Outrage Builds Over Dogs Left Behind in Afghanistan

BUCK: Ryan in Augusta, Georgia. Ryan, welcome.

CALLER: Yes, I just had a quick question. Everyone is worried about — which I understand — trying to get military and everybody out of Afghanistan. But I haven’t heard anything about fundraisers that are trying to pull out the canines. I did police canine training back in California, working with some military canines in Rhode Island. I don’t think people understand how important those dogs actually are, and I don’t know if you guys have heard anything or if you know anything about fundraisers or what they’re actually trying to do to pull these dogs out.

CLAY: Yeah, thanks for the call, Ryan. We’ve seen the viral video and footage on social media, like many of you have, I think just further reinforcing, Buck, the calamitous nature by which we withdrew from Afghanistan. We left behind people, and we may well have left behind canine guide dogs, guard dogs that we were using.

BUCK: These are dogs… I’ve been around some of these dogs in Afghanistan. The relationship that a canine handler… Ryan can speak to this. The relationship that a canine handler has with this animal is a sacred bond, because they rely on these animals not just as a companion animal. They rely on them to save their lives, to sniff out bombs.

They’ll have Belgian Malinois. You get some of the SEAL teams together and some of the different special operations forces and just military in general; they’ll send these dogs in and they’ll end up grabbing a bad guy so that he can’t actually use the AK and send some of ours home in a coffin.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That’s the kind of stuff these animals have done. So, yes, of course, first priority is the Americans. The first priority is the human beings need to get out of there. We can still be very sad. I’m very sad! I love dogs, Clay. I love them.

CLAY: I just think it speaks for the incompetence, right? To his answer, I have not seen… We don’t know 100% what the story is there. There’s so much chaos and confusion. We’ve seen those viral videos, those viral photographs. But I haven’t seen a legitimate, “Hey, this is 100% true story” on those yet.