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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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For four months, Smathers sent e-mails, sometimes with photos of Scout, to every soldier and civilian he knew in the area, asking if they had seen Scout. By then, Smathers was being helped by Bonnie Buckley, a Massachusetts woman who runs a Web site dedicated to helping soldiers rescue animals overseas.
On Aug. 5, 2004, a soldier sent an e-mail to Smathers and Buckley. "Guys, I see Scout almost every day," the e-mail said. "No one is taking care of him. He is looking pretty skinny, and a vet needs to look at his left eye.'' The soldier wrote that Scout hung out near the pool of a large house.
Smathers e-mailed a soldier and asked that Scout be captured, caged and taken to the Baghdad Zoo, where Smathers had become friendly with a veterinarian. Within days, Scout was at the zoo, where he would stay for a year.
Smathers couldn't get Scout out on a military flight because U.S. soldiers are not allowed to bring back animals from foreign soil, he said.
Just after Scout was taken to the zoo, Smathers cooked up a scheme: An Iraqi picked up Scout and drove him eight hours to the Jordanian border. The plan was to drive Scout to Amman and put him on a plane to the United States. But Jordanian border guards turned Scout away. Smathers's Iraqi contact had to drive back to Baghdad.
Smathers said he could not identify his Iraqi contacts because their lives would be in jeopardy if insurgents learned that they were helping an American.
Finally, Smathers said, Buckley found the British woman who runs an animal shelter in Kuwait, and she was willing to help. The woman took Scout to Kuwait, put him on a commercial flight to the Netherlands and then to Dulles, where Smathers met him Aug. 22.
Scout's life is much different now. Every Sunday, Smathers's six sisters bring their young children to his one-acre property, and the kids frolic with Scout.
Smathers is taking pains not to lose sight of Scout again. He erected an invisible fence, with an electric current, around his property and outfitted the dog with a tag that reads "Scout. IRAQ WAR DOG."
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