Sarbi and her handler, Sergeant D, in January 2011.
The Australian Army’s most famous hound, Sarbi, retired from active service on Monday after six years of sniffing out dangerous bombs and weapons and saving countless lives.
Sarbi, who turned nine on September 11, retired as an explosives detection dog to live with her handler, Sergeant D, and his fiancé at their Sydney home.
She joins the experienced handler’s other dog, Vegas, who retired from her job as an EDD in 2005, and their cat.
“She’s settled in well. Vegas didn’t even bat an eyelid. She thinks it’s great that this new dog goes and gets the ball and drops it within easy reach for her to pick up,” Sgt D tells me via email.
The household cat, though, is another matter!
Sergeant D returned to Australia in early December after his fourth deployment to Afghanistan as an EDD handler since 2007 and was eager to lead Sarbi into her new life as a household pet.
The ball-mad black Newfoundland-Labrador retriever cross was twice deployed to Afghanistan with Sgt D – as he is known for operational security reasons – to sniff out improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and a range of other deadly weapons and bomb-making equipment.
She is the star of my fourth book, Saving Private Sarbi, The True Story of Australia’s Canine War Hero, which was published in October by Allen and Unwin and launched (see page 11 in Army, The Soldier’s Newspaper) by the former Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie who told me earlier this year he wouldn’t be sending Sarbi back to a war zone.
The book is now in its third printing.
Sarbi went missing in action after the joint Australian, Afghan and U.S. patrol on which she was working was ambushed by the Taliban on September 2, 2008. It was the same fire-fight in which SAS Trooper Mark Donaldson was later awarded the prestigious Victoria Cross for courage under fire for rescuing a seriously wounded Afghan interpreter.
Sarbi was taken by the Taliban as a prize of war and kept for nearly 14 months before she was ‘dognapped’ in a deal brokered by a local malek (trusted Afghan elder) and a US Special Forces soldier in Uruzgan Province and returned to the Australian Army based at Tarin Kot.
After several months in quarantine in Dubai, she finally made her way back to Australia last December and has spent all of 2011 training new EDD handlers at the School of Military Engineering at Holsworthy on the outskirts of Sydney.
She was also awarded the RSPCA’s prestigious Purple Cross for services to humans becoming only the second military animal to receive the top honour after Simpon’s donkey Murphy, who helped ferry wounded men from battle in Gallipoli. Sarbi has also received campaign medals for her two deployments to Afghanistan.
She deserves her retirement.
In dogs we trust.
