|
|
Post by grannygussie on Apr 11, 2012 19:24:43 GMT 12
This is in the Dec 2011 ed of HATS magazine, but I don't know how to get the story into the computer without just typing a copy. Hats credit Smudge Graphix: www.smudge.com.au/vietnam/twodogs.htm I've typed it exactly as written, if there are mistakes, apologies. It's not a 2 dogs joke. It's moving. Should it be html ? I know so little - but I know there's hotmail. |
|
|
|
Post by Luther Moore on Apr 11, 2012 21:54:25 GMT 12
I remember a few years ago I watched a doco about dog handlers in Vietnam...It was one of the most hard hitting docs I have ever seen.It was sad how they had to put their own dogs down after they were wounded by shooting them after living with them for a long time.The fight they had to go through to get their dog home only to have it handed over to the South Vietnamese was also hard hitting.
|
|
|
|
Post by grannygussie on Apr 12, 2012 10:55:57 GMT 12
It's truly appalling that we use animals like disposable tissues and I am haunted by all the stories of horses, dogs, even the pigeons who died, the Berlin zoo animals... It is an avalanche if you get into it. I DO have one glimmer of a happy ending, that some may not have discovered. If anyone read HORRIE THE WOG DOG by Ion Iddriess? Guess that title wouldn't be allowed, now. (I was always told it was a slightly sarcastic acronym of Western Oriental Gentleman, originally - would that I were so insulted...). Anyway, those beautiful lads rescued a little terrier in WW2 and were told to shoot it or rehome it and decided that they'd smuggle it home. Lucky it wasn't a deerhound! (As an animal lover, the lack of quarantine horrifies - but they did come back by boat...) Dog back, well established and bureaucracy steps in, and demands it be killed. Any disease, etc would have spread long ago. Horrie dies with this hanging over his head and I wept 30ish years ago, for a week. I was scrounging old newspapers for my garden compost, sometime in the last 8? years, checking for undone sudokus and found an article that gave me such joy. The last involved man had died and now that no one could get into trouble, the involved families had come forward to confess that the death had been staged and Horrie had been smuggled off, to REALLY live in the country, with another old army mate, and had lived a long and happy and loved life.
The Americans and dog lovers of America have been stepping up and making it possible for these dogs to come home and become pets of their handlers - or found homes with volunteers. They have even been paying for the strays that soldiers have befriended in Iraq and Afghanistan and there are at least 10 books on the particular stories of dogs and handlers or chapters for each pair. The quarantine and vet costs are huge and there is at least one or two sites for soldiers to contact, to nominate their animal and get the fundraising and paperwork started.
|
|
