Tom Blodgett's veteran's page

I served in the Army, 1971 to 73. I was a patrol dog handler stationed at the 561st MP company at Fort Myer, VA, outside Washington D.C.

My dog's name in the photo is Udo.  He was known as an Army Super dog.  The Army got into breeding for a while to come up with the optimum patrol dog.  His qualifications were: 

--He or she needed to be a certain size and weight. 

--They had to be able to be aggressive, yet that agression had to be controllable, as patrol dogs can be used in crowds.

All patrol dogs are very well trained and must pass very rigorous testing before going out in the field.

I had three dogs. First was Dante. Dante did not graduate from our mutual training course.  He failed the first 8 weeks of sentry dog training, as he wouldn't bite. I was assigned Hebert for the next 5 weeks of patrol dog training. He passed and went with me to my duty station, the 561st MP company. The 561st patrolled several bases in the D.C. area.  Most of our duty was night patrol, which meant that I worked in fatigues.  Hebert developed severe hip dysplasia and I had to put him down.  That is when I was issued Udo. We only worked one daytime duty station where we had to work in class A uniforms (as seen in the picture).  Udo closed out my service.

This looks like a fun assignment!  (Thanks to Jim Tripp for contacting Tom and submitting the photo and preliminary information.)

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