The Warfighters (2016) s01e12 Episode Script

Benno was a dog that was 100 percent warrior and was all business when it came to conducting major missions.
He was always the platoon mascot, and he had 42 apprehensions.
- He was very legendary.
- Find 'em.
Having that dog there is an extra line and measure of security.
He can save your life.
Rangers are a direct-action raid unit.
They're meant to go in and find the bag guy and eliminate them.
And the dog's working with them with that same purpose.
When you cut a dog loose inside of a bad guy's house, the bad guys are more focused on the dog and not all the barrel-chested freedom fighters coming in there to do justice to this guy.
I've seen dogs and what they're capable of doing and doing in combat, and that is a humbling thing, just the physical prowess of a dog.
Military working dogs, they've been around since World War I.
They used them a lot in trench warfare.
They would put a note on a dog and they would send a dog across the battlefield.
Then they started using the dog to carry things like ammo, so they could resupply the guys.
Now military working dogs are trained in bomb detection, weapon detection, they can be trained in drug detection, and to chase down combatants that are fleeing.
To do their job in war, they have to be highly aggressive.
and 600 are serving in warzones.
They eat, sleep, and fight alongside their handlers 24-7.
As a dog handler, I was always around the action.
If somebody ran from the building, I was there.
I was the person that they called on.
I'd get to be up there at the breach.
I'd get to be right up there with the main assault.
I'd get to do all the fun stuff.
I was heavily, heavily utilized, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
I'm Julian Trent McDonald, 29 years old.
I did eight combat deployments in a matter of six years throughout my military career three to Iraq and five to Afghanistan.
I was born in Clovis, New Mexico, at Cannon Air Force Base.
My father was in the military.
He had 25 years in the Air Force.
After my parents split up, probably when I was about 12 years old, that's when I moved to northwest Arkansas with my mother.
We had a big farm, lots of cattle, lots of horses, goats, chickens, you name it.
It was one of those you didn't eat in the morning until your animals ate.
I would wake up at 4:00 in the morning, feed the animals, and that would give me enough time to get to school by 6, 7:00 to do football practice.
My mom taught me how to saddle break colts.
That was a hard task, especially for a hundred-pound kid.
I wasn't a big I wasn't very very big in high school.
I left eleventh grade weighing 155 pounds soaking wet with two bricks in my pocket.
I was just a little guy and there horses were just they would manhandle me and throw me off.
You have to take a whole lot of caution when approaching something like that.
And if for one second you disrespect that animal, you're going to know it, because the animal has a potential to hurt you or kill you.
That's where my big respect for animals came from.
My grandfather had a rule that if you had a dog and you owned a dog, you took care of that dog.
Everyday feeding, everyday maintenance stuff like that on the animal, you always took care of it.
What you also took care of was if the animal decided it was going to go after farm animals.
I remember I came home off the school bus and I look out to the pasture.
I can't find my dog anywhere.
I look out and he's literally hanging off the side of a cow.
My grandfather comes and hands me my rifle.
He says, "Well, this is your problem.
" I took the rifle and I said, "What do you want me to do?" He said, "You're going to kill him.
" I said, "Okay.
" Living out on the farm and living that lifestyle, it was a lesson that had to be learned.
I learned real quick to train dogs because I didn't want to have to kill them.
After that, joining the military, going into basic training, that was a joke.
That was easy stuff.
I got to eat, I got to sleep, and all I had to do was run around and get yelled at.
That was every day on the farm.
Trent McDonald got to Ranger regiment a few years before I did.
I always called him "Mac.
" He's the wild one on deployment.
He's the crazy one.
He's a loud guy.
He's full of energy.
But he was honest, and you knew exactly where he stood on everything at all times.
I think Mac struggled early on in the Rangers keeping himself out of trouble because I think he has a lot of play to him.
But he really did find his calling with the dog section, because when he went there, he didn't have any trouble at all focusing on task at hand.
In spring of 2009, I went to the dog section.
When I got there, I found out that I was getting this dog Benno.
I had a big problem with Benno at the time.
He had a reputation of not being the most stellar dog.
Benno is a steely-eyed idiot with four legs, really.
He got kicked out of Afghanistan, came to Iraq the dog did.
Bit a bunch of assaulters out in Iraq and they didn't know what to do with this dog.
So now they give this new guy this dog and I almost looked at it as if it was too much too soon.
Almost like, "Wait a minute.
" I don't even know how to handle a dog.
"Why are you giving me this thing?" When McDonald had him, it was initially a power struggle.
Benno tested McDonald's limits.
McDonald trying to be the handler to Benno.
It was a big love-hate relationship right from the get-go.
On my first mission with him, I popped his muzzle off of him real quick, and then when I went to go release him, I released him right into the back of a team leader's calf.
Yeah, that wasn't a very good day.
There was a lot of learning curves that deployment.
We were going out on a mission to find a known enemy combatant's compound.
We did a call-out trying to get these guys to put down their weapons and come out.
- They still didn't.
- Seven, this Tango.
Prepping K9 for assault.
I got the go ahead to go ahead and release Benno.
You ready? You ready? That's when a good burst of machine gunfire came through the breach.
I grabbed him, I dragged him back, and what happened is I overcorrected him by putting too much pressure on him and I ended up paying the price for it.
He bit me so hard I started puking.
The guy next to me, he said, "I really want to help you, but you have to get your dog off you first.
" I remember thinking to myself, "Are you serious?" I have to get this dog off me, too?" He actually didn't eat his food for two or three days after he bit me.
He just refused to eat his food.
It was almost like he knew that he did something wrong.
I had to train that dog to standard, because you don't want a dog on the ground that all your boys behind you rely on, and when you cut him loose all they're worried about is "Is he gonna eat me?" Seven, this is Tango.
Dog muzzled.
We had to go through a lot of scenarios and we had to go through a lot of things for me to openly trust Benno and be like, "All right, this dog knows what he's doing.
" Not only that, but then to have the platoon I was working with have that same trust that I had, it was just as important.
I will probably say the biggest thing I learned from Benno is that he demanded a certain amount of respect.
I think me bringing him around the platoon and around the boys as much as I did really helped him to be like, "Oh, these guys are part of my team, too.
These guys aren't just people out there that I can bite.
" You'd see other platoons and they wouldn't have that interaction with their dog, or dog handler, for that matter.
Growing up, I wasn't necessarily a dog person, so I made it a point to go see the dog every day, have the dog smell me more for my own personal protection.
But it actually turned into a friendship with McDonald and Benno.
My name's Chad Clough, I'm 29 years old, and I serve in the United States Army.
As I child, I was always into sports and getting into trouble, trying to make people laugh.
I did karate.
I always wanted to compete, so I after I earned my black belt, I really focused on competing and I earned several world titles at a pretty young age.
I fought in Venezuela and I went to Canada multiple times, went to Vegas and Atlanta.
It was cool as a child, getting to travel, getting to do something you love to do.
From a very early age, it was always in the back of my mind that I wanted to join the military.
All the research I had done was that the Rangers were the premiere direct-action force.
And if you're gonna do a mission, I figured direct-action would be the best mission to be a part of.
My first deployment was in 2009, and it was McDonald's first deployment as a dog handler.
He lived right across the little hall from me that we were in.
Chad Clough, just another guy with a huge personality, awesome sense of humor.
Chad and Dillon took a big they really liked the dog.
They really liked the capabilities of the dog.
Bite 'em! I would have them help me every once in awhile.
Oh, yeah, Misha! I would do classes where they would come in and they would see training.
"Hey, this is what a dog looks like" when he finds an explosive.
"This is what a change in behavior looks like.
" You couldn't watch Mac and not understand that this guy is passionate about training and caring for dogs.
I always used to joke with my friends in the platoon that McDonald was such a good dog handler because he was an animal himself and he could just he was on the same level as Benno.
He's an animal, Benno was an animal, and they enjoyed the same things.
You couldn't have matched up their personalities better really aggressive on target, want to find and kill some bad guys.
And then off target? "I just want to create havoc, mess something up, and have a good time.
" The whole platoon got to know Benno, and Benno went from being this almost like an outcast dog when he came to the platoon with McDonald to being the platoon's mascot.
He would come into the platoon area and we loved Benno and Benno loved us.
There was just this jerk running around eating your boots, jumping on you, smashing things over.
You couldn't get in the team room and be prepping your stuff without the dog running in there and just crashing stuff.
Walked into the TOC one day, and these guys had two basketballs, and Benno is attacking one basketball.
He pops that basketball.
Goes after the other basketball, pops that, and everybody's looking at me like I'm the bad guy.
And I'm like, "You guys are the ones" teasing him with a ball.
" The thing we jabbed Mac for was having a love affair with this dog.
He would go somewhere, the dog was going to be there.
I'm pretty sure I saw the dog coming out of the showers with him, too.
Benno has a lot of names in battalion.
He would pick up a nickname here, a nickname there.
Some were descriptive, some were inappropriate.
Rock Eater, Rock Muncher, Zombie Dog, Fur Missile.
Hellhound was one of them.
Benno has lost a lot of teeth due to bites in training, bites in combat.
So we joked that we had the best dog military working dog there ever was and he had two teeth.
Benno would have been surprised to see himself in the mirror.
I don't think Benno thought of himself as a dog.
Or maybe he just thought dogs walked around on two legs and had rifles.
He was a character, and he brought a lot of home to a place that wasn't so homey.
He was able to bridge a gap of being there, but still kind of having the feeling of being home.
There's this bond that's hard to really put into words.
He's part of the team.
It didn't take long for Benno and McDonald to really gel together and be a cohesive force.
After my first deployment, my second, my third, and my fourth deployment with him, we were a well well-oiled machine.
You really bond with a dog well when the dog is executing the same tasks that you are.
There was one incident where there was a tunnel that led to an underground room.
We were stacked, waiting to go in, and we opted to send the dog in first.
Benno got excited to do stuff like that.
All of the sudden you hear a man screaming for his life.
When we got down there, the enemy combatant was holding a burlap sack that Benno was biting.
Benno had scared this guy so much that he was in fear for his life and was screaming like he was about to die.
So Benno detained the guy without ever biting him just from he scared the guy into submission pretty much.
That's the type of dog Benno was.
He was he was he could be very scary.
Benno was a dog that was 100 percent warrior and was all business when it came to conducting Ranger missions.
We're going after some dudes who are pretty radicalized, and when those guys flee and run for their lives and they run into some thick opium fields, those dudes are real threats.
But when you have a dog like Benno that you could release into a field like that, then everybody's like, "Whew, all right.
He's going to find them.
" This dog is going to go after with a high sense of prejudice towards the enemy and eliminate him.
I first met Benno in 2009 in Kandahar.
I kinda showed up and it's my first deployment.
The only thing I know about warfare is what I'd seen in the movies and played on video games.
Then I see this dog.
Benno has several deployments more than me.
This dog's roaming around as a grizzled veteran with four legs, and I'm thinking again, it's my first deployment.
I'm thinking, "Now, wait a second.
" People are acting like this dog is deserving more respect than me.
"What's going on here?" I'm Dillon Ford, I'm 30 years old, and I served in the Army with the US Rangers.
Growing up, I would say I had a drug problem.
I was drugged to church on Sunday, drugged to church on Wednesday, and drugged to church on Saturday night, too.
That was really formative for me growing up, and I also had this fascination with the military, specifically with the Rangers.
As 1 John 3:16 would say, "And this is how we know love," that Christ laid down his life for us, and so we ought to be willing "to lay down our lives for our brothers.
" That sounds like what a call to arms is.
I wanted to be on the very tip of the spear.
I wanted direct-action.
Oh, yeah, buddy? You ready? Huh? You ready, buddy? Oh, yeah.
Benno, he was the only dog I'd worked with.
He'd been on more deployments than I had.
This dog very excitedly and very willingly ran into danger time and time again.
At one point, me and my team were maneuvering around to get a squirter.
A squirter is any time you've got an isolated target that you're going after and you've got someone who breaks out of the perimeter.
You don't want them to get away, so you're going to chase them around.
You have a grasp that as you squeeze in, something squirts out.
We're in a swampy area.
Everyone's kind of looking around.
Benno is just running around like an idiot.
He keeps going off into the swamp.
This dog is splashing around in the water.
"You're going to give away our position.
" He gets on this other guy in the marsh.
I didn't even catch that we had another squirter off to the right.
At that point, he becomes this highly efficient and highly effective tool of warfare.
Good boy! You look at things like that and say the dog has saved your life.
This dog's going to get me home after this deployment.
It was my birthday, and I was hoping that we were going to get a lot of squirters.
We haven't had anybody squirt from any target compound, it seemed like the whole deployment.
Benno was so experienced you could tell he knew what was going down every time he got onto a helicopter.
He was the type of dog that I could put down I could put his vest down and he walk into it and stand there.
We would load the aircraft and the boys would come up around and they would get come loving off Benno.
That specific night, I was on the same bird as McDonald and Benno.
I was tasked with going on a squirter chase.
At three minutes, the whole aircraft would get up and take a knee.
That's instantly when the dog knew, "Hey, it's go-time.
" We got off the helicopter and we got a call that the squirters had starbursted, which means when we hear that, that means that there's guys who fled in every direction.
The first squirter I went and got, I released Benno on him and he ran right up there and bit him.
Textbook.
Perfect.
The guy brought the dog to me begging me pretty much to get the dog off him.
We followed another guy that fled the target compound into a wood line.
That's pretty thick vegetation with both underbrush and actual trees.
We used an interpreter to call him out, tell him that we had him, just come out, surrender.
He didn't respond and play along.
At that time we made the call to use the dog.
Dog got a bite.
Dog got a bite.
Seven, this is Tango.
Dog got a bite.
Benno was biting him, but it seemed like the guy was looking like he was trying to reach for something or grab for something.
I didn't even see the pistol.
I remember I walked up.
I remember it happened and it was like in my head I was thinking, "Oh, my God.
We can fix this.
" I remember I rolled him over and I felt a lot of blood.
I looked, and I was like, "Oh, no.
He's done.
" I saw McDonald carrying Benno in his arms.
I knew something was wrong because Benno was not one to be carried.
McDonald laid Benno down and was like, "There's nothing you could do.
He's dead.
" Thanks, buddy.
Thank you.
It sucked.
It hurt.
I just lost my best friend.
And it was it hurt so much, but it was something that I couldn't I couldn't process it right there.
There were still two more guys that had to be got, and I wanted to make sure that they paid for my dog's death.
And they did.
It drastically changed the mood.
because it spread around real fast that Benno didn't make it.
We had to walk a few kilometers to where we were going to get picked up, and we all took turns carrying Benno.
As the walk went on, you could tell it was sinking in for McDonald.
He walked next to me for a good portion of it, and you could tell it was sinking in.
After we had gathered up his remains and we had brought him back to the base, I saw a lot of emotions come from a lot of guys who I have a lot of respect for.
All the guys in the assault force, they just showed so much love for him.
I mean, not only as a dog, but as a Ranger.
Those guys, they all respected him.
They all loved him.
Benno was our mascot, and our mascot just got killed.
We held a platoon memorial for Benno.
We had a picture from the deployment before of Benno behind a minigun in a helicopter.
Everyone gathered and a few people said some words about Benno and that was it.
A lot of people loved that dog.
You memorialize him to remember him and to thank him for the work he's done, and half of that is appreciating every time he went out there and saved you.
Benno loved what he did, and he was the best military working dog a platoon could ask for.
He was warrior through and through, and I don't think Benno would have enjoyed life after that, and I know he was getting ready to retire as a military working dog.
And if Benno could have chose a way to go out, I believe he would have chose to go out on the battlefield.
But I felt worse for McDonald's loss, because McDonald lost his best friend.
Basically, one half of Mac is gone.
I think to be a dog handler, it takes a very special, very certain kind of bond with those dogs.
And so losing that, that's a real hard deal.
Benno died on McDonald's birthday, which compounded the loss, I feel.
That's the worst birthday present a dog handler could get, I think, is having your dog die on your birthday.
I was still in a whole lot of shock, so I was still really pretty much emotionless.
I remember that when I went to go pick him up from the morgue, the regular Army, he did something that was really, really touching.
In the morgue, they all came out of the morgue, and they were shoulder to shoulder.
And they did something they put Benno's remains were draped in an American flag, and his toe tag said "Staff Sergeant Benno, Hero.
" And here are these regular Army guys that they've never messed with this dog.
They've never pet this dog.
They've never seen this dog.
They don't have any any connection with this animal whatsoever, but yet they're treating him as if he is a soldier, not just a dog, but a soldier.
They brought tears to my eyes.
After Benno got killed, Mac needed another dog.
Operations roll on, and we're going to need a working dog with him.
When I got to Kandahar, it was like, "Hey, here's Benno's remains.
" Gave a quick brief to the vet.
The vet was real emotional.
And I got to pick between two dogs.
One dog was a male dog named Rico.
Rico had already been on two deployments and hadn't done anything spectacular.
And then I saw Layka.
She this fire in her eyes.
She would get really, really excited really quickly over some small things, and I like that, because that's something that I can use.
Another selfish reason why I picked Layka is because was really stubborn like Benno had a lot of the same qualities and a lot of the same characteristics as good old Beans did.
When McDonald came back with Layka, we were so accustomed to the McDonald-Benno relationship that was seamless, that it was very foreign to the platoon to watch the struggle between a dog and dog handler.
Layka's demeanor was not like Benno's.
And I was about to say you got big boots to fill, but I guess in this case you got big paws to fill.
She didn't like to go into dark rooms, which is a problem for me, because that's what we do.
We go into dark places and we go into dark rooms.
So it took a lot of It took a lot of remedial training.
McDonald one time asked me if I'd do bite suit training with him.
"Sure, I'll do bite suit training," because I used to not really let on to the fact that part of these dogs terrified me.
I'm asking all these in-depth questions trying to prepare myself.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a little tough to get that.
I remember him telling me that when the dog bites the sleeve, you need to yell like it's really biting you, so it doesn't try to really bite you.
If I was scared before, I was even a little more scared then.
Hey! Hey! I remember waiting for it.
Her eyes lit up and she latched on to the bite sleeve.
I was thoroughly impressed with how strong a 75-pound dog could possibly be.
Get her! How you doing, man? You doing all right? Okay.
The whole platoon got involved, and that was something that really motivated me, because never once has the whole platoon ever gathered around and been like, "Hey, let's do some K9 training.
" Sit.
I had a dog that I had to train to standard and I had to get to a certain point to where the boys could trust her.
I needed that trust more than I needed a mascot.
Whoo! When I lost Benno and we got a new dog, there was a sense of urgency.
"Hey, we need this dog to as close as we can get her to Benno.
" They would do training, and you could tell that she would purposely not do things.
From the outside looking in, it was comical.
But I'm sure from his point of view it wasn't as funny working with a brand new dog that liked to push his buttons.
With Layka, no one had a story about her saving their lives, because the first few missions didn't make her look like an all-star.
We'd get back to base and the standard response from Mac was, "I know, guys.
I'm going to work with her.
" After doing a lot of remedial training, getting Layka to go into dark rooms, it really paid off.
The platoon accepted Layka really fast as a trustworthy dog because McDonald said she was.
Sit.
We trusted him.
This specific night, we had followed several fighters.
We knew that they were heavily armed.
We landed.
We rapidly contained the target compound.
It was textbook.
When we started proceeding with our call-outs We called in a Hellfire strike on the compound.
It collapsed the wall and part of the roof.
The compound was really dilapidated.
At that point in time, I looked at it, "and I was like," Yeah, everybody's dead in there.
I feel comfortable.
Let's send Layka.
" The squad leader, he said, "I'm going to show her this thermal barrier grenade.
" It looked like a ball.
Layka, watch it.
Me and him are sitting there counting, "1001, 1002, 1003.
" Move! She lunges in there, and I don't know what they're stepping into.
with me pulling security outside.
Dog on bite.
Dog on bite.
Hey, Seven Hey, I got one EKIA.
Give me a second.
Let me get the dog off of him.
She's bitten this what I thought was an enemy killed in action.
And as I reached down, that's when the guy comes back to life.
And I thought, "Oh, God, I'm dead.
" I'm dead.
" Literally, that's what I thought.
I thought I was done for.
I fell back, and that's when another team leader, he took the shots to go ahead and end him.
Layka.
Hey, come here.
Here! Here! Come on girl! Layka.
Here! Here! So I started recalling Layka.
When she came to me, she had her left arm in her mouth.
It was in her mouth and it was only held on by tendons.
I grabbed her, and I remember the only thing I thought to do was just run.
It's okay.
I got you.
The dog was back to a safe distance.
You see the medic start working on her leg.
Everyone started to re-engage the best they could.
We got her relaxed.
That's when we started to do work on her and figure out the extent of the damage that was done.
You have to dig through fur and clumps of hair.
I'm doing blood sweeps on her, and I come to her arm and we see the path that the round had taken had hit her in top of the shoulder and hit her in that bone socket, completely decimating that joint.
I remember there was a split second there I remember that's when it all hit me, and I was like, "Here I am" in this situation again.
" It hasn't even been a month.
The rest of the mission, you've got this working dog that you pull out of there and you're trying to give aid to, but you still have to continue conducting operations.
We go ahead and achieve the objective, but Layka gets shot.
She went in there and sacrificed to keep me and the other guys safe.
She probably saved three lives that night.
Everyone understood the magnitude of what could have happened if she hadn't been there.
We got word that she was still alive and we were all hoping that she'd pull through, but it was out of our hands at that point in time.
From the time she got shot to the time the mission was over, it was probably about two I'd say two and half hours.
We had her on plenty of narcotics and she was comfortable, so we were just going to ride it out and get her home with the rest of us.
We returned from that thinking, "Man, I hope she makes it.
" She obviously she had to go out of country.
She had several surgeries.
She ended up losing a leg.
They took out the whole shoulder.
And there was another pretty serious injury that happened to her.
It was on the right tricep.
Surgeons made the assessment that they did not have the equipment and the tools needed, so they made the request to put her on a medevac bird and send her to Germany.
And they performed another seven-hour surgery once they got her there.
I waited for about two to three days to figure out, "Is she gonna make it?" Is she going to heal up and is she going to make it "to be able to live a full life?" Layka no longer fighting in a war zone, but she's fighting for her recovery.
As you see here, she's learning to walk again with that remaining front leg.
This is at the University of Tennessee.
Everyone was excited that she was going to pull through.
Then we found out that she had lost a leg.
We were so happy that she lived, that the jokes started flowing pretty fast nicknames for her Tripod and whatever it may be.
We were sitting there thinking, "This is a big victory that this dog even survived.
" And Mac's thought was already on the process of, "She's going to survive," but what are we going to do "to support her after she survives?" When I got back home from that deployment, probably one of the first phone calls I made was to Lackland Air Force Base.
They weren't really ready to release her to me, because they thought she was too aggressive.
There was a lot of resistance to him adopting this dog, the thought being it's wounded animal, it's a dog that's specifically bred and trained as an attack dog.
And you want to bring that into a domestic setting? You're going to have it around people? You have a military-grade weapon with legs, and it's injured.
But Mac was unswayed by that logic.
They didn't want to give her to me because I had a year and a half-old boy who was just a toddler.
So they were afraid that she was going to get ahold of him and something bad could happen, and they didn't want any of that falling on them.
"And I said," Let me try to give her a shot at having a full life.
" And they did.
I went to San Antonio, picked her up, and now she's been part of my family ever since.
This is Layka.
This is Big Booty Judy.
Her and my son are like two peas in a pod.
He's always doing stuff and blaming it on her.
She had every reason to come out of this and be completely neurotic and be completely crazy for what's happened to her.
But she came out, and she is so social, and she's so "lovey," and she's so sweet.
And when I see her transition like that to normal life, to regular life, she inspires me.
"Man, if she can do it, I can do it.
" If she can be that social, then I can be that social.
I'm really excited about the opportunity that Mac's created for himself, and, really, opportunities that Layka's helped provide.
McDonald continued to be a great dog handler after I left the service.
Maybe it is because he is an animal himself, but I think he found his calling in life when he became a dog handler.
He really excelled at it.
I have my own kennel.
I have nine dogs.
And what I do out there is I do exactly what I did when I was in the Army.
I train them how to find bombs and I train them to apprehend bad guys.
As far as what Layka's doing, I think she's just basking in her glory and lording over her position.
She gets to watch "Grey's Anatomy.
" She's like a diva.
She's her own person.
She does what she wants.
She looks at my kennel dogs like they're common dogs.
I wouldn't be in the position that I'm in right now if it wasn't for her.
And Benno, I think about him every time I turn on my computer.
He's my screen-saver.
He's my buddy.
When you walk into my kennel, I have massive banners of Benno, Layka, my brothers that I've lost in combat, and they're all sitting up there.
So every time I go into work, I see him, I think of him.
Being on those deployments and seeing what dogs can do really opens your eyes.
They're capable of so much more than what people give them credit for or respect them for.
Come here.
Good girl.
Fans, please direct your attention to the north end zone, as we welcome Layka, a five-year-old Belgian Malinois, to Neyland Stadium.
Layka is a decorated war dog that saved the lives of American troops in Afghanistan.
Let's give a big orange round of applause for the caregivers from the college of veterinary medicine and service dog and hero Layka!