U.S. Army Ranger and Purple Heart recipient Julian McDonald met Layka in Sharana, Afghanistan on April 28, 2012, after his first dog was killed in action on McDonald’s birthday.
“I picked her up from the kennel and we began running direct night action raids on the 29th,” he says. The team had been operational for less than a month, and had been deployed on six special operations missions, when Layka was credited with saving the life of her handler and his team.
