This short news video from KXAS in Dallas yesterday pretty much speaks for itself and really captures them very well.

“Local Veteran’s Life Changed By A Dog”

In case it’s not real obvious which one (or you’re just a wiseguy):  one of us hasn’t been to space – me.

It was my great privilege and honor to spend a large portion of Monday and Tuesday this week with three astronauts from Space Shuttle mission STS-131 who just returned from space April 20th – Commander Navy Capt Alan Poindexter, Pilot Air Force Col Jim Dutton, and Mission Specialist Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger.

The occasion was a visit here to Colorado Springs including Challenger Middle School, Challenger Learning Center, Mountain View Elementary School, and the US Air Force Academy that was organized by my close friend Art Romero and which he very graciously allowed me to be a part of.

I’ve known Jim since he was a cadet at USAFA and I was on the staff over 20 years ago, Dex and Dottie I only met this week, but I’ll tell you this about all three of them. I honestly think you couldn’t meet three more impressive and truly just plain nice people on the planet (or I guess off the planet, too – that just rolled right off my tongue that way, I swear).  Although Dottie really has the edge there (sorry, guys) – I’d been told more than once before I met her that everybody just loves her, and now I understand why.

Beyond that, it was another tremendous experience and one of those once-in-a-lifetime things you feel very, very lucky to have been involved with.  That really doesn’t even begin to cover it, but it’s about all I know to say.

And just like I mentioned a few days ago when talking about Rocky Bleier, same thing applies here, too.  If you know me, you know at some point we’ll be talking about service dogs, especially for veterans, and Canine Companions for Independence, and you can bet that happened with my three astronaut friends as well.

Thanks again to everybody who made this possible, starting with Art.

For me personally, there have been so many overlapping and intersecting worlds – friends on the Air Force team who were competing, Air Force Academy coaches along with training and events at USAFA, a Canine Companions for Independence graduate on the AF team – it’s just been overwhelming. I’ve met a lotta ‘old’ friends – people who I’ve been talking to for years in some cases but had never met in person – and made a ton of new ones as well.

It’s really been the center of the wounded warrior universe here for the last week or so, and we reached critical mass with all of the elements that have never before been assembled in one place at the same time.

First, you had the inspirational competitors – 200 wounded warriors from all the services setting an example for all of us that has just left me in awe. In fact, “awesome” is a word that used to be reserved for events like this before it became just another meaningless overused trite expression.

This paragraph from the American Legion blog Thursday is the best description I’ve seen of what’s gone on here – I was there Wed afternoon, and it happened just this way:

My “I wish I brought a hankie” moment came in the Mens 50m freestyle. The heats were divided into 3 categories, Lower Body Injuries, Upper Body Injuries, and TBI/PTSD athletes. In the LBI heat there were 6 competitors, the first 5 of which finished the heat bunched up closely at around 45 seconds. But the 6th competitor trailed by a lot. In fact, he was only about 15 meters in to his swim. It was a young Marine….a young marine with no legs. He could have stopped, he could have turned around, since he was about 1/3 done. But that isn’t what Marines do. The entire crowd was on it’s feet. I even saw a guy in a wheelchair painfully push himself to a standing position to cheer. The other athletes in the heat didn’t exit the pool, they turned around, and treaded water while yelling, clapping and cheering on this survivor, this athlete who was going to finish no matter what. It was incredibly loud in there, and behind me a marine mom was crying as she cheered. She wasn’t alone, a good 50% of the crowd was either crying, and a good 49% of the remainder was blinking as rapidly as they could. I would have been in the first category, but somehow held it together. There are events you witness in your life that awe and inspire you, this was one of them. When that Marine finished the 50m, the crowd was ballistic. Athletes, coaches, fans, media, military and even the folks running the event all screaming and clapping. Perhaps one of the most moving things I ever witnessed.

http://burnpit.legion.org/2010/05/warrior-games-day-3/

The guy that was written about is Chuck Sketch, who I later had the  great privilege of meeting, and who was chosen by the winning Marine team to accept the Chairman’s Cup at the closing ceremonies:

On top of that very emotional environment, you had a collection of the real “movers and shakers” from different organizations in the wounded warrior world coming together in an unprecedented way. Based on my experience, I have a feeling we will see some great things coming from all the conversations that I know went on here.

For me, it was an opportunity to talk service dogs for veterans with many varied groups – veterans thinking about getting dogs, nonprofits and government agencies looking at helping veterans get dogs, people interested in puppy raising, and so on.  In case it’s not already obvious, there is a tremendous interest in service dogs in this world, but the reality is also that most people aren’t aware what’s available, and, even if they are, don’t know where to go, what to look for, and who the best organizations are.

And, trust me, all service dogs and organizations are by no means equal – might look that way (and some organizations may even intentionally try to make it look that way), but they are not.

The best way I know to get that point across is for people to see what a real service dog team looks like and then let them make their own judgments and comparisons, and having Jason Morgan with his CCI Service Dog Napal here was absolutely invaluable in doing that.  Here’s a nice picture from my friend Agnieszka Obstoj taken right after Army Chief of Staff Gen Casey presented the AF team with bronze medals for wheelchair basketball – Jason, Napal, and Rich Pollock:

This is exactly what a service dog should look like in public a lot of the time – lotsa hoopla, excitement, and noise, but the dog is lying down relaxed, leash firmly in the hand of the human. Look around and notice how many times that’s not what you see, and you’ll have even more appreciation for CCI dogs like Napal.

Jason and Napal very definitely provided the example, and when I explained to those who saw them – and there were many – that it takes two years of very serious and focused effort to produce a dog like Napal and a match like those two have, and only about a third of the dogs make it all the way through, without fail, their eyebrows went up and their eyes got real big.

There’s lots more I could say – I’m not really speechless, but there are just so many thoughts and emotions still buzzing through my head a day after the events ended I can’t get them all out.  So I’ll just leave it here for now.

So, I’ll just give you a coupla neat things to look at which, given my military background, not surprisingly have a definite Air Force bent.

First, a great picture that was taken of the Air Force team with Gen Gene Renuart, NORTHCOM / NORAD commander and ranking officer in Colorado Springs.  Even better because Canine Companions for Independence graduate Jason Morgan and his service dog Napal are in the front row at the right:

Second, something funny – Gen Renuart’s comments about the ‘interservice rivalry’ – I think he pretty much nailed it here:

Jason and Napal visiting with Lt Ryan McGuire at the Air Force Academy track.

Last night my wife Joann and I spent several very enjoyable hours at dinner with Jason and Napal. Not only is Jason a really nice guy and Napal the classic CCI service dog, Jason’s story of how he came to be injured and his recovery is truly incredible.

It’s not something he’s talked about a lot for a number of good reasons, so most people – including those associated with CCI – don’t know it. I did find one place where Jason’s written about it, though, and if you wanna read an amazing story, just go to this link:

http://www.clinesrunningcorner.com/archives_09/formerspecialforcesmemberadjusts_09.pdf

Rumor has it we’ll be seeing them on the cover of Airman Magazine in the near future. I know I’ll definitely be watching and rooting for them in competition this week.

They can be seen zipping around the track at the one minute point of this Today Show video:

And also about 30 seconds into this local news story from KOAA Channels 5 and 30:

As a retired Air Force Chief, I can’t tell you how proud I am of all these wounded warriors representing the AF, and with my deep involvement with CCI, particularly the veterans initiative, having Jason and Napal here is just the proverbial icing on the cake.

Schriever Air Force Base here in Colorado Springs has a new article both online and in the printed edition of their base newspaper this week about – who else? – their namesake dog, Schriever:

(Click on the image for a nice giant high-resolution version.)

“Assistance-dog training school honors Schriever with namesake“

You can also download the PDF version of the paper here – article is on page 6: 

http://csmng.com/wp-files/schriever-sentinel-weekly-pdfs/sentinel_2010-02-18.pdf

I still think this was a great idea, and the local angle for those of us in a big military city like Colorado Springs is an added bonus.

‘Clinic cat on orders to Luke’

I hafta be honest, though, and say it is a little disappointing a vet clinic would let a cat get that heavy.  Plus this story was originally run the day after National Pet Obesity Awareness Day, too.

Maybe they need to let the MWDs chase him around a little (please don’t e-mail me or send me a buncha “How dare you!” comments).

“MWDs ‘out of the doghouse’ at JBB”

It doesn’t surprise me – I know enough handlers to know how they are about their dogs, and the stories over the years about them sleeping with the dogs, usually under hostile conditions in the field, are legion.

But there’s just something about the image of a big Lab out there taking over a bed just like they do everywhere.

Not that that would ever happen around here, of course.

Air Force Coach Troy Calhoun (in blue) and Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel visit Henry Bautista at a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.

The visit is part of Coaches Tour 2009, where a number of NCAA coaches are visiting the troops – next stops are Turkey and Iraq. You can read more here:

“NCAA coaches visit wounded warriors in military hospital”