This Veterans' Day, join us for a moving episode about America’s four-legged warriors—military working dogs, or MWDs. These unsung heroes serve on the frontlines of combat zones around the world, but the challenges they face extend beyond the battlefield and into retirement. In this episode, Bob Bryant, co-founder and vice president of Mission K9, and US Navy Veteran Elijah Holyfield speak with co-hosts Jordan Tyler and Dr. Stephanie Clark about the duties, sacrifices, and unmet needs of today’s MWDs.

Helpful Links

Learn more about Mission K9: https://missionk9rescue.org/, and follow the organization on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MissionK9/

Learn more about The Ddamien Project, a partner organization of Mission K9 that specializes in caring for retired MWDs who aren't suited to be adopted out to the public due to behavioral or medical challenges: https://www.ddamienproject.org/

Read more about the unique roles working dogs play in our lives: https://bsmpartners.net/insights/celebrating-humans-best-friendship/

Learn more about military working dogs from the Department of Defense and the Association of the United States Army.

Find the full text of the proposed Honoring Our K9 Heroes Act: https://fitzpatrick.house.gov/_cache/files/e/4/e462d2d5-5f20-43f7-8973-b192ebdd09d7/7AF5380674B8629CDEA00BAFAE044AB4.honoring-our-k9-heroes-act.pdf

Show Notes

00:00 – Behind the Episode

02:34 – Introducing Bob Bryant and Mission K9

05:27 – What is a Working Dog?

08:32 – “Fur Missiles” with Elijah Holyfield, a US Navy Veteran

09:46 – The DoD Military Working Dog (MWD) Breeding Program

12:11 – Do Dogs Get PTSD?

15:04 – The Five R’s of Mission K9: Rescue, Reunite, Rehome, Rehabilitate, and Repair

20:05 – The Plight of Contract Working Dogs

23:21 – Carefully Pairing MWDs with Their Forever Homes

27:08 – The Ddamien Project

28:28 – Happy Endings for More Than 1,300 Dogs

29:19 – Life After Deployment

30:15 – Celebrating Happy Endings

31:49 – “Navy, Seek!”

34:17 – Supporting Canine Veterans After Service

38:18 – Stress Testing and Hot-Loading

40:13 – Long-Term for Mission K9

42:49 – How to Support Mission K9 Now and In the Future

44:10 – Conclusion and Farewell

Jordan Tyler: Did you know that some military working dogs can run at speeds of 30 miles per hour and take down enemies with bite forces that equate to nearly 200 pounds of pressure per square inch? Or that 40% of these brave canines return home with PTSD, just like their human counterparts? These unsung heroes don’t just serve on the frontlines of combat zones—they save lives, but when their service ends, many face a new battle for survival.

Today, we’re bringing you a special Veterans’ Day episode highlighting the unique and integral roles of these four-legged soldiers and exploring the heart-wrenching difficulties they face in retirement.

We have an extraordinary guest and passionate advocate for our four-legged heroes joining us today. Bob Bryant is the co-founder and vice president of Mission K9 Rescue, an organization dedicated to the rehabilitation and rehoming of retired working dogs, many of whom were born and bred to serve in the US military. Bob’s journey from the tech world to becoming a lifeline for these canine veterans is both inspiring and heartwarming, but not all his tales have happy endings, as even today, not all military working dogs are honored accordingly for their service.

We also welcome Elijah Holyfield, a US Navy veteran who served for seven years, who shares his personal experiences with military working dogs and advocates for better care for these veterans once their dog days of duty are behind them.

This isn’t just another story about dogs—it’s one of loyalty, resilience, and the duty we owe to those who have served our country, whether they stand on two legs or four. So, whether you’re a dog lover, a fellow veteran, or just curious about the lives and untold stories of America’s military working dogs, this episode is for you.

Stephanie Clark: Welcome to Barking Mad, a podcast by BSM Partners. We’re your hosts, Dr. Stephanie Clark.

Jordan Tyler: And I’m Jordan Tyler.

Stephanie Clark: Welcome, Bob. Can you please tell Jordan and me a little bit about yourself and a little bit more about Mission K9?

I want to advertise on Google,” and the then executive director of this organization said, and I quote, “I will never spend money on paid advertising.” Well, the handwriting was on the wall. Two months later, she had to get a real job, disbanded the organization and my partners reached out and asked me to start Mission K9.

Other than that, personal activities, I'm a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt. I've been training for 14 years. I own part of an academy here. It keeps me sane and not overweight. Thank goodness. I used to weigh 265 pounds. That was a while ago. It's amazing what focused exercise and just showing up somewhere will do for you, plus not eating everything under the sun.

So, That's me. I'm a salesman. I do a lot of public speaking. I work with dogs. What else do you want to know?

Stephanie Clark: Wow; you sound like a jack of all trades. So, going on to a little bit more about Mission K9, what do you guys do?

Jordan Tyler: That's a lot of money and love right there. You mentioned different types of service dogs, and I wanted to just quickly explain All the different roles that working dogs play in our lives before we dive deeper into Mission K9 and your experience.

There’s a really great article on our website about all the ways in which man’s best friends are there for us as working animals. And we'll link that article in the show notes for this episode. But essentially, people have been using selective breeding practices for thousands of years to pair specific breeds of dogs with specific jobs.

So, for example, service dogs have been bred for intelligence and skills that make them perfect for assisting individuals with disabilities to help them perform everyday tasks, whereas, therapy dogs, on the other hand, can provide emotional and mental health support, and other pups are selectively bred to manage livestock, like herding dogs.

Then we have detection dogs, which loyally serve in airports and hospitals and in agricultural settings to detect nefarious substances like drugs or explosives and even cancer. And then finally, bringing this full circle, many military and law enforcement dogs are trained in detection as well, but they also play important roles in combat zones and in search and rescue missions.

Stephanie Clark: You know, a fun fact, Jordan, when I was at the Mayo Clinic and we were working with therapy dogs, there's emotional support animals as well. And they always get really confused, is it a therapy dog or is it an emotional support animal? And honestly, therapy dogs were getting spooked by emotional support animals because they are untrained and they're more, just there for that individual person and their comfort And you would sometimes just hear a dog barking down the hallway in the middle of the hospital.

Jordan Tyler: Hello, what's going on?

Stephanie Clark: I thought this was a hospital, not a zoo.

Jordan Tyler: That's really interesting and it comes back to—I don't know if you remember this, but I feel like it happened a few years ago. There was this whole brouhaha in the news about people bringing emotional support animals onto airplanes, and people would try to bring their pet bunny on the plane and claim that it was an emotional support animal.

Stephanie Clark: Then the bunny escapes and is hopping all over the plane and you're like, I feel so much better now; now that I have this bunny with me.

Jordan Tyler: So yeah, that's an interesting point, too, is we've kind of, as we humanize animals, now we're, if a pet doesn't have any training, it can still be an emotional support animal. But the training piece and the selective breeding piece plays a role in what separates a working dog from an emotional support animal.

Stephanie Clark: Oh, absolutely. There's a huge difference.

Jordan Tyler: Back to these military dogs. According to Elijah Holyfield, who served as a Navy Corpsman for more than eight years providing medical care and fleet logistics, being a handler for a military dog is a coveted station.

Elijah Holyfield: In my experience, most military working dogs are either a breed of Malinois or German Shepherd. Pretty much everyone in the military wants to work with the Military Working Dogs, or MWDs. And on deployment, some of the handlers will even give demonstrations. They'll let volunteers put on the bite suit, and either attack someone or let them run away.

And then they will sick the dogs on them. A lot of people don't really understand how strong or quick these dogs are. The average Malinois can be around 60 pounds, and runs around 30 miles an hour. And once they grab onto you, I mean, they're trained to shake hard and just continue to bite harder. Some of the handlers will even jokingly refer to the Malinois as fur missiles, because once they release them and give them the command to sick someone down, they sprint fast, they jump far, and they hit hard.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, I can imagine. I definitely wouldn’t want to be between a fur missile and its next objective, that’s for sure. But what an appropriate nickname.

Stephanie Clark: Just to provide some more context, there are roughly 1,600 military dogs currently enlisted and only about 300 of them are retired each year. Now, of these 1,600 dogs, roughly 13% are bred and born directly into service through the DoD (Department of Defense) Military Working Dog Breeding Program, also endearingly known as the Puppy Program. This breeds between 50 to 90 military dogs per year at the 341st Training Squadron at Joint Base in San Antonio.

These puppies go to foster homes for about six months to be socialized before being trained as military dogs. They have no choice. It's like being drafted and they never get a say, but it turns out that this program exclusively breeds Belgium Malinois, which both Elijah and Bob pointed out as the most popular breed of working dogs in the military today, even more popular than German Shepherds.

Bob Bryant: The most popular working dog these days, it's most prominently used in the world, is the Belgian Malinois. They are faster, they are lighter, and they have more bite strength than the German Shepherd, and they're less prone to hip dysplasia. The second most common dog we see is our good old German Shepherds. I have a bicolor Shepherd named Navy.

That was a police canine in Longue, Canada. It's a little city up in the Quebec province. The third most common dog we see a lot are Labrador Retrievers. And on the TSA side of things, we see Labradors, we see Springer Spaniels, and we see German Short-Haired Pointers. We also have seen some little bitty dogs.

I once heard of a Jack Russell Terrier that was trained for drug detection on submarines. You know, get in tight spaces. So, working breeds are roughly what we see in the working world. Obviously, there are more working breeds, but these dogs have been used by our militaries and private contractors for years.

Jordan Tyler: That's really interesting. When I think about the archetype of a military dog, my mind doesn't immediately go to a little terrier in camouflage. But it makes a lot of sense that different breeds would be needed for different tasks like that, like biting ankles.

Stephanie Clark: Bob, before we get into the five Rs, I was wondering if you could share how the disposition of these dogs might be different from other adoption settings. Just thinking about what these dogs have been through, I would imagine like many human veterans, a lot of them come back with PTSD. Is that true?

Bob Bryant: Four out of ten dogs, we get, have some sort of PTSD. Most of these are if they're military working dogs, they're getting it due to explosions or gunfire.

Jordan Tyler: Bob also mentioned that dogs can develop PTSD from being physically abused or mistreated, which is really unfortunate but can happen in the case of contract dogs that are deployed in areas of the world where maybe the treatment of military dogs and foreign military, for that matter, can get a little dicey.

Bob Bryant: I had a Belgian Malinois named Anubis. And when they went to get him out of his kennel, one of our guys went to get him, and he just shocked and just peed all over everything. And they called me, and they said, “I've got a dog, I want your wife to take.” I thought, “Oh no”.

So, Oreo, our Labrador, had just passed over, and I said, okay. For the four years we had Anubis, although I tried to be friends with him, he never really liked me. He never wanted to do anything with me, but he bonded to my wife like a tick. And we had to go to the point, I got a dummy and dressed it in her clothing, used clothes, got a red wig and put it on this, this female dummy and would lay it on the couch and put a blanket, put the head on the pillow.

He bought it. She could finally leave the house without him going crazy and having separation anxiety. He would go to sleep on the floor by the couch by that dummy till she got back. And then he's like, Where did you come from? You're right here. He wasn't mean to me. He never growled. He never tried to bite me.

He was just a tortured soul. And it still breaks my heart to think about how someone could treat a dog that magnificent, with that much character, with that much skill, like a piece of trash. So, PTSD is a very big thing. And people say, “Well, Bob, how do you fix the PTSD?” You don't. You simply learn how to recognize and avoid the things that trigger it. And you try to compensate with affection, praise, and surety.

Stephanie Clark: This is really interesting, Bob. I was talking to my husband the other day, and he's a veteran, and he was telling me that it is the same punishment, the same crime to injure or harm a military dog as you would a military person. So, the amount of respect they get while working in the military is undeniable. They're, exactly on the same playing field as humans. So, I thought that was really interesting. I never really thought about it in that context.

And so, you had mentioned your five Rs for Mission K9. Can you explain what each of them means? And specifically, what makes these dogs unique in the rehoming and rehabilitation process?

Bob Bryant: Mission K9 operates on what we call the five Rs, that is, rescue, reunite, re-home, rehabilitate, and repair. Most of these dogs have been kenneled their entire lives. They have no idea what living in a home is, what having a family that cares about them, other than their handler. Their handlers love them, but at the end of the day, the dog goes in the kennel, and the handler goes home.

We help these dogs transition from a working life into being more of a comfortable life, being just a pet. Now, do they still want to work? Absolutely! And they can work for fun. We just don't allow our dogs to be worked in a physical work environment anymore once they're retired. That's kind of how that works.

When we rescue these dogs out of situations all over the world, military working dogs are well cared for while they're in their service. I mean, they get the best vet care. They get everything they need. And when they retire, they need a way to get home. For the majority of the time, since we've been doing this, the military has not stepped up to bring dogs home on their own.

They brought three dogs home on a rotator flight from Japan up to Seattle. We still had to take them across the country. But it saved us $6,000 a dog. So, that's the rescue portion of it. With contract working dogs, they're even in worse situations. These dogs are owned by private companies. They're often kenneled when they're retired, for way too long.

We've received Dutch Shepherds from a contractor that should weigh 75 pounds that weighed 38 pounds. We're talking about skin and bones and the mental conditions that go along with such a deprivation of essential nutrition. His name was Robby. Robby was the star. He and his handler in Afghanistan were the star mind detection duo.

Jordan Tyler: Sadly, Robby's handler died in action. According to Bob, Robby not only lost his handler but found himself neglected in a kennel as a result.

Bob Bryant: We got a picture from a rescuer of this dog that was just emaciated. We brought him home and he regained his health, he regained his coat, he regained his physical features, but he was never right mentally.

And it's just sad. On reuniting, we will reunite any working dog that has a handler who wants them. That's a given. It's a great feeling to see the dog's eyes spark up, and the ears perk up when they see or hear somebody that they haven't seen in years. We brought a big Czech Shepherd named Attila, that was a military working dog, home to his handler JD up at Chicago Midway Airport about three years ago.

Kristen, my partner, actually does all the heavy lifting in this organization, as far as moving the dogs everywhere. She was walking the dog across the airport and all of a sudden JD made some crazy little squeaky noise that only that dog knew. Attila nearly dragged Kristen across the airport to get to him.

We've done so many of those over the years. Rehabilitate. Working dogs train like athletes their entire lives and because of that, they have stress-related injuries. They have rehabilitated, minor fractures, they get back issues, they get eye problems like pannus, and they can even develop cancers.

Unfortunately, more often than not, because of their kennel environment, the things that they're required to detect, the bleaches that are used in their kennels, not the military dogs specifically, but more the contract dogs, working dogs, and they require a lot of rehabilitation. We will take a dog in, if it's a military dog, most of the time it's going directly to its handler.

So, it's just more of a hand-off situation unless they're still doing a permanent change of station, and they need us to keep the dog for a few weeks, and that's fine. But with contract working dogs, when they come in, we evaluate them thoroughly for at least a month, and we find out what their triggers are.

Stephanie Clark: And just like people, dogs can also have triggers. There are several triggers to look for, like, as is the dog aggressive. Does it act aggressively in the kennel or around food? Is the dog comfortable around men or women? Or do they have a strong dislike towards a specific gender or type of person? Or even the look of a person? Do they have facial hair? These are all factors that make the rehabilitation and rehoming process particularly challenging for our four-legged veterans.

Bob Bryant: We find out if they have health issues, and we vet them medically for anything that they need, and that's more in the repair process. Once we move from the rehabilitation process, we move to repair; if that dog has veterinary issues, it's going to be fixed, or it's going to be managed in a lifetime situation. Now, we don't provide vet care for the dogs once they're adopted. We can't do it. It would just break us.

Bob Bryant: And it will be administrated by organizations like Mission K9 that can prove what they spend on veterinary care. A lot of organizations try to lump all their money together and they're advertising with most of it. They're really not doing the work. So, they're going to force the non-profits that get the work, get the money, to spend at least 75% or more on their actual work, not on ads. And we're at 90%, so we're well above that curve.

And sometimes it's too much because we get funding struggles occasionally when we spend too much money on the work and then more work comes in. And I'm reduced to begging on Facebook sometimes. So, that's the repair process. We will also re-home any working dog so that they are in the best situation for the remainder of their retirement years.

Back to that military dog bill. Contract-working dogs aren't covered. Contract-working dogs get nothing when they retire. And it's sad. I would like to see the government require contractors to fund their flight home initially. In other words, put a deposit up. You get a flight home. You have money for veterinary care the entire time.

Bob Bryant: You have money for nutrition. And they know where the dog's going to be, and they monitor that. Can they do it? Will they do it? I don't know. But it needs to be done. So that's the five Rs.

Jordan Tyler: Thank you, Bob, for that explanation. It sounds like you all are taking a really holistic approach in addressing each of these factors that make military dogs and the adoption of military dogs really unique.

So, coming back to the rehoming process, I have just a couple of follow-up questions. How do you find the right people? I'm assuming you can't just throw these dogs up on Facebook and say, who wants them? It takes a special kind of person to adopt a veteran military dog. So, it's going to be some extra work.

And then, on the flip side of things. What happens to dogs that maybe aren't suited for being re-homed? Maybe dogs that have a lot of PTSD they're a little more damaged, and they had a rougher go of it. What happens to them?

Bob Bryant: When we post our dog of the week, and we always do that on the Facebook page like CWD Peppy, dog of the week, help Peppy out.

Everybody wants to adopt Peppy. Peppy may be the worst dog for all of them. We have a very thorough adoption vetting process. We have an application on our site that our potential adopters fill out. From there, our two adoption coordinators will research the adopter’s background. They research where they are currently, if they have a lot of dogs, they have a lot of cats.

We want to make sure that the people that apply, and we've got probably 500 applications at any one time. But the biggest reason people are not qualified to adopt working dogs is that they have too many animals or two, they're unable to afford the cost of senior veterinary care. We will not send our dogs to a home where they will not get the care they need when they need it.

We want to make sure that they have time and that the working dog has space. What do you think is going to happen if you leave a Belgian Malinois in your apartment all day with nobody home? He's going to eat your couch. I've seen it. I've seen it 100% of the time. But that's what we look for in adopters.

Two or three phone interviews, and then we will match them, if they're qualified, with the dogs that we have in our current care, about 35 of them at this time, that are a fit, and we'll invite them down, and people say, “Well, I'm in Washington, I can't come down.” Well, if you really want to adopt a dog, we will try to pick the best one.

And if you don't mind paying for the transport costs for our guys too, we're talking about $400 or $500 to drive a dog from Texas to Washington and back; if you'll care and love that dog, we'll do that. And you also ask, what about the dogs you can't adopt? And that's a tough question. We try to avoid taking aggressive dogs with multiple bites.

We simply are not comfortable adopting a dog out to the public who is a non-handler. For instance, my canine, I would never hand him over to an inexperienced person. He or she would either be bitten or someone else would be bitten within a day because they don't know the nature of the dogs. And this is the issue we have with police departments in the United States.

Police departments have no plan for their dogs when they retire. And we're constantly getting, hey, this is sergeant so and so with X police department. We've got this dog, and we want you to take him. He's a great dog. Okay, well, how many bites has he had? Well, he's gotten a little aggressive lately, and he's run up the leash and bit the handler and not to tell him, sir/ma'am, we can't adopt the dog, we're not a hospice.

We're not a lifetime care facility. Now, there is a great organization that takes the worst of the worst of the military working dogs. And that's called the Ddamien. Project D. D. A. M. I. E. N. Project run by a wonderful lady named Crystal Trumbull. She's a former United States Navy canine handler. She has a kennel of nothing but the baddest biters in the world, and she has managed to make friends with all of them, she keeps them until the end of their life, and she even takes them on a bucket list.

When it's time, it's pretty cool. We have a few dogs that we've taken in that just because of their nature, we consider them lifers. They're staying with us, but that's not our ultimate goal. Our ultimate goal is to get the dogs into a loving home where they've got a family and can learn to be just a pet again.

Stephanie Clark: Thank you, Bob, for answering that. I totally understand. It is a hard question, and these dogs go through so much. They see a lot, and just as humans, the military personnel, sometimes they just don't come back the exact same person. And sometimes what they've gone through, or what they've seen, or what they've experienced, or PTSD, may just not make them suitable to be the best pets. So, I get that, and I appreciate your answering.

You had talked about rehoming and rehabilitation. Can you talk a little bit more about Mission K9 stats? Since you've started this, how many dogs have you rehomed and rescued?

Bob Bryant: 1,325 dogs in the last 10 years, and those are all successful. We've only had two dogs that we had to go and pick up.

Because they weren't receiving the care that we felt they should have. So, that's a pretty good track record, I'd say. $2 million on veterinary care. We've literally brought dogs home from almost everywhere in the world. And it's a great, it's a great work. I really enjoy it.

Jordan Tyler: That's really awesome. And you mentioned that you reunite handlers with their dogs, which is super special. Approximately how many have you reunited?

Bob Bryant: 677.

Stephanie Clark: That's awesome. Just from my knowledge, because I don't know this actually, how long do these working dogs work for? What does a typical career length look like for them?

Bob Bryant: We see dogs averaging 8-9 years old coming into our care.

However, The military and contractors only retire dogs when they lose their work drive, or they get injured. I've seen a 13-year-old Belgian Tervuren Shepherd that was at the kennels at Camp Pendleton in Southern California who's 13 years old. He still likes to work. And of course, you say, well, that's all they know.

They want to do that. No, they don't. These dogs didn't volunteer. They were drafted. And the military basically washes their hands of them when they're done.

Jordan Tyler: Wow. Yeah. My dog is, well, I guess he's 14 now. Homeboy can hardly find the motivation to get up off of the couch most of the time. So, they are not the same.

Stephanie Clark: We've talked a lot about PTSD and rehoming and rehabbing these dogs, and it's very heavy. But I was wondering if we could flip topics just a little bit, and instead of talking about their tragic beginnings, maybe you could share a story that has a Cinderella ending or a happily ever after for one of these dogs.

Bob Bryant: Ikar was reunited with his handler, Vance, a few years ago. Unfortunately, Ikar has passed over now. But Ikar was an explosives detection dog over in Afghanistan. Vance was a conservationist up in Idaho, and he trained Ikar how to find elk antler sheds. And so Ikar hunted for elk antlers and would find those, and he'd just be delighted because he still had a purpose.

My old working dog, military working dog Oreo, a black Labrador Retriever. The big bucket head, English Labrador, had the head size of a garbage truck. He was always searching. He was a bomb dog. One day, he alerted it in a park, and I about flipped out. I scratched around on the surface, and I found a blasting cap.

He hadn't forgotten what it was after all these years. So, they never stop working. A tale of the German Shepherd, I tell you about running crazy to his handler at the airport. These dogs are just amazing in what they do, both in work and retirement.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah—I, too, would probably flip out in that situation! I’m wondering if you could share a little more about what it looks like when a former military working dog, such as a bomb dog, alerts in public. I would imagine that, for a normal person, that may sound like a scary situation.

Bob Bryant: First of all, Oreo’s finding was very, very rare indeed. He was exceptional because he loved to find tennis balls, and especially lacrosse balls. He found over a hundred—we're not talking just in the bushes; we're talking buried under the earth—he found over 100 in a year's time, and he would just delight and run around in finding them. But this thing was the only thing that he ever hit on that I didn't plant to just keep him sharp. We do encourage our adopters to help continue their nose work. There are things that can be taught to find, like tennis balls, what have you.

Oh, how do they alert? Well, first of all, all of them are not automatically searching. For Navy to search, I have to tell him, “Navy, seek, seek, seek.” And I'll point in the direction that I want him to go, and he'll sniff it up, and if he finds something, he finds something. When he's out playing, he's looking for tennis balls and he'll often catch another scent. Of course, the tennis ball, he just dives in. But the other, they have a very specific type of alert. These are canines that work for police departments as well as military and contract working dogs, they simply sit away from and their nose toward whatever it is they smell.

They simply just sit. I mean, it's no big mystery about how they do it. And they'll, a lot of time, wag their tail because they know they're going to get a reward. They know they're going to get to play with their ball. And that's what they're working for. They're finding whatever it is to play with—a toy.

Jordan Tyler: Gotcha. That’s really interesting—I guess I was thinking maybe it had something to do with barking, or some other more overt trained behavior, but it’s really more of a simple sit and point, so really it wouldn't be as alarming or off-putting as I was imagining it in my head.

Bob Bryant: Yeah, they're not just going to be running around finding stuff all the time. It's rare. And if I want him to search, I direct him to search. Otherwise, he doesn't care. He's not looking for it.

Jordan Tyler: Right. He’s just busy being a normal dog, as he should be. And to that point, it really just reiterates that so many of these dogs were born and bred into service, they’re doing the jobs they were brought up and trained to do, and then when it’s time for them to retire, we can redirect that dog’s training and instincts into more normal dog things—like searching for shed antlers and tennis balls—it is possible, and if we really invested in their rehabilitation and rehoming, like Mission K9 is doing, we could save a lot of them from being euthanized.

Stephanie Clark: So, my husband is a veteran, and the VA does what it can with the medical issues that he came back with after being deployed. I think this is so interesting that they take care of the human soldiers, but they don't really take care of the dogs, which to me, it's a package deal. They both served, they both experienced some crazy things, and they're both heroes.

Jordan Tyler: No doubt about it. It’s saddening to know our canine combat veterans don’t get equitable treatment. I think this point is illustrated perfectly by the experiences and observations of Elijah Holyfield, in which he shares his frustrations about how the VA will compensate what he describes as “bipeds,” or the humans of the US military, for their service, but dogs get nothing—and in fact, many are euthanized in retirement.

Military working dogs face a lot of the same problems and are often rehoused at the owner's responsibility. A normal house pet gets anxiety and PTSD, and a military working dog is no different. Years of hard work on these dogs will cause them to have various joint problems at a minimum and a mix of any possible concerns from breeding, and then you add on top of that all the mental stresses of potentially being in a combat environment or all the other training they've been through.

So not only is it difficult to re-home these dogs because of their aggression, but then you turn them over to someone, and all these years of hard work on these dogs have these compounding issues that you could never see and eventually cripple the dog. Just like many vets, I get this check to thank me for my hard work and to help me in my times of need.

To my knowledge, nothing is done for these dogs that are rehomed. Once they're turned over to a new home, It's the owner's responsibility to ensure that everything's taken care of. Some of these dogs developed lifelong health problems due to the work they were in. The owners are stuck footing the bill at the end of the day.

I understand that, yes, by adopting this dog and choosing to accept it, you're also choosing to accept the responsibilities that it entails. I just don't simply think that's enough. Ensuring the dog gets a good home is not the same as ensuring the dog gets a good life. In the same way, I get a paycheck to ensure that my mental health is covered, why are fellow Marines, fellow sailors in my example, and fellow soldiers in the Army's case, why are they not receiving the same care?

Jordan Tyler: According to Bob, the Department of Defense considers military dogs as equipment.

Bob Bryant: The military wouldn't bring them home even after Obama signed that portion of the National Defense Authorization Act, because once they're dispositioned as excess, They are no longer eligible to take military transport.

And, of course, that got said, Hey, this is a law. You've got to do it. It’s gotten to the point where if we talk to anybody overseas and say, Oh, we're not bringing that dog home. Uh, yeah, you are. And here's why. And it's gotten to the point where it's becoming easier for us financially to get dogs home because we're basically forcing the military to follow the law that was enacted 7-8 years ago now.

Stephanie Clark: I know in my PhD work, I had worked with a couple of working dogs, but I was doing some stress tests, and no one ever really thinks about how these dogs are going to act under stress. And so, we had kind of done some research looking at if you hot load these dogs onto a helicopter or essentially load the dogs and the helicopter is on and then you transport them when you land, and you say, okay, now go search how their search time changes because you've put them through a stressful environment. And now you're asking them to perform and perform well. And I guess to me, that was eye-opening, just thinking about the stressful events, the stressful environments that they're being put through, and they're being asked to perform at such a high level.

Bob Bryant: In all candor, there hasn't been much change in the military as far as how the dogs are worked. We know everyone down at the Lackland Joint Task Force Base, which is the home of the Military Working Dog Program in San Antonio, Texas, and they pretty much operate the same way they always have. So, I’m glad they see that, and they may need to make some adjustments if they finally get it through their heads that, yeah, their dog's stressed after being chucked out of a helicopter on a parachute. Maybe it's not going to go to work just immediately.

Stephanie Clark: It's amazing how much dogs are like us. If I had to jump out of a helicopter, or I had to be hot loaded into a helicopter, I'd be like, okay, I need a couple minutes. Let me breathe. You have some water.

Jordan Tyler: Same. And hot loading, that's a new term for me, something I learned today.

Stephanie Clark: It was new to me, too, but I've also never been on a helicopter.

Jordan Tyler: Well, I'm just thinking next time I'm thrown into a stressful situation, I can say that I was hot-loaded. So, Bob, I'm curious what your long-term hopes and dreams are for Mission K9. You already talked about the problem that Mission K9 is addressing still exists. And so, it's not going away anytime soon.

And if this bill that we've been talking about has been in place for 7-8 years already, and we're still having to force people's hand to send these dogs home and make sure that they have the care that they need and reunite them with their handlers. Wouldn't the long-term dream for Mission K9 be to not exist anymore?

Bob Bryant: It will be the happiest day in my life when we're no longer needed. When every contract working dog is brought home automatically at the contractor's expense, put up for adoption by an internal agency, adopted to a loving home, and given veterinary care. That's when Mission K9 is not going to be needed anymore, unfortunately.

I don't see that happening for the military dogs. We'll administrate that. That's cool. But it's a contract working dogs that need more than anything because they really get nothing. Now, are there some good contract companies? Yes, absolutely. But they still, when they retire, have no health care. You know, nothing.

Stephanie Clark: If that's not character, I don't know what is. I mean, when it comes down to it, a lot of people probably would have turned their backs and said, “Nope, we're not getting involved with this.”

It just sounds like too much work. But I really appreciate your character and really caring for these dogs and making sure that they get home and in a home That is good for them It definitely sounds like you go above and beyond, and it's true, and hearing you talk about it, I can really sense your passion.

Bob Bryant: My character was developed by my partners. I didn't know anything about working dogs 10 years ago. I'd never had one. You know, I had a collie, I had a poodle, I had a basenji. And I remember when Kristen called me one day, she said, “Remember you said you wanted a working dog.” I said, “Uh, yeah, well, I got you one.”

Come to, I got you a ticket to Houston. And I go to Houston. I meet a military working dog, Oreo. And that changed my perception when I saw the intelligence, the drive, the want of these dogs will give you everything. You don't even have to ask. They'll just do it.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. That's really awesome. I think that's a really good way to kind of drive this episode home. Now before we wrap the episode up, I was wondering, Bob, if there's anything that you wanted to share about what Mission K9 is currently working on? If you want to plug your website or any campaigns that you have going right now, just want to make sure that everybody out there listening knows how to reach you and how to support you.

Bob Bryant: Well, we're trying to build a kennel, a new kennel facility this year. It's going to cost about $120,000. Our initial kennel building has got some rust on the bottom of it. We're getting it redone, but we need to expand our capacity. We need to expand our septic system. Priefert has been very good and done adding some indoor kennel runs.

Like every nonprofit, the nature of the beast is to always have its hand stuck out, but we're going to do the right thing with the funds that we're given. We've proved it for 10 years and we're not going to do it any differently.

Jordan Tyler: I love that message—you’re sticking to your guns. Thank you so much, Bob, for joining us today. This is a tough topic, but one that absolutely must be addressed, and I’m glad there are people like you and organizations like yours out there doing the right thing for our tail-wagging veterans, no matter the difficulty and no matter the cost. It’s really inspiring.

So that does it for today’s special episode of Barking Mad. I’d like to leave you with a quote from former President Barack Obama.

Jordan Tyler: For all veterans—including our K9 heroes—thank you for your service. If you’re out there listening and you have a personal story about a rescued military working dog, please don’t hesitate to share that story with us at media@bsmpartners.net. And if you’d like to learn more about Mission K9, check out the show notes for today’s episode, where you’ll find a link to the website and other useful information.

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Barking Mad. If you want to learn more about BSM Partners, please visit us at bsmpartners.net. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite leading podcast platform and share it with a friend to stay current on the latest pet industry trends and conversations.

We'd also like to thank our dedicated team, Ada-Miette Thomas, Neeley Bowden, Paige Lanier, Kait Wright, and Dr. Katy Miller. A special shout out to Lee Ann Hagerty and Michael Johnson in support of this episode. See you next time!