Friday, May 23, 2008

FOB Dog

Americans love their pets. When the United States Army deploys to garden spots like Iraq, we adopt local mutts as ‘FOB dogs.’

A FOB dog’s life is simple; eat left-overs, bark at strange things, let Soldiers pet them. In return, we take good care of our little mascots. Iraqis, for some reason, hate dogs. They don’t keep them as pets, they don’t like to touch them, nothing. Despite the fact that Iraqis hate dogs, they’re everywhere.

The Afghanis take the cake in dog hating. The Russians left behind millions and millions of land mines, which are still active. To clear the land, the Afghans will fence off a mine field and then put a pack of dogs inside the fence. Fetch, Rover! BOOM! One less land mine.

Our FOB Dog is Daisy. She is a little unusual for a FOB Dog. She hates all Iraqis and other dogs, and enjoys swimming in the pond/cess-pool behind the base. A few days ago, I saw her gnawing away at a very long bone, which looked like a human femur. What was I supposed to do? My family had a little chiuahua/rat mix named Gizmo who’d put up a real fight if I tried to take away something he was eating. This dog is five times that size and was apparently Eating A Human Bone. Bad dog! Very bad!

Upon further investigation, it turns out the bone belonged to another dog. Whew! Wait…so our FOB dog is a cannibal. It’s a dog eat – No! No I can’t go through with that cliché.

There are a number of things I did not anticipate about Iraq. Former terrorists who’re now my friends, eating sheep ass and cannibal FOB dogs. Why is everything in this country bat-shit insane?



There are some complications. The FOB Dogs do not appreciate the military working dog teams who visit the base, which results in an “Old Yeller” moment if the FOB dog attacks the working dog.

Some times Soldiers can ship FOB dogs back to the States, but the process is expensive and complicated. New units normally inherit FOB dogs…and their puppies. But, there are traveling vets who stop by for a little snip-snip to prevent that issue.

I can imagine that conversation:
FOB Dog: Yeah, the Soldiers let me sleep in peace, feed me and play with me.
Wild dog: Damn, that sounds awesome.
FOB Dog: It’s the life, but they cut my balls off.
Wild dog: @#@* that.

I do my best to stay away from the FOB dogs. Who knows when we’ll move elsewhere, and then who’ll take care of my dog? I have enough to worry about.

Here’s Daisy sleeping on a sun screen, her own improvised hammock.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The reason many muslims do not like dogs is they consider them to be "unclean" animals.
Think about the bible. Jezebel was eaten by wild dogs in the streets.
Dogs are indeed cannibals and shit-eaters, just like swine.
that is why Jews and Muslims often shun dogs and pigs.
It is only countries like the USA and Breat Britain (wealthy places) that can afford the luxury of keeping dogs as pets. When every day is a struggle to feed all human family members, animals had better provide a useful service!
Being cute is not reason enough!

Anonymous said...

what the fuck ever! okay valid point but humans have been breeding and utilizing dogs since creation (when ever that was) they hunted for us, protected us and became campanions for us. fuck em, i would save a fobdog's life before i would piss out a fire on a iraqi or afghanie

Anonymous said...

There are actually breeds of dogs exclusive to the area around Israel. And I'm a Jew, and I love dogs. And we don't avoid pigs because they're unclean. Some strange person back in the day decided that they're not ok to consume. There are a lot of animals that they decided we couldn't eat for one reason or another. But whatever, it's just another rule.

Again...Canaan Dog. Google it. It's Israel's national breed. If they hated dogs that much, they probably wouldn't waste their time developing a breed just for them.

Anonymous said...

FOB Dogs, yeah! We had three of them and all of them, especially Butch, hated Iraqis. Our section of Old MOD was pretty much Iraqi free because of the dogs, so very little pilfering. I loved those dogs and would have brought all of them home if I could have.

Unknown said...

Hi there a bit late but I still wanted to say something. One theorised reason as to why pigs are considert unclean by the jews and muslims comes from the animals themselfs, pigs eat nearly anything including insects. This can lead to an infection with Trichinella, an insectoid parasite whitch lives in muscle tissue. Normaly they live in the skeletal muscles, but in humans it can infect the cardio muscles too. To combat them the meat must be heated. In the levant and the arabic peninsula is was not always easy. Therefor it is possible to theorise that the leaders of the comunities could see this and through religious rules try to prevend further deaths.