Wounded vet wants Air Force dog
Washington -- They had trained together for three years in the military and were deployed overseas side by side. In June, they arrived in Iraq, where they worked as a team scouring houses and villages for hidden explosives. Then, one afternoon, riding back from a mission, a roadside bomb went off under their humvee.
Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jamie Dana was critically injured -- bleeding internally, her lungs collapsed, her spine fractured, her pelvis broken. In her last moment of consciousness, she asked in desperation about her comrade. "Where's Rex?" she pleaded. When no one answered, she grabbed a medic's arm. "Where's my dog?! Is he dead?"
The medic told her that he was. "I felt like my heart broke," she recalled in an interview. "It's the last thing I remember."
Weeks passed before Dana absorbed the news that the medic was mistaken and that Rex was alive. The German shepherd was burned slightly on his nose but was not seriously injured. Dana teetered at life's edge, with doctors unable to assure her husband and parents that she would survive.
Not long after she started to rally from her injuries, Dana asked Air Force leaders if she could adopt Rex. The answer was no; it was against the rules, and Rex was still valuable to the military.
Now, the Air Force has changed its view -- but federal law stands in the way.
Under Title 10 U.S. Code 2583, the Air Force says, it cannot allow the wounded airman to take her combat dog home until the animal is too old to be useful. Rex, 80 pounds and brown and black with gold markings, is just 5 years old, not nearly the retirement age of 10 to 14.
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