A marine and his dog

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NORCAL-DS650
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A marine and his dog

Postby NORCAL-DS650 » Tue Jan 22, 2008 5:00 pm

Little story about a Marine and his dog, Lex.

Over the holidays the story of Lex the German shepherd emerged. At 8 years old, Lex has been serving the United States Marine Corps as a bomb sniffing dog in Iraq, one of nearly 2,000 such dogs currently deployed overseas. The American lives these dogs have saved cannot be overstated, simply by warning their fellow soldiers of the presence of road side bombs, IED’s, landmines, dormant grenades and the likes. With a little research, it is easy to discover that countless dogs (mostly German shepherds) have saved even more countless human lives in the days after 9/11.

Lex has 2 good years left in him of serving the Corps before being adopted out (usually to his human handler) to live out his final few years. In this case, Lex’s human partner was a 20 year old Corporal named Dustin who not only slept with Lex every night, he even posed for the photo for his 2006 Christmas card from Iraq with Lex, both of whom worse Santa hats. There wasn’t a 2007 card.

Early in 2007 while patrolling Fallujah, Dustin was killed by a mortar attack, one of the few things Lex couldn’t warn him of. Lex, for his part, took some shrapnel in the neck as Dustin fell to the ground dead. By all accounts of Dustin’s fellow soldiers who were there taking on the attack as well, Lex used the strength he still had to literally crawl towards Dustin, despite the metal in Lex’s neck and back and the ensuing chaos that was occurring around them of explosions and gunfire. Ultimately, Lex laid on top of Dustin, whimpering and refused to move until 2 fellow Marines literally lifted him off of Dustin and sent Lex to receive medical care. Three months later, Lex was back in service, as any great soldier would be.

The reason this whole story came out is Dustin’s family, who upon hearing the story of Lex, petitioned the Marines to allow Lex to come home early to them, a wish which was granted in Late December 2007.

While I could seemingly leave the story at this and allow you to (hopefully) bask in the glow of an amazing story of the love, loyalty and devotion of Lex, I fell there is more to be said.

While Lex simply behaved as any other Marine would have, it must be pointed out that Lex is a dog, not a person. The Armed forces are basically reserved for the greatest members of America’s society, while the rest of us are allowed to arrogantly, ignorantly take for granted everything that the military provides for us. Most people suck, those that don’t join the military.

Dogs ask for nothing other than your love. In return for that love and loyalty, they watch you die and lay on you until they are forcefully removed from your body.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317830,00.html

I snipped the story from Rob Williams, the guy from Rob Arnie & Dawn
To read in its entirety
http://www.robarnieanddawn.com/newsite/robsoapbox.html

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Ken
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Postby Ken » Tue Jan 22, 2008 6:32 pm

Great story...the Fox story is excellent.
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Postby GrizzlyGuy » Tue Jan 22, 2008 6:43 pm

Great story, NorCal. I lucked out and happened to be watching FOXNews when they interviewed the family. Sure was nice to see USMC bend a rule or two to get Lex to his true home. :)
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Postby Kendo » Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:28 pm

That is a great story. I am a sucker for a dog or military story, and the combination of the two is wonderful.

Too bad we don't get more press coverage of things like this rather than the crap we DO get to watch on a nightly basis.
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Postby FishaHallic » Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:07 pm

That was a great story I happened to see it also. I am glad Lex has a new home and as others have said thank God that these young people have the cahones to join the military and fight for our freedoms.
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NORCAL-DS650
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Postby NORCAL-DS650 » Wed Jan 23, 2008 9:10 am

I have a brother and cousin that are in the army, my brother just got back from afgan, and is getting deployed to iraq in 9 months and my cousin is in iraq right now. So I really enjoy good stories like this.

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Postby zkeys » Wed Jan 23, 2008 3:16 pm

Very cool story man! Somewhat of a shameless plug along the same lines.

http://www.amazon.com/Baghdad-Love-Mari ... 980&sr=8-1

The P.R. group from my company (The Iams Company) helped get this dog from Bagdad to the Marine in San Diego. Kinda cool to see this around, my company eats alot of crap from the public....
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