Retired Military Dogs - Pam Farquhar

13^th July 2023 Retired Military Dogs – Pam Farquhar

Pam explained that her background was as a nurse, both with the NHS and the Army, but what brought her to this interest was when her daughter became an ‘explosion dog handler’ who used 30 ft. of rope whilst her dog searched for IED’s, so naturally Pam gained a great respect for such dogs. She’s not the only one, General David Petraeus is quoted: “by all means of performance” military working dogs outperform” any asset we have in our industry”. The capability they bring to the fight cannot be replicated by man or machine.

She then went through a range of pictures of various dogs, including Rin Tin Tin and mentioning that there is a statue of a military dog in the White House. Judy, a pointer, that was awarded the Dickin Medal and became the first dog to be taken as a ‘prisoner of war’ when their boat HMS Nas was captured. Another RAF ‘search dog’ that saved thousands of lives, then Trio, a Dickin medal winner for the work on ‘Daisy Chain explosives’, Australian Cattle dogs were used for sending messages, they had 2 handlers and the dogs were kept hungry so that they would go to the second handler to get fed and delivered the message.  Medical dogs, trained to find fallen soldiers and having to wear gas masks.

Inevitably, there are some countries (Russia) who trained dogs to feed under tanks, fitted with a GPS device, so that they could blow up the German tanks, with the dog underneath them! Americans saw the value of dogs in the Vietnam war, where the temperature/humidity conditions meant that the men couldn’t cope and dogs smell ability with 50 million olfactory receptors, 1000-fold higher than humans. Unfortunately, at the end of the war they left 4000 dogs in Vietnam.

There is the Royal Army Veterinary Corps centre in Melton Mowbray who have Open days where you can find out about how they train the dogs for different specialisms. She posed the question about what we thought it would cost to train such dogs and our answers were way out of the actual cost of £60k (10 years ago).  Her daughter Alex did a number of tours in Afghanistan with her Malinois ‘high assurance dog’ HiHa, and she showed us the bootees they had to wear to protect their sensitive paws from the rough terrain, as well as the muzzle required for the helicopter lifts they needed to get to the forward bases, plus the googles (called DOGGLES) to keep out the dust. Naturally the dogs and handlers are a specific target for the enemy, recognising the invaluable contribution they make in identifying IED’s and other strategic information, so it’s a very dangerous occupation. However, one amusing tale from Alex’s Army experience was when she was asked for an audience with the Queen following the Manchester Bombing involvement, she didn’t take HiHa and the dog she took actually passed wind in front of the Queen!

Pam has taken on 5 retired dogs over time, as they tend to retire about 8 years old and it’s her way of giving back, via the RBL to military dogs who saved her daughter’s life.

Gerry S gave the Vote of thanks knowing nothing about the range of specialised training these dogs go through and what an interesting and informative presentation we had enjoyed and the members joined him in an enthusiastic round of applause.                                          AR