Recently, Gregory A. Rodriguez, a 1^st  Sgt. stationed in Afghanistan, was honored for his death by family and friends during his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. It was suggested by reports he died while taking a bullet for a fellow soldier.

Rodriquez was assigned to the K-9 unit base in Ansbach, Germany while in the Army Reserve. He continued to work as a military dog handler; he trained dogs for search parties along his side while doing his job out in the field. He was great at what he did, in fact he was typically given the most difficult dogs to train and always succeeded at it. 

His own trained K-9, “Jacko,” survived the attack and apparently had been by his side for the past couple of years, sleeping in the same bed as him, since landing in Afghanistan. Rodriguez’s wife told the paper, “He was Greg’s best companion for the past couple of years.” She hoped Jacko would be returned to their family as soon as possible.

This relates to my research topic directly because this soldier trained his own pet to become a part of his everyday job. Jacko helped Rodriguez perform his tasks in the workplace, and came home with him at night as his companion.

It’s horrible to hear stories about loss, but Rodriquez’s work with training military dogs is recognized and honored. It’s touching to see how close a man and dog can become, even if the animal is mainly there for procedure uses. It makes it clear how much of a use animals are needed in today’s society. They not only serve a purpose of fullfilling tasks, but friendships are created as well.

Thursday night I conducted my first interview pertaining to this project. I interviewed a very interesting and hilarious woman, Marcie Herman. She is a dog and horse trainer by day and professional artist and teacher by night. She cracked me up throughout the entire interview and gave me some perspective into how her love for animals began. She started going to race horses at Pimlico at TWO with her grandfather! It was a good start to the project!