Food drive begins for starving Iraqi police dogs

LAS VEGAS - An Army Reserve officer's plea to feed starving Iraqi police dogs at a Baghdad training center spurred an outpouring of aid that friends back home were struggling Thursday to handle.

Offers of help poured in from New Hampshire, Florida, Texas, Ohio and New York after Army Reserve Capt. Gabriella Cook begged for help, according to Cook's friend Diana Paivanas in Las Vegas.

Wayne Allen Root, a sports gambling handicapper, ponied up $5,000, and the Las Vegas Valley Humane Society was trying to find a way to ship pallets of dry dog food to Iraq to feed the 12 undernourished German shepherds and one black Labrador retriever at the Iraqi Police Academy.

"The dogs are starving and urgently need dry dog food," Cook wrote in an e-mail that said the Iraqi Interior Ministry's only bomb-sniffing police dogs were eating table scraps and garbage.

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

Cook, a Las Vegas police officer, is commander of the Las Vegas-based 313th Military Police Detachment. The unit arrived in Baghdad on Dec. 13 to train Iraqi police, including officers with bomb-sniffing dogs.

A Henderson veterinarian said his telephone started ringing with offers of help after he was first quoted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal about Cook's request to "please send all the dog food you can."

"If one dog smells one bomb and saves a platoon's life, it's worth it," Terry Muratore told The Associated Press. Muratore treats several pet cats and dogs that Cook has at home in Las Vegas.

Paivanas said Thursday that she heard twice by e-mail from Cook, who was excited by the stateside response.

"That is so wonderful," Cook wrote in an e-mail thanking Paivanas. "PS the Iraqi bomb dogs helped us Americans to sniff out a building."

The Southern Nevada effort appeared to be unique, said Stephanie Shain, spokeswoman for the Humane Society of the United States in Washington. She said the national organization was contacting officials on Capitol Hill about Cook's account.

An aide to Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the senator was asking the Army about the health of the U.S. military's working dogs in Iraq. Ensign also is a veterinarian.