Military dog adoptions: Army procedures to give former handlers priority

The Army is working to establish dog adoption procedures that would give priority to former handlers.

Maj. Gen. Mark S. Inch said an Army dog adoption program didn’t follow regulatory processes perfectly, but it complied with the law and intent. The two-star general made his response last month in a letter to North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr.

“The Army is working in conjunction with our sister services to establish and codify future adoption procedures,” Inch said. “It is our intent that all former dog handlers be given the right of first refusal during future adoption processes, and we remain grateful for the sacrifices of our military working dogs and to those who support and work alongside them.”

The adoption process previously followed Air Force procedures because the Air Force is the executive agency for military dog disposition. That process meant law enforcement agencies had a chance to adopt dogs before former handlers.

There also was no legal requirement at the time to notify former handlers that their dogs were available for adoption. The only requirement was to allow handlers wounded in action or the family of handlers killed in action to have the first opportunity to adopt the dog, according to the Office of the Provost Marshal General.

Both of those procedures have changed.

Maj. Olivia Nunn, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Provost Marshal, said the office tweaked prioritization for adoptions by giving former handlers priority over law enforcement agencies.

And last year an amendment was added to the National Defense Authorization Act requiring service members be contacted first for the opportunity to adopt.

The dog program - Tactical Explosive Detector Dog - was established in January 2011 as a contract solution to shortages in the Military Working Dog program, Inch said. The Army-funded program was designed to be temporary and to support Army brigade combat teams by providing maneuver units with bomb-sniffing dogs to mitigate casualties from improvised explosive devices.

The program came to the attention of the Office of the Provost Marshal General of the Army in 2013, before Inch took command, Nunn said.

The dogs in the program were trained by non-military police handlers at contracted facilities in Indiana, and later North Carolina, Inch said.

Once trained, the dogs were deployed with their handlers to search for explosives in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

The program ended in February 2014 as U.S. Central Command curtailed the requirement for bomb sniffing dogs, Inch said.

The 341st Training Readiness Squadron should have handled the adoption process, but was unable to because of contractual time restraints and expedited disposition, Inch said. Instead, the Office of the Provost Marshal General oversaw the adoption process for 229 dogs, he said.

Representatives from the office contacted soldiers who expressed interest in adopting dogs. Forty handlers were reunited with their dogs, Nunn said.

It would be inappropriate for K2 Solutions, a center in Southern Pines that was the subcontractor hired to kennel and train the dogs, to administer the adoption process, according to the Office of the Provost Marshal General.

Representatives from the Office of the Provost Marshal General traveled to K2 Solutions to administer the adoptions.

The Office of the Provost Marshal, which had authority to determine dogs available for adoption, created documentation to reflect excess dogs, Inch said. The documents were then forwarded to the 341st Training Readiness Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas.

Inch’s promise that the Army will codify future adoption procedures comes after Burr’s office asked the military to review the adoption process.

Burr visited K2 Solutions on March 30 to see the military and law enforcement working dog training program, according to his press secretary, Taylor Holgate.

“Sen. Burr is aware of the controversy surrounding the military dog adoption program and has made a formal request to the military to examine the process,” Holgate said.

Also in March, North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson asked for a separate, formal investigation into the adoption process. Hudson’s office made the request to Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on March 24.

Hudson had been following the plight of a handler attempting to adopt his military working dog since 2013. Brent Grommet, a specialist with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, struggled to adopt his German Shepherd Matty after both were injured by improvised explosive devices while serving in Afghanistan.

Grommet was sent to Fort Campbell to be treated for brain and spinal cord injuries, while Matty was sent to Fort Bragg Vet Services for a torn ACL, according to published reports.

Grommet was filing papers to adopt Matty when the dog was adopted by another family.

Hudson said he used his contacts within the Special Forces communities and the dog handler contractors to track down the family, who had Matty for about a year. Hudson persuaded the family to return the dog to Grommet.

The two were reunited in Fayetteville in November 2014.

Last year, Hudson and Rep. Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey pushed to include an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act to give injured service members priority to adopt their military working dogs.

Before the amendment, the law did not require the Department of Defense to give the handler priority to adopt the dog upon its retirement.

Now, Hudson’s concern is focused on all adoptions of military working dogs.

“Their situation is not an isolated case, but appears to be a common trend with (dog adoption program) handlers and their now separated (military working dogs),” he said.