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A War Dog's Faithful Friend
After a 17-month quest to bring his adopted dog from Iraq to Maryland, Capt. John E. Smathers was reunited with Scout in late August at Dulles International Airport. Scout had acted as a watchdog for Smathers's Army Reserve unit, above, in Iraq.
(By Michael Robinson-chavez -- The Washington Post)
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In Baghdad, the unit took over a two-story, three-bedroom house near the Tigris River. Worried about attacks by enemy fighters, the soldiers slept on the roof, their M-16s at their sides, while Scout stayed in front of the building.
"Scout was our early-warning system," Smathers said. "If someone came by who he didn't recognize, he'd start barking.''
Smathers and Scout bonded. At 5:30 a.m. most days, Scout would put his paw through the mosquito net Smathers slept inside. Smathers would awaken, and the two would run by the Tigris.
"Sometimes he'd jump into the river. I'd yank him out by the scruff of his neck," Smathers said.
At one point, Scout became gravely ill with parvovirus, a disease that leaves dogs dehydrated. For four days, Smathers and another soldier took turns administering intravenous antibiotics.
Scout and Smathers were inseparable until Smathers and other soldiers were ambushed Feb. 21, 2004.
Smathers was in a convoy of three sport-utility vehicles headed to villages south of Baghdad. The soldiers planned to assess whether villagers had enough food and water.
Just south of the city, the convoy was ambushed by fighters shooting AK-47s. The driver of the SUV that Smathers was in floored it, and the vehicle overturned at 100 mph, landing right-side up. The Iraqi translator sitting next to Smathers had been shot in the head and killed.
Smathers had braced his arms against the SUV's roof, and his left forearm had snapped.
Smathers crawled out, and the attackers left. Three weeks later, Smathers was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, recuperating from the broken arm and a damaged right knee.
Via e-mail, Smathers kept in touch with members of his unit. One soldier wrote that for the first two weeks Smathers was gone, Scout remained outside the front door of the house, as if waiting for the captain.
Eventually, Smathers's unit left the house, and Scout was on his own. In an e-mail, a soldier told Smathers that Scout had been picked up by a dogcatcher and was going to be euthanized, but that he escaped by digging under a fence.
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