Chucky

You walk into a conflict as a human, you know there is a chance you may get killed. Even when your version of that conflict involves never leaving an armed base that is so "safe" that we even have a TGI Fridays, for crying out loud. This is a different war. There is no well-defined "front." The enemy choses to practice what we now call asymmetrical warfare...a fancy term for killing by any means necessary: IED, suicide bombers, etc. The enemy also randomly launches rockets onto our base. I kind of view my chances of being hit by a rocket as being similar to winning the lottery, except the downside is a bit worse. That being said, wasting your time worrying about getting hit by a rocket attack is mental energy that I don't feel like wasting. This goes under one my favorite expressions, "Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you." Which gets me back to my opening sentence: as humans we always know there is the chance that something could go drastically wrong, but we take that risk because we feel that the good we have to offer outweighs that risk.

On to writing about the dogs. Do they understand what is going on around them? When they are on patrol with their handler looking for bombs or bad guys what is going through their minds? Do they know fear? Do they know that they may be killed? Or is their sole focus on doing the things that make their handler happy? And when they make their handler happy, that makes them happy. If you've read a couple of my postings, you know I love dogs. I love their fuzzy faces, I love playing with them, I love their unconditional love (I know, an overused expression with respect to dogs), I love how happy they are with the simple things in life and I really identify with that aspect of their personality.

Chucky, a beautiful Belgian Shepherd, a working dog in Afghanistan for private security contractor is out on patrol with his handler. The handler steps on a landmine. The handler took most of the blast breaking one leg, losing part of another leg and has a variety of other injuries. Chucky is brought in on the same helo and put into one of our trauma bays and treated just like any other patient. You can see the blood on his back legs and he lays there quietly under a blanket. He lets you scratch his head. He responds to little whistles and talking. The veterinarian comes over and sedates him and starts working on him. I don't routinely read dog x-rays, but I do here. He has multiple pieces of shrapnel in his back legs with two fractures in his right leg. I talk to the vet and she tells me that these are treatable injuries, but it all depends on the contractor and if they will pay for it. War, like many things, comes down to money. It is, after all, a business. The contractor won't pay. It's cheaper to get a new dog then fix the one that they already spent thousands of dollars on. A rumor goes around that you can sometimes adopt these injured working dogs. One of the people at our hospital goes over to the vet to find out about this...too late, the dog has already been put to sleep.

It hurts to see young soldiers injured and killed. But soldiers know what they are getting into as they go to war. Dogs, like children, rely on their owners (or parents) to take care of them. Maybe part of the reason that dogs and children are so carefree is that they usually don't have to worry about their health and well-being. I think that's why we love them so much because of their carefree approach to life. For those of us who own and love dogs, it hurts to see one of them treated purely as an asset and when that asset becomes a liability it is cut loose and terminated.

I hope Chucky's soul is free to travel the land, running and playing for as long as he would like. Perhaps he'll run into Dorsett. Perhaps they'll go to Belgium and have some pomme-frites. Run free, Chucky, I'm sorry the system failed you. You deserved better.