By Staff Sergeant Autumn Stock slipped into the Laughlin Air Force Base kennel. Tomorrow, she was scheduled to begin training as a military dog handler, but for now, the lifelong dog lover was on temporary kennel cleanup duty.
“Hey, guys!” she greeted the seven new recruits that had arrived that morning. Some of them barked back as if to say, “Hello,” and one of the dogs, a German shepherd whose name tag read Zorro, caught Autumn’s eye. The connection was electric. She squatted at the kennel door while Zorro rubbed back and forth against the bars, his tail wagging.
There’s something special about this one, she thought, and the next day, she nearly jumped for joy when the kennel master announced, “Stock—you’re with Zorro.”
A special bond
At the end of their first training session, the kennel master handed out thick binders to Autumn and the other handlers. “Rules and regs,” he explained. “Read and memorize them while you spend time with your dog.”
That night, and many nights after, Autumn sat on the kennel floor reading aloud with Zorro at her feet. The next day on the training field, it was like they could read each other’s minds. They met each new challenge and aced every test and evaluation.
After graduation, Autumn and Zorro spent a year at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, checking incoming vehicles for explosives and performing other security work. They then spent a year on active duty in Jordan—the most junior team to be assigned in the Middle East.
The partners went on to work many missions with the Secret Service, but when Autumn got pregnant, she was reassigned to desk duty. Sadly, Zorro was retrained with another handler, but Autumn visited him often and still laughed when he’d happily nuzzle her belly.
“Not yet, but soon,” she’d say, because Zorro could sense her pregnancy.
Zorro was still on base in Georgia when Autumn gave birth to her son, Waylon, and she couldn’t wait for her two favorite boys to meet. As soon as she could, she and her husband, Troy, took the newborn to the training area, and Zorro sniffed the stroller from top to bottom, then bounded over to Autumn to express his joy and approval.
Soon, Autumn and Troy—who was also in the military—began planning to have a second child, but they couldn’t be stationed together. “Either we’ll never see each other or one of us will never see our kids,” Autumn despaired. So when Troy was reassigned to a base in New York, she retired from the Air Force.
“I’m going to miss you so much, but you’ll always be with me,” she tearfully hugged Zorro before leaving.
Zorro simply sat, watching Autumn go. Then, as a good soldier, he returned to duty with his handler.
Sweet reunion
Troy and Autumn moved to Rome, New York, and welcomed a second child, a daughter named Winter. Meanwhile, back in Georgia, Zorro and his new handler were about to be reassigned when the veterinarian spotted a mass on Zorro’s chest. The mass was benign and easily removed, but the vet decided it was the right time for the K9 hero to retire.
“Oh my God!” Autumn exclaimed when she read the email that Zorro would be retiring and available for adoption. She could hardly complete the paperwork fast enough. Just hours after Zorro’s discharge, Autumn raced to the kennel to get him.
“Zor-rrrro!” she called, and in a flash, he was rolling in her lap, licking her face and whining softly, like a newborn baby. The next morning, Autumn and Zorro headed to the airport carrying Zorro’s discharge papers, his many commendations, medical records and—like all honorably discharged soldiers—a folded American flag.
“We treat our veterans right,” the flight attendant said, and upgraded the reunited comrades to first class.
Today, Zorro is almost 11 years old and enjoys a healthy, active retirement, playing with his rubber Kong toy, taking naps and accompanying Autumn on her errands. He loves playing with Waylon, now 3, and trailing 1-year-old Winter, waiting to snag a dropped Goldfish cracker.
“I told Zorro before I left the Air Force that I’d always love him,” says Autumn. “I was right, and now he’s living his best life with us as a family.”
