An Attack Forced a Couple to Leave Their Puppy in Kuwait. Six Months Later, Maple Is Home
Unrecognizable military couple embracing while poodle is sitting on woman's lap. Focus is on dog.© Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock.com (© Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock.com)
Niki Dawson had about twenty minutes to get herself, a young dog, and a folder of paperwork onto a flight out of Bahrain, the last leg of a trip that had already wound through several countries.
“They actually had to hold the plane for us in order for us to get the paperwork done for the animals and get them loaded on,” Dawson told WCBD Charleston. “It was close, and we almost didn’t make it.”
The dog was Maple. She’s now in Georgetown, South Carolina, with the two people who found her outside a base in Kuwait and then had to leave her there.
Found With a Cluster of Other Pups
Justin and Izzy Barnett were deployed to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, Justin working as a paramedic contractor and Izzy as an EMT. Maple turned up near an allied forces base nearby, one Justin identified as the 15th Armored Mubarak Division. “She was with a cluster of other pups when we found her,” he said.
They fed her, cared for her, and started making plans to fly her back to the United States. Then the base came under attack, Izzy was hurt, and the couple had to evacuate quickly, which meant that the puppy had to stay behind.
“It was unclear whether or not we were going to be able to come back and see her,” Justin said.
The Hardest One She’s Done
Going back for her themselves wasn’t an option, so the Barnetts turned to Paws of War, a nonprofit that helps bring home animals that service members take in overseas. Dawson is its director of animal welfare and logistics. “Bonding with these animals overseas, it really is sometimes the only thing that’s keeping them going,” she said.
Justin’s nights in Kuwait looked like that. “I spent a lot of nights out with the puppies … for a long time because when it got very lonely, it was just a scary time in our lives,” he said.
Dawson called getting Maple out one of the biggest challenges she’s ever faced with animals in the Middle East. The whole journey, start to finish, took six months, ending at that gate in Bahrain.
Why She Still Knew Them
A dog doesn’t remember things on a timeline the way we do. Instead, dogs run on memory built from association, tying smells and places to whatever happened there last time. A person’s smell is about as reliable a cue as a dog gets. We each carry a scent built from oils, sweat and breath, and a dog can pick their owner out by it whether or not that person has changed soap, uniform, or country since the last time they met.
Her age helped too. Puppies form their first bonds with humans at around seven to 10 weeks old, while their brains are busy sorting the world into safe and not safe. That window, where bonding comes easiest, closes somewhere near 16 weeks. Maple was still a young puppy when the Barnetts found her and started feeding her, which put them in that sweet spot of a timeframe.
Maple’s Home
The Barnetts have ordinary plans for her now. “We are excited for Maple to go to dog parks, for her to come out and meet our family, and for us to do all the things a regular family would do,” Justin said. Their first outing, after six months and a held plane, was a stop at Sonic for a pup-cup.
Source: Nature
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