Dogs train to save troops' lives - Today's THV

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JONESBORO, Ark. (KTHV) -- Duck dog trainer Chris Akin's farm is full of eager young dogs, but not all are being trained to retrieve feathered fowls.

Akin is teaching dogs to find improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, to help save the lives of U.S. troops.

"The training is the same," Akin says. "We teach these labs to find ducks and now we switched some of our training to find explosives."

Akin says it takes a special kind of dog for this program.

"We have a bunch of dogs so we go through and say this dog goes in this bunch, this one goes here and this one goes in the special group," Akin says.

Akin says dogs in the explosive sniffing program are more hyper than most duck dogs but are still willign to learn.

"In the bomb dog situation, the way we use them now is let's say you and I were sneaking through a jungle and we come up on an Army Jeep about 200 yards away. We line this dog up send the dog all the way out to the jeep. When he gets there he can do a search pattern on the jeep so our troops don''t have to get close."

The military is asking for more of these specially trained dogs. In fact, at the end of last year, the Marines asked to double the amount of dogs that are trained to sniff out explosives.

For Akin and the fellows at Webb Footed Kennels that means more dogs and hoepfully safer troops.

"We call them troops but let's face it they're dads, they're brothers and sisters, they're sons and daughters, these people are family members to somebody. We got to keep them safe in every way we can."

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