Two old war buddies will be reunited in Boston today. A Marine and his dog.
U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan Bogue and his beloved K-9 partner, a black lab named Moxie, reluctantly parted ways two years ago after spending seven months together in combat in Afghanistan.
Moxie sniffed out bombs, protecting the platoon. The pair of them were together around the clock. They shared everything.
As they said their goodbyes at North Carolina’s Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, Bogue thanked the courageous canine.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done,” he told him, “and hopefully I’ll see you again.”
“I was sad to see him go,” Bogue recalled last night, “but I knew it was coming.”
Today, thanks to a social media blitz, Bogue and Moxie will be reunited. After his tour of duty, Moxie went to work for the MBTA, and kind-hearted T officials are now returning the hero canine to the grateful soldier.
Bogue said he can’t wait to give his four-legged friend a big hug.
“I’m very, very excited,” said the 22-year-old married Marine. “More than I can say.”
Bogue and Moxie were assigned to work as a team in August 2011 when he was sent to a dog-handling course in North Carolina. The duo were deployed to Afghanistan in January 2012.
“It was comforting and reassuring to myself and my unit to have a dog there in the stressful situations of a combat deployment,” said Bogue.
The pair returned to the U.S. in August of that year and went their separate ways.
“You can’t really prepare for that,” said Bogue, who said he and Moxie both suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Bogue never forgot his furry friend and turned to social media to find him.
His quest went viral with help from Vietnam vet Lon Hodge, who posted the Marine’s plea on his own service dog’s popular Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Moxie has been working for the T for a year and a half. But returning him to Bogue was a no-brainer.
“After serving their country so courageously, these two heroes deserve to be together again,” said T spokesman Joe Pesaturo.
Hodge drove all the way from Chicago to witness today’s reunion.
“That’s an extraordinary gesture,” he said of the T’s decision to give the dog to Bogue.
Bogue and Moxie will take in a Red Sox game tomorrow. Then they’ll head to Bogue’s North Carolina home, where Moxie will meet Bogue’s three pit bulls and his Australian Shepherd. Said Bogue: “He’s going to be part of the family.”