Lackland AFB's military working dog may win big honor
Charles Zuckerman
Tuesday, June 05, 2012, 3:37:55 PM
The heroism of men and women who fight to protect our country is honored with a number of awards, and military working dogs (MWDs) are getting recognized, too. The American Humane Association will award one MWD from
Lackland AFB with the 2012 Hero Dog Award soon, according to Army Times.
One of the front-runners for this year's honor is Gabe, a retired MWD whose work sniffing bombs, guns and ammunition in Iraq won him more than 14,000 "likes" on his Facebook page, where is he is running for the award.
Staff Sergeant Chuck Shuck, Gabe's former handler in Iraq who met him early in his career at Lackland and adopted him after his retirement in 2009, said his dog is still serving an important role. Shuck brings him to visit wounded soldiers in hospitals and to schools to discuss Army values, the news outlet reports. Plus, he is a poster dog for shelter animals - before his job in the Army, he was just another pound puppy in Houston.
“Pound puppies and shelter dogs die every day, but Gabe got adopted by the Army and found all this stuff,” Shuck said. “I want to get on the stage and talk about that cause.”
According to the Military Working Dog Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the MWDs have been assisting the U.S. military in a number of missions since World War II, when the public donated family dogs to help with the war effort. Since then, MWDs have been used in almost all branches of the military - gaining a particularly high level of attention when it was reported that a dog named Cairo played a crucial role in the Navy SEAL's mission to find Osama Bin Laden in 2011.
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