Friendship Hospital for Animals is sponsoring a dog through the Marshall Legacy Institute (MLI). This organization works with countries to establish affordable and sustainable programs to rid their land of the scourge of landmines. Did you know that an estimated 80 million landmines are still buried worldwide?

One of their programs, the K9 Demining Corps Campaign, trains dogs to sniff out mines, which is faster and more effective than using a manual deminer. The dogs learn to detect explosive odors commonly found in landmines, and to alert their human handlers to the presence of a landmine by sitting still. Once the dogs are trained, MLI places them with a trainer native to the country where the demining will occur so that they may clear their own land.

Friendship Hospital is sponsoring a male German shepherd named Friendship. Born on May 4, 2007, Friendship was trained in San Antonio, Texas and was set to be deployed to Afghanistan in mid-March. We are proud of our involvement with this wonderful organization and hope you will visit their website to learn more.