Rest in peace, our hero.
The level of stress that soldiers need to endure during their training and active duty gives rise to a number of the foremost beautiful relationships in the world.
A lot of those men and ladies stay friends for the remainder of their lives, recounting the trauma and various struggles they need had to face leading up to their present lives.
The modern military, however, isn’t just made from the citizenry.
Military dogs
An explosion in the use of improvised explosives in troubled regions of the planet has led to an increased use of breeds of dogs with a robust sense of smell.
It’s not as simple because it sounds not everyone can handle it, but it works.
These canines, a bit like everyone else in these units, need to endure dangerous conditions and sometimes lose their lives for the sake of their teams.
Thousands of lives are saved by these dogs. Such a lot so that the lads and ladies whom they serve beside don’t just see them as animals or tools, they’re partners.
For the lads who trained and served by their sides (TEDD handlers), they’re family.
Justice for TEDD Handlers,
Despite making this immeasurable sacrifice, tons of dogs don’t get the credit or respect they deserve back in their home country. Tons of them are stuck in shelters in the US, or worse, overseas.
Many TEDD handlers, after leaving the soldiers, have tried unsuccessfully to bring these dogs home.
Justice for TEDD Handlers may be a small organization that happened from that shared pain. They struggle to reconnect many of those dogs with their original partners.
Their Facebook page is plastered with heartwarming success stories of TEDD handlers who, after months or years of struggle, finally need to adopt their former partners.
More recently, however, they shared a singular tribute to at least one dog who gave up the ghost. The post includes a link to their main page where a series of mini-articles paint a colorful journey of 1 dog, Fama, and her handler. The entries written by David (Fama’s handler) are raw and don’t sugar coat anything
Enter David Winners,
Now, David wasn’t new dogs. His mother had been breeding and training Saint Bernard dogs long before he was born. He grew up around them and helped out as well as his family’s dog business until he was in his thirties.
He left home to hitch the military, hoping to urge assigned to a unit with dogs. Sadly, for David, the sole thanks to work with dogs in the military, at the time, was to spend two years working with the MP. Without much of a choice, he served in the army and ended up in Afghanistan. A couple of months in, the units stationed there have been facing a shortage of TEDDs and handlers to assist them out with their patrols.
The US military, out necessarily, created a replacement program that gave interested soldiers training in handling TEDDs. David’s superiors knew his history with dogs and he was picked.
The First encounter with Fama
In Indiana, after a couple of days of introductory safety training, all handlers were introduced to the dogs and were assigned one supported their personalities.
But once they need to Fama, the mood changed. One among the instructors asked for somebody who wasn’t scared of dogs to volunteer. What he was actually saying was Fama was no ordinary dog and would probably hurt whoever dared to select her.
The first month of coaching was painful for David, literally. Sometimes, he’d be trying to lock her cage door when she’d just pounce on his hand all of sudden. To anyone besides David, this behavior would be alarming.
Through weeks of coaching, however, David realized that Fama was exceptionally good at finding explosives. During their exercises, she’d find explosives faster than the other dog in their team.
In fact, David was having trouble maintaining with the dog once they were working. He’d grow up leading dogs and telling them what to try to to, it had been a pleasant change to let the dog lead for once
Certification in Arizona
Before TEDDs and their handlers are often shipped to Afghanistan, they need to travel through terrain specific training for an additional month and obtain certified through a series of tests.
Fama, by now , had grown to respect David and appeared to tame her wild tendencies, but David had been bitten enough times to never let his guard down as well as her , a lesson an overconfident vet learned the hard way.
As a part of the handlers’ usual routine, they might bring their dogs certain check-ups with military vets to make sure they were healthy. One vet seemed very offended when David insisted on restraining Fama while she got her checkup.
The vet ignored all of David’s warnings and chalked it up to inexperience on David’s part. a couple of minutes after letting Fama off her leash, the vet was pinned on the bottom shrieking in fear as Fama kept on charging as well as her muzzled mouth. Again, it shouldn’t be funny, but David features a way with words.
Their month of coaching was coming to an in depth , and then the tests were due. Despite all the bites and random attacks from Fama, David had grown to love her and couldn’t imagine being separated from her.
The main fear around these tests wasn’t just failure; there was a risk that those that failed would be shipped back to Afghanistan to resume their previous duties without a second chance.
Fama did exceptionally well and even got a gift for earning the first place in the exam. Sadly, out of the twenty teams that signed up for the training, only eight passed
Torture in Afghanistan
Fama got sick as soon because the plane touched down. Her senses were so weak she couldn’t sense the dummy explosives they utilized in training. What was even worse was that they only had thirty days allowed to acclimatize to the region or get shipped back to the Us .
Before being allowed to hitch their units in real action, they might need to undergo validation, another test, to prove that they were up to the task. It wasn’t enough that Fama was sickly, the person responsible of the validation had a touch of a grudge.
See, the TEDD program originally belonged to the MP . This man felt as if he and every one MPs (Military Police) were being disrespected by this new program. So, while he’d praise David and then the remainder of his group face to face , he’d file negative reports with superiors with the hope that the whole program would get scrapped all together.
What's more, it’s claimed that he would sabotage the tests to undertake and make the new TEDD handlers incompetent. in the end, the handlers trained through the new program outdid the MPs trained in the old program.
Fama passed and would continue to become a tremendous soldier who saved many lives.
She will be deeply missed.