Dogs for Defense K-9

Ronja-Cam

Chris — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 06:51:38 +0000

I got a GoPro Hero2 action cam for Christmas and decided to try it out with a canine-point-of-view video. While I ended up slowing the very shaky parts down significantly, it probably still warrants a warning for those of you who suffer from motion sickness … you may want to skip this.

I am pleased to report that the camera does quite nicely, even in the cold and even mounted to a dog. I will have to play around with different types of mounts to see what kind of footage I can get from Ronja’s point of view in the future … maybe mount it to the front or side of the harness? In the video, it is mounted to the top of our Extreme Duty harness using one of the mounts that came with the camera and a fair bit of medical tape.

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Christmas Eve Tug

Chris — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:59:23 +0000

I suppose a few Soldiers started their Christmas Day emails and calls to their loved ones with the words, “You never believe what happened while I was on CQ last night.”

I don’t think anyone who starts CQ on Christmas Eve imagined they’d get pulled down the hallway in an office chair by a hard-tugging German Shepherd that night. I bet it really broke up the routine and made for a story they’ll be telling their friends for years to come, though.

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Christmas Eve

Chris — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:52:54 +0000

I will always be the first to admit that I don’t care very much about the holidays. I don’t subscribe to any particular religion and therefore don’t care much about the religious aspects of the holidays, whether Christmas or Channukah or Kwanzaa or Yule. And since we don’t have children, I don’t really care a whole lot about the secular aspects of the holidays, although I do like looking at the light displays on peoples’ homes and I do exchange cards with friends and loved ones.

Although we don’t celebrate Christmas ourselves, we’ve created our own holiday tradition – bringing a little bit of holiday joy to others. Since 2007, we’ve piled into our car each Christmas Eve with the dogs, dressed for the occasion, as well as an assortment of Christmas gift bags containing cookies and candies, and driven to the military base where we’ve been stationed at the time to bring a little bit of the holiday spirit to those unlucky soldiers who spent their holidays on CQ (charge of quarters) duty.

Ollie and Ronja helped make the gift bags.

Last year, Brian was deployed, so I enlisted the help of my friends Sandra and Jess, with their dogs, German Shepherd Indra and Shiloh Shepherd Max. This year, Brian was home but Sandra’s husband is deployed, so we once again met up with Sandra and, this time, her Shepherd Nala, before heading out to visit the CQ’s.

As always, the dogs and gift bags were a hit. We made our rounds through various brigade headquarters, stopped in to some of the barracks, and even visited the division headquarters and the Provost Marshal’s office. The Soldiers had a blast playing tug with Nala and getting hugs and cuddles from Ronja.

Hugs - Ronja's favorite thing.

Nala enjoyed her game of tug.

More cuddles for Ronja, who climbed right up into his lap.

And more tuggies for Nala, who never tires of this game.

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Happy Holidays

Chris — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:33:58 +0000

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Having Fun

Chris — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:31:37 +0000

This is Ronja's "I'm proud of myself!" prance.

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