Hero's return – and a shower – for Sabi, Australia's bomb sniffing dog, after year lost in Afghan desert
Lost labrador found wandering Afghanistan by US soldier after going missing during gun battleEsther Addley
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 November 2009 
Sabi, a bomb sniffer dog, back at base in Afghanistan after going missing during a battle between Australian troops and militants.
Photograph: Andrew Mearse/AP
A highly trained Australian special forces combatant who disappeared during a firefight in Afghanistan has been found safe, well and waggy-tailed after surviving for more than a year in the desert.
Sabi, an expert in detecting improvised explosive devices who also happens to be a four-year-old black labrador, went missing 14 months ago during a battle in which nine Australian soldiers, including her handler, were wounded. Months of searching revealed nothing and the dog, on her second tour of Afghanistan, was officially listed as missing in action.
Last week, however, a US serviceman known only as John spotted Sabi wandering in a remote area of the southern province of Oruzgan and, knowing his Australian counterparts had lost a bomb-sniffing dog, tried out some commands to which, Lassie-style, the labrador responded.
Back at Tarin Kowt base, Sabi was a little grizzled but otherwise unharmed. Her trainer checked she really was Sabi by means of the tennis ball test: he nudged a ball to her; she picked it up. "It's amazing, just incredible, to have her back," the trainer said.
Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who was coincidentally visiting his country's troops during a brief visit to Afghanistan, posed for photographs petting the dog, alongside US General Stanley McChrystal, overall commander of the US and Nato missions to Afghanistan. Rudd declared Sabi "a genuinely nice pooch".
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Sabi showed no signs of stress after her ordeal and greeted strangers "with a sniff and a lick".
It is not known whether the dog spent the past 14 months eluding Taliban forces in the area, as befits a special forces combatant, or whether she was captured and held as a prisoner of war, but the fact that she was in good condition when found suggested she had been well looked after, military spokesman Brigadier Brian Dawson, told reporters in Canberra.
She is now being tested for disease, with a view to returning to Australia, although Rudd suggested that passing quarantine tests "might be the greatest challenge".
Trooper Mark Donaldson was awarded a Victoria Cross for his part in the battle in which Sabi disappeared in September 2008, when a joint Australian-Afghan patrol was ambushed. He declared her return "the last piece of the puzzle.
"Having Sabi back gives some closure for the handler and the rest of us [who] served with her in 2008. It's a fantastic morale booster for the guys," he said.
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