Read to serve…
America’s military K-9 units have received a lot of attention in recent months. Who could forget about Cairo, a Belgian Malinois, who was part of the team that raided Osama Bin Laden? The dog became so famous that when President Obama visited Fort Campbell, Kentucky to thank the team of special operators involved in the raid, he met Cairo.
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So its great news that both the Marine Corps and the Army are funding two new programs to put more dogs alongside US troops operating on the battlefield. Apparently its the result of the great work our four-legged friends have been doing sniffing out explosives and accompanying our fighting men and women in combat. Amazingly, since May 2010 14 military working dogs have been killed in combat, six have been wounded and three are MIA. The number of cases of PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress] has been rising in dogs as well. Canines are highly emotional and what they see and experience stays with them. Right now there are 725 military dogs working in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s off the high of about 1,200 during the height of the Iraq war. But that number is set to rise again.
Cairo reporting for duty, sir!
The new programs are the Army’s Tactical Explosive Detector Dog program and the USMC’s IED Detector Dog Program. The push for the new programs came strait from the top: General David Petraeus. According to the Marines, the dogs of war are here to stay. “We need a solid, stood-up force to support the war fighter,” said a spokesman. Indeed.
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