Good NewsU.S. Marine reunited with bomb-sniffing dog that saved his life
In 2010, Marine Lance Corporal Brad O'Keefe was severely injured in an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion in Afghanistan. The only reason he and his fellow troops survived the blast: Earl, a two-year-old black lab, warned them just in time.
Earl was trained to sniff out IEDs.
"He and I were working together really well and we just had this chemistry," O'Keefe said of the canine partner who saved his life.
"He was with me all day, every day," he added.
O'Keefe returned home to Rochester, New York, and Earl was reassigned elsewhere. In the years following the explosion, O'Keefe, now retired from the Marines, couldn't stop thinking about the canine friend who saved his life.
"I tried to move on because I didn't know what was going to happen," O'Keefe told WPRO. "But there was always a place in my heart for him."
O'Keefe and his family started searching for Earl. His sister, Rachel Lawson, launched a search on Facebook. She soon learned that Earl was working on the explosives detection teams at the Rhode Island State Police.
The pair were reunited at State Police Headquarters on June 21.
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"I thought I would be happy and excited, but it's more than that," O'Keefe told WPRO. "Seeing him is better than I imagined."
Earl is now retired, too — and is moving in with O'Keefe.
“They're letting us adopt Earl. No strings attached, no extra expenses,” Lawson told WHAM.
"I'm really excited," O’Keefe told WHAM, listing the things he and Earl are looking forward to doing together. "Probably we'll do a lot of hanging out, playing with him, we didn't get to play much when we were over there."
"Him being with me makes me happy and I think me being happy makes him happy," O'Keefe told YNN.
Lawson is now trying to help reunite other soldiers and their canine partners.
"It's just a start," she told YNN. "He's just one dog. I love all of them and I want to do this for other people. We just want to pay it forward."
