Marie T. has fostered nine dogs and babysat dozens more from the DoD’s Breeding Program. PHOTO BY JANET DELTUVA.
“Service Before Self” is the Air Force motto. The woman with the three Mals on the facing page lives this philosophy in retirement just as she did when she was a crucial team player on US Air Force surgical teams in Iraq, Germany, and the United States. Whether you’re a dog or a person, Marie T. is the kind of person you want as a friend, neighbor, or colleague because she is good, kind, and always finds a way to get things done. When she enlisted, the US Air Force harnessed those qualities and trained her to be a surgical technician—the right job for someone with a compassionate heart, a quick mind, and able hands.
Landstuhl is the Defense Department’s largest and most advanced medical center outside the United States. When hostages are rescued from terrorists, when soldiers are wounded in combat, Landstuhl is often the first stop. The huge hospital is also close to the Army’s renowned veterinary hospital called Dog Center Europe. In that facility, wounded and sick Military Working Dogs from Europe, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa receive superb care.
Like all who enlist, Marie entered the USAF through the Lackland gate. After Basic Military Training, which everyone must have, Air Force personnel experts read her aptitude tests, interviewed her, and set her on a career of caring for others.
When terrorists began using IEDs against our troops, thousands of our finest young men and women were rushed to America’s top military hospital in Europe, the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Kaiserslautern, Germany, home to more than fifty thousand US military and their families. Marie was there. Along with the rest of her surgical team she worked six or seven days a week, twelve to sixteen hours a day, most of that in the operating room, struggling to save the lives and limbs of American combat wounded from two ongoing wars.
In one year under Marie’s leadership, Armed Forces Against Drunk Driving reportedly saved hundreds of lives in the area surrounding Landstuhl, the largest American medical center outside the United States.
If you’ve ever worked in an organization, you know there’s always someone who becomes the go-to person when things are tough. That was Marie. Her bosses needed administrative help beyond the operating room and she rose to meet those needs as well. They kept heaping more responsibility on her and she kept getting it all done. Marie also wound up running the local chapter of Armed Forces Against Drunk Driving, a volunteer organization that gives free rides to military folks who’ve had too much to drink and know they need to be off the road, not behind the wheel.
Marie returned to Lackland twelve years after she first entered, to complete her Air Force career at the famed Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center. It was at Wilford Hall that she heard about the Military Working Dog Breeding Program’s need for volunteer fosters to raise future MWDs. A chance to help people by loving and caring for puppies in her home? Perfect.
“When I first started fostering for the Department of Defense Military Working Dog Breeding Program,” Marie says, “I never imagined that it would lead to where I am now. I thought I’d foster a couple puppies until the Air Force moved me to another duty station. I was so wrong. Six years later, I retired from active duty after fostering five and adopting two that had failed to meet all the training requirements. I adopted a third Mal after I retired.”
In retirement, Marie wanted to stay connected to her Air Force brothers and sisters and to do what she could to help keep our troops safe. She also needed to work.
“I applied for, and was hired as an animal caretaker for all these magnificent dogs who I love as if they were my own.” So Marie, who had given meticulous care to hundreds of human patients on three continents, now has a job—in a kennel.
Lackland’s kennel, where Marie works, is meticulously maintained. PHOTO BY JANET DELTUVA.
However, the word kennel doesn’t begin to describe the Lackland accommodations for visiting and resident canines. It’s more like a kennel city with a support staff steeped in veterinary knowledge and the Lackland K9 spirit. There’s room for more than eleven hundred dogs on the base and its neighboring Medina Annex.
That’s a lot of barking, a whole lot of kibble, and tons of special diets, daily meds, exercise, and scheduled visits to the doctor to manage. It takes a highly disciplined, well-organized team. Marie was a natural fit for this unsung and mostly unseen crew whose outstanding work makes possible everything else at Lackland K9.
Marie says that the Lackland kennel crew is tasked with “safeguarding the health and welfare of all MWDs by observing, monitoring, and reporting any and all physical and emotional changes, regardless of the time of day or weather conditions.” She sounds as if she’s talking about taking care of her human patients. Of course, that’s the point. 