This is a bill on Congress that we can get behind. A new bill in Congress, the Military Working Dogs Retirement Act, would require military working dogs that are retired overseas (and many times sitting in small or large pens) to be sent back to the U.S. for their handlers, other service members, or families to adopt and give a home to.
Dogs are a tremendous help for PTSD recovery but when they are retired they just stay at the base where they retired and typically get adopted around their base, locally. For soldiers returning home to the U.S. that want to adopt their dog partner it becomes quite a hassle and they do not get great priority if their dog is overseas since currently the emphasis is on finding someone to adopt the dog near the overseas base. This bill aims to help with this process. So while dogs save military lives and the bonds developed between handlers and dogs is extremely strong, the current dog adoption process needs to catch up.
We are sure there will be kinks that need to be worked out but dogs should be reunited with their partners if the partners want.
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Just check out one example below per the Military Times:
“Only Ellen could give Army veteran Josh Tucker the motivation to recover.
The two served together in Afghanistan, where Tucker endured a traumatic combat brain injury in 2011.
But it took about two years and the intervention of a congresswoman to get Ellen, a bomb-sniffing black Lab, back to Tucker.
“How would you deny someone this?” asked U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat who helped return Ellen to Tucker, who is from Chandler but now lives in Virgina. “It makes no sense to have a talented dog like this sit in a runner (enclosure) when she could be helping a serviceman cope with PTSD.””
And this is a great video done by ABC News 10 in Phoenix, Arizona about the issue.
Read more at the Military Times
Leave us a comment on what you think about the military dog adoption process. We want to hear from you!
