Under current law, the military classifies its working dogs as equipment, and those “retired” while overseas aren’t granted transport back to the United States. Organizations are lobbying Congress to change the official language defining military working dogs. As it reads today, Harrington might never have been reunited with Ryky. Happily, though, two months since his airport reunion with Ryky, he figures, “She’s always going to look out for me.” A Dogged Role in U.S. Military Military working dogs caught the public’s attention in 2011, when it was reported that one of the members of SEAL Team 6 had four legs and a fur coat. Cairo, also a Belgian Malinois, served alongside the elite special operations forces during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Canines, though, have long been integrated with troops serving overseas. The United States began employing military dogs in 1942. In 1971, they were brought in to combat marijuana use among military personnel stationed in Southeast Asia and to detect explosives. Decades later, in 2005, the Pentagon introduced a new kind of “detector dog” to stem the rising number of attacks on U.S. troops using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan and Iraq. These canines, or specialized search dogs, can detect IEDs, arms, ammunition and explosives. Then, in 2010, the Air Force’s 341st Training Squadron at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, which trains military working dogs and handlers, teamed up with the Marine Corps to train Combat Tracker Dog Teams. These dogs, the first of their kind since the conclusion of the Vietnam War, are trained to recognize and follow human targets. Since the beginning of the Afghanistan War in 2001, the Department of Defense has spent more than $941,000 on acquiring military working dogs, according to an analysis of government contracts. More than 2,500 military working dogs currently serve, roughly 500 deployed at a time.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 02:15:48 +0000
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