Officer begging food for Iraqi police dogs

LAS VEGAS - The commander of an Army Reserve detachment is begging friends back home to send food for Iraqi police dogs.

"The dogs are starving and urgently need dry dog food," Capt. Gabriella Cook, commander of the Las Vegas-based 313th Military Police Detachment, said in a Dec. 28 e-mail reported Wednesday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

"Some of them have already died," Cook wrote. "Half of them are sick. We have no way of buying actual dog food here."

Cook's unit arrived last month in the Iraq capital. She said 12 German shepherds and one black Labrador retriever trained for bomb-detection and attack at the Iraqi Police Academy in Baghdad have been eating table scraps and garbage.

"It seems like an emergency situation," Diana Paivanas, a Henderson pet-care provider and Cook's friend, told the Review-Journal. "Something needs to be done now to save these dogs."

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., a veterinarian, directed a legislative aide to contact an Army liaison to investigate, a spokesman for the senator said.

Military officials at the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad did not immediately respond to the newspaper's request for information about the food supply for U.S. canines in Iraq.

Paivanas said she found it costs about $50 to mail a 30-pound bag of dog food to Cook.

Henderson Veterinarian Terry Muratore estimated that each of the 13 working dogs would consume a 40 pounds or more of dry food per month.

"If securing the country entails having security dogs that are healthy, then we should do that," Muratore said. "Surely there's space on a C-130 to get a pallet of dog food over there."