What is up, everybody? At Vortex, we love a lot of things around here, but two things

that stand out are the military and dogs. And in this podcast, we're going to talk about

both those things and to help us do that. We have Mr. Chris Willingham from the US War

Dogs Association. Chris, man, you guys have just a really, really cool program. Oh, and

actually, I'm going to say this too. We've got a really cool promotion that we're going

to talk about later too. So we'll tease that up a little bit. Chris, tell us, tell us

a little bit about yourself, how you got involved with US War Dogs and, you know, the organization

itself and what you guys are up to. Yes, sir. First of all, just like to say, thank you

very much for, for having us all in a given us a chance to kind of talk about the mission

for US War Dogs. And we truly appreciate this opportunity working with y'all in November.

Myself, I was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and I served in the Marine Corps for 20 years.

And for 17 of those years, I was in the military working dog program. So we've used canines

in our military since war two. And I was very blessed just to be part of that incredible

canine family and you know, every, every war they've had, you've kind of adjusted the capabilities

of our dogs to meet the threats we're facing. And for me, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan,

IEDs was a number one threat to coalition forces. And so I had a awfully specialized search

dog who was trained to search for explosives. And we would go out and walk patrol and we

would leave point and have the dog out in front of us searching and kind of leading the way as we

would go to different objectives and incredibly successful. And they, those dogs saved a lot of lives.

And one of my biggest mentors and some of my biggest supporters and mentors during my time in

the Marine Corps were Vietnam dog handlers. And one of those gentlemen was named Ron Ayello,

who was one of the founding members of US War Dogs Association. He was also one of the first

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