Military Working Dog handlers from the Navy, Army and Air Force learned how to render first aid to their K-9 counterparts during a training evolution onboard Naval Air Station Pensacola, April 21, 2021. The handlers trained with robotic dogs and learned how to bandage wounds, check vital signs and more.

Transcript

You don’t have to tell you secondhand. But this afternoon we came out here with a lot of our mannequin dogs and gave them the practice to do common first aid procedures that they might encounter down range or in a deployed environment on mission. So they could apply care to these dogs as their kind of first responders in that situation. So we had a couple, they’re dealing with bleeding wounds. So stopping bleeding. We have robot dogs that simulate that bleeding. So they could practice including that bleeding, stopping at performing bandages, getting simple things like vital. So temperature, heart rate, breathing rate on these guys doing stabilization of wounds, like applying bandages, applying a chest seal. So those are some of the common things that we were dealing with today. And then we have teams of handlers from Fort Rucker, Eglin, Air Force Base, hurlburt, field piece, labor Force base meridian and gulf port as well. So we have a lot of handlers and then veterinary staff as well here for the training. I think it’s really important because in a lot of situations downrange we’re not going to have enough veterinary teams in those situations that are able to apply first line care to these military working dogs. So having handlers trained in first aid care really helps us as definitive care for these dogs. Get that process started before they get to us in a downrange situation. It’s important because dogs like ourselves, we’re always potentially in a situation where things can go wrong when things go wrong, you get injured life threatening injuries and it’s important to be able to bandage up our partners as much as the Navy tries to bandage us up to. I think it’s just a good chance to really appreciate these teams coming together. A lot of these handlers are in different branches, so it’s kind of nice for them to also interface with each other. Since even though they’re in different branches of the military, they can come share their experiences, learn together and work together as a team. Yeah.