Dog Days of Winter

Sorry for the delay in a post; life has been quite hectic.  With new people arriving at our location life has gotten very busy and I have had to spend a lot of time "away".  All in all nothing to complain about just going on right now.

I want to thank everyone for all of the emails that I have received and responses on the blog. It is nice hearing from everyone when I get to log on.

Story for the day:

Last night I am woken up by the sound of a dog crying outside my room.  I go outside and see one of our military working dogs, Lucca, curled up on the ground crying with his handler yelling at him.  Rod, the handler tells me to look inside of his room where I see the other military working dog ,Darko, and his handler, Danny, standing in the room. The room is a complete disaster.  The two handlers share a large room to keep their dogs with them at all times.  In the very middle of the room right in from of the door is a large pile of poop!  The rest of the room is wrappers everywhere, towels ripped up, shoes all over.  After helping them clean we figured out that the dogs had eaten two MRE's (Meals Ready to EAT).  These require water to be added to them.  Each of the snacks in the MRE were gone to include the napkins, salt, pepper, and TANG drink mix.  After they were done their dinner, they jumped up on the desk grabbed two OTIS Spunkmeyer muffins, a cliff bar, and dog treats from a care package. They finished those off.  Darko was obviously not feeling well after all this and went looking for a medical kit.  Upon finding the medical kit he decided to eat the gauze and ace bandage from the medical kit!!!! 

So the dogs drank a lot of water last night and I can't imagine that this mornings bowel movement is feeling very nice. I wish I had a picture to put up.  These two dogs are extremely well behaved and great dogs and it was the highlight of my trip so far seeing this.  The dog handlers obviously got a good laugh out of all of this too!

Once again, life is pretty busy so I am sorry if I don't respond to messages.  In the coming weeks I will be spending even more time away from "home" so expect updates every 4-5 days if possible.

Most importantly my beard is doing great, getting pretty big!  I hope to be able to add some pictures soon. I just ordered a card reader and it should be here in early FEB.

I have been able to speak with all of my teammates and they seem to be doing well.  Everyone is living a slightly different lifestyle in regards to living conditions, tempo of the deployment, and connectivity! Please keep them all in your thoughts!