Posted on 11/28/2005 5:40:47 AM PST by Wolfie
Congress acts to let wounded soldier to keep her on-duty dog
McKean County native to adopt 'Rex,' her bomb sniffing canine
This is the story of a soldier and her dog, and the act of Congress required to keep them together.
It began in July, when Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jamie Dana woke up, confused, in a hospital bed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Her last memory was riding in a military convoy in Iraq after she and her bomb sniffing dog, Rex, had searched a village. She remembered being in extreme pain. And she remembered asking frantically about Rex, eventually being told that he had not survived.
But she didn't know that the military had told her husband, fellow Air Force security officer Mike Dana, that she wasn't going to survive her injuries.
She didn't know that, after a bomb exploded under her Humvee, she spent more than a week in military hospitals in Iraq and Germany before arriving in Washington.
And she didn't know that Rex had survived the bombing with only a minor burn on his nose.
Click here for rest of story.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
And it's not as though there aren't new dogs being trained for the job.
So, we're not the enemy to our enemies? Try a little logical thought fer cryin' out loud.
(I had always heard that Labs and Beagles had the most sensitive noses, though. Most of the drug interdiction/detection dogs that I run across in the justice system are Labs.)
How long would it take to train a new "sniffer", as opposed to attempting to retrain Rex to work for a new handler? Might be a negligible difference in time, anyway.
You probably should stick to Airhead America for your news.
Welcome home. Thank you for your service and that of your buddies. You did/are/will do a great job and make us proud.
JFD, US Army, 1977-1997
I was wondering about the time difference, too.
No, no, no, you're completely right. We're not the enemy of the people we're fighting over there. Should come as a relief to the soldiers getting blown up on a regular basis. (Drinking the Kook-Aid from an extra large sippy cup, aren't you?)
If that is the case I'm with you.
However, a quick read of the MWD school website at Lackland states they can only produce 185 explosive sniffing dogs per year and almost 400 handlers. They also state they produce the dogs to be used by "limitless" handlers which makes sense knowing the constant churn of military personnel.
I keep hearing that a working dog will only work with one handler, yet the school turns out two handlers for one working dog???
Just so you all know it's definately "Schutzhund". Schuetzen is the activity they do (the verb). Schutz is the German word for Protection. Schutzhund means protection dog. There is no such thing as Schuetzenhund.
And the u - umlaut is on every German keyboard.
Some schools do that... Sometimes it works, more than often it doesn't. The dog will NOT identify more than one person as the Alpha dog of the "pack" so to speak. It's against the dogs nature to do otherwise. Because of that, in a multiple handler situation, you'll have the master handler then you'll have the other person that the dog listens to because of the interaction with the master handler... once that person is gone, the dog will test the other handler for the Alpha dog spot. That takes away from the ability of the dog and handler to do the job as well as can be done.
Any school that teaches "unlimited handlers" is suspect in my book and obviously doesn't understand the way a dog thinks and how a dog's social position is structured.
Mike
Vielen Dank!
In my experience it is the Navy, not the Air Force that passes out the medals for the flights...and all else. See Congressman Mark Kirk, the "combat veteran", for a good example of this.
So if a military dog's handler, leaves the service, goes on leave, transfers, get's in a car accident or get's popped on a drug test, the dog is useless?
Not buyin it!
Do you have more expertise than the folks at Lackland?
May I postulate some more?
1st, Schutzhund-type work - which is what alot of what we think of as "military/police" dogs do - is undoubtedly much more complex than teaching scenting (and we're talking here scenting for items, not searching out live & dead people which would surely require a bit more work to ensure the dog at least stays w/the person if not tries to dig him out).
2nd, as elsewhere indicated, dogs like Labs (retrievers) are frequently used for this kind of scenting work. Overall, retrievers are probably more open-ended and adaptable than herding and guarding dogs like Shepherds, who are generally bigger "1-man" very loyal dogs. Breeds can vary alot.
3rd, think of the nature of the average scenting operation. There are probably tons more opportunities to do scenting and it is overall less intense than patrolling and holding captives. Think of airports. Is there really only 1 dog/handler in the average security service? Might a scenting dog be expected to work many more hours than a union human is allowed?
Hence, training expecting unlimited handlers might not be surprising for this kind of work. If you're talking Schutzhund, you're talking Shepherds and Rotties and Dobes and Belgians who are doing very intense work and training, and are more naturally 1-man dogs. (Not that they can't handle more than 1. After all, referring to the "alpha" theory - don't wolves experience alpha changes in their lifetimes w/o being alpha ever themselves? You bet. There's no reason the average dog can't handle a new alpha even when they're very loyal.)
Getting back to your original question about how Murtha voted on this, it does not appear to have come to a vote yet, but since Murtha was responsible for putting the language in the appropriations bill, I suspect that he will vote for it.
Now this is getting farther and farther off topic, but are you saying that American troops in Iraq are not targets and are not viewed as the enemy by the terrorists there? I really don't understand your point. It seems to me that the Murtha quote you cite is him pointing out the obvious, i.e., that American troops are targets in Iraq and are viewed by many as the enemy. Whether he is right that Iraqis have to win it on their own is entirely different. However, even you must recognize that we cannot stay there forever.
Buy it or not, that's the facts... Don't know if I have more experience than the folks at Lackland but after training and caring for German Shepards, Black Labs, Wolf and wolf hybrids, and several other breeds of dogs, I had to learn how these animals think and what they do and why they do it.
I learned a great deal through books and personal experience and mainly by discussing the issue with dog handlers in LE and military. What I learned has held true without exception every time.
Oh, and on the issue of Lackland... just because someone has a corporation and claims to be a professional, don't believe it for a second. Often times it's mostly smoke and mirrors. I'm not saying this is the case with Lackland but they do make some interesting and far fetched claims.
Mike
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