No Ordinary Dog

February 17, 2020
Former U.S. Navy SEAL Chesney offers an inside look at life in the Special Forces and pays tribute to his canine partner Cairo in this heartfelt debut. Chesney details the intense mental and physical stresses of SEAL training, noting that only 20% of candidates graduate, and sketches his early deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Impressed by two military working dogs embedded with his unit in Afghanistan, Chesney, a self-described “dog guy,” decided to become a canine handler. At the end of a two-week “indoctrination period,” he was assigned Cairo, a Belgian Malinois with a hard work ethic and easygoing demeanor. He documents their growing bond over the course of several deployments, highlighting a mission in which Cairo was shot twice while flushing out a pair of insurgents and their participation in the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. After Chesney’s medical retirement (due to a brain injury), he fought bureaucratic red tape to bring Cairo home with him. Touching on the power of the human-animal bond, the effects of PTSD, and the legacy of the “war on terror,” this earnest account delivers many memorable moments. Dog lovers and fans of military history will be enthralled.

June 1, 2019

After Navy SEALs eliminated Osama bin Laden in May 2011, only one team member was named: military dog Cairo, a Belgian Malinois. Here, handler Chesney tells Cairo's story, from his work with Cairo in the DEVGRU canine program to the many critical missions they undertook to the grenade explosion that left Chesney with a brain injury and PTSD, when Cairo eased his pain as modern medicine could not. And Chesney was there at the end for Cairo, too.

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