarean, watched by Becky and her mum Lisa, who runs an antiques business with her husband Terry.

'He started lifting the puppies out and eventually got to eight,' says Becky. 'We thought that was it but then he said: “I'll start on the other half now.” We couldn't believe it.

'The vet and his nurse aren't used to having that many puppies to deal with in one go, so Mum and me took a batch each, and rubbed them with towels to help get their circulation going.

'It wasn't long before they were running all over the place, tipping over boxes of cotton wool and almost sliding off the table on to the floor. They have been a handful ever since.'

Back home, the family made space for Milly and the puppies in their conservatory, with Becky sleeping on the sofa beside their basket, unwilling to leave them for even a minute.

Her anxiety was understandable. The first few weeks of life are a particularly dangerous time for puppies from such a large litter. Born pure white, and with their eyes closed until they are about a fortnight old, their competition for Milly's milk meant that the family had to ensure they fed in shifts.

'We'd let eight feed while eight stayed in the basket,' explains Lisa. 'Then we'd swap them over. Otherwise, the greedier ones would have taken all the milk.

'As it was, we noticed one or two of them looking a bit weak at times so we tried to feed them with formula from baby bottles. That didn't really work because they didn't like the rubber teats, but they all managed to pull through anyway.

'That surprised the vet, who thought we might lose one or two along the way.' With her milk eventually drying up, the puppies were weaned off an exhausted Milly. The Elvins family now have their work cut out grinding down food pellets and mixing them with warm water to form what looks like a doggy version of Weetabix. This is given to them four times a day — with predictable pandemonium every time.

'We put out four feeding bowls with four puppies at each one so they will get a fair share,' says Becky. 'Some hope! It usually ends up with them all feeding out of each other's bowls and grabbing whatever they can.'

At a month old, the pups had already developed individual markings and personalities, which have become even more pronounced since
.
The quietest is Prince, notable for having the fewest spots, unlike his brother Bertie, who has the most. Then there is Snoopy, with two dark smudges under his eyes, and Lexi, who has three large splodges on her face.

Most distinctive is the largest, Butch. Unlike the rest, who all have black spots, his are brown and he is particularly boisterous.

It was Butch who was gang-leader when it came to teasing the family cat, Dalboy. 'The puppies loved to chase him at first but Dalboy started lashing out at them,' says Lisa. 'They soon learned their lesson and now they keep well away.'

Such petty jealousies aside, there is no shortage of puppy love as far as the humans in the family are concerned.

As soon as she gets home from school, 11-year-old Sarah runs to the rectangle of straw bales which form the puppies' play-pen during the day and lets them out on to the lawn. 'She is out there every night, playing with them until bedtime,' says elder sister Becky, whose room is filled with dalmatian-themed ornaments and stuffed toys.

For her 21st birthday party, she had a white cake covered with black spots and topped, naturally, with a plastic dalmatian.

This, of course, is no substitute for the real thing — and Becky will keep one of the newborns, Maisie, to live alongside Milly.

'This will be the last time Milly breeds,' she says. 'We think she has had enough with two such big litters.'

The rest of the puppies have been put up for sale. The four bitches command more for their breeding potential and have already been sold for £600 each. The dogs cost less, at £550 each, but Butch (or Charlie, as his new owner has named him) has been sold, with the rest likely to go soon.

The Elvins family are understandably concerned that none of the puppies should end up at the real-life equivalent of Hell Hall, the fur factory presided over by Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians.

Each prospective owner is checked to ensure they can offer a loving home and understand the implications of taking on a dalmatian (the Kennel Club advises that the breed needs at least two hours exercise a day and is best suited to large houses and gardens).

When the puppies are ready to be taken away next week, there will no doubt be tears for Becky and her family. 'The first one to go and the last are usually the most emotional,' says Becky. 'But you know they are going to the next stage in their lives and that they will be loved.'

Each departing puppy will be accompanied by a blanket rubbed over with the scent of the rest of the litter to give them a comforting scent in their new home. And their new owners will receive a CD containing photos of them from their day of birth onwards, and will be asked to keep the Elvins family updated on their progress.

As for Milly — and all the family — they will be having a very well-earned rest. 'When you watch the Disney cartoon, you have to wonder if anyone could ever cope with that many dogs in real life,' says Lisa.

'We've loved having the puppies, but it's been hard enough looking after 16 of them — let alone 101!'

The British Military ensure that their K-9 Warriors are well kept in Afghanistan

In the photo above, British Army soldier Lcpl Marianne Hay from the Royal Army Veterinary Corp, crouches next to her explosives dog Leanna on Aug. 3, 2008 in Maywand District in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.


The Brits are our best Allies, here in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Seems like they take pretty good care of their K-9 warriors also. They need to, as they are based out of Camp Bastion, deep in the heart of Helmand province. Presently, the temps there will approach 120-125 degrees in the shade on any given Summer day. That is dangerous conditions for our K-9 warriors. Glad to see they ensure that the 4-legged soldiers get good accomadations.

Good Show. All our best to our British Allies and their K-9 Warriors. Brilliant.


Life for a British military dog in Afghanistan

By Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent
Rebecca Frankel - Foreignpolicy.com

As President Obama made his announcement this week about the troop drawdown this week, allied forces in Afghanistan are on the topic table again. European allies responded positively to the president's announcement. U.K. prime minister David Cameron, who announced his own plan for British troop withdrawals in May, was quick to applaud Obama, adding:

We will keep UK force levels in Afghanistan under constant review. I have already said there will be no UK troops in combat roles in Afghanistan by 2015 and, where conditions on the ground allow, it is right that we bring troops home sooner."

Britain has approximately 10,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan -- the second highest number after the United States. Working alongside Cornish soldiers on the frontlines out of Camp Bastion -- Britain's largest military base in the country -- are a troop of 70 military dogs. So what's life like for a British military dog in Afghanistan? Actually, not too shabby.

The accomodations for these war dogs are extensive. Each dog has his or her own kennel quarters -- a small square building with both an indoor and outdoor component. The indoor quarters are air conditioned and each kennel has its own self-sustaining power source.

While on patrol, each handler is outfitted with a special canine first aid kit. For the detection and patrol dogs in Afghanistan, heat is always the handlers' and veterinary medics' biggest concern. There's also only one pool on base -- and it's just for the dogs.

But the canines aren't the only ones happy with these arrangements:

Private Daniel Gregory, from Bodmin, helps look after the dogs at Camp Bastion [says]: " It's the love of the dogs, working outside everyday. It's a good job, a really good job."

British Paratroopers raise money to bring home their K-9 friend PHOS - “Walkies’ to him is going out on patrol and we’ve grown very fond of him.”

British Paratroopers are trying to bring home their friend " PHOS " who adopted them as much as they adopted him....They are utlizing online fundraising as a way of getting the word out to as many others as possible....."Awesome use of the technology Dude.."

Bring the Pup home.....he's a good dog. I salute our British Allies and all their efforts....Brilliant. Good show.


Soldier seeks help to rescue dog from Afghanistan

by Ian Bunting, Airdrie & Coatbridge
Garry McMahon -
http://www.acadvertiser.co.uk


AN Airdrie soldier serving in Afghanistan is asking for help to rescue a dog from the war-torn country.

Garry McMahon (29), from Porters Lane in Chapelhall, and his team need to raise £5000 to bring Phos the dog back home with them.

Garry is a Sergeant in the Machine Gun Platoon of 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment and serving on a third tour of Afghanistan.

Soldiers rescued Phos and five other puppies when they were very young and had been abandoned by their mother.

The puppies were meant to be sent away to be put to sleep as no-one could look after them.

The soldiers switched the box with the puppies in it and sent the six dogs out to different check points as pets.

Garry said: “We have raised Phos since he was six-weeks-old and he has been a part of our team ever since.

“Walkies’ to him is going out on patrol and we’ve grown very fond of him.”

The problem for Garry, his team and Phos is that when they return home the next unit have already said they have a ‘no pet’ policy.

Garry said: “We don’t want to give Phos back to the locals as they will just cut his ears and tail off to use him for fighting purposes.

“All of the team think Phos has a right to come home with us but we need to raise the money to let this happen.”

The team are trying to raise the £5000 required through the charity Nowzad, set up to relieve the suffering of animals.

They have raised £2177 so far but are seeking the public’s help to reach their final target.

Garry said: “Any help from anyone reading this would be highly appreciated and will allow Phos to live a safer life than he would here.”

Anyone wishing to donate to the cause can do so by visiting www.justgiving.com/stuart-mcbean

" She saw guys in a uniform and knew they would feed her and take care of her." - The USMC rescue a puppy named " Alice" from Afghanistan

This is the measure of true devotion that our K-9 Friends pay us and the USMC returned in kind, with the help from some school kids, to a puppy named "Alice"....AWESOME and SEMPER FI !!

War zone puppy reunited with Marine
By: Karen Hensel - WISH-TV Channel 8

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - A dog that survived the war zone in Afghanistan is safe in Indiana thanks to the U.S. Marines and the love of hundreds of local school children.

"She was a stray and in bad shape, maybe 10-15 pounds. She had been in a couple of fights and was all scarred up," Captain Matt Taylor of Lebanon, Indiana says,

She is a stray puppy who became a lesson in war, life and love for students at Lebanon Middle School who raised money to bring her to the states. The students donated one dollar at a time and raised over $1,000 to help send Alice home to the states.

Captain Taylor and Alice walked into a room of smiles and applause from the students on Friday.

"I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart and my Marines hearts because this little girl helped us through some hard times and was a really sweet reminder of what is good and good things that can happen when people like you come together," Taylor told the students.

But the story really begins with Alice and how a foreign four legged friend can break down barriers to find trust even at war.

"She knew a good thing when she saw it I guess. She saw guys in a uniform and knew they would feed her and take care of her. She became attached to my Marines. She wouldn't leave and kept coming around and of course they were feeding her and giving her water and she became a part of the family," Captain Taylor recalls,

She was rescued from sure death by the Marines but in return became a loyal and loving unit mascot for six months. But then came word the Marines were getting a military working dog to help with ied detection so they would have to get rid of her. Rather than turn her back onto the streets they worked to send her back home to the states. The Afghan puppy got her own website. Marines, families and students all donated.

A non-profit based in the UK helped get her from Kabul to Dubai to Indianapolis. The last time Captain Taylor saw her was months ago as he was putting her into a taxi. It would be months before he would see here again, this time in Indiana.

"It was a big leap of faith. A very excited Afghan taxi driver saying I've got this, it's good, I'll drive her 14 hours to Kabul. There's obviously some trepidation there," Captain Taylor reveals.

Trepidation; an interesting word choice when you understand why Captain Taylor has missed the last four Christmases and last four birthdays.

We first met Matt Taylor of Lebanon Indiana thousands of miles from home when 24 Hour News 8's Karen Hensel went to Iraq in 2006. He was stationed in the thick of the war halfway between Balad and Fallujah. He was just a lieutenant then and brand new. But he has "trepidation" for the stray dog who became a battle buddy, bridged barriers and healed wounds. For even tough Marines far from home it was nice to have a dog to come home to.

"It was a nice bit of comfort. You come home and it's hot or cold or you are wet or tired and there is always somebody who is real happy to see you. You're not going to get a hug and a kiss from a Marine when you come back from patrol, but there is always a little girl like this to come up and give you a lick, put her head on her lap and remind you there is something nice in the world too," Captain Taylor says.