Military dog retires amid accolades

By Mao Weihua in Urumqi and Xing Wen

A army canine named Yanlong retired just lately after eight years of service in a border detachment in Altay prefecture within the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous area.

“Yanlong has reached the age of retirement. Evaluating canine years to a human’s age, it has already grown right into a 64-year-old veteran,” mentioned coach Tang Yanyi, a frontier guard who joined the Folks’s Liberation Military in 2014.

He mentioned Yanlong had participated in common patrols alongside the border shared by China and Kazakhstan greater than 700 occasions over the previous eight years. Of all of the canine serving within the border detachment, Yanlong has served longest, marching practically 9,000 kilometers.

All of the border troopers and the canine need to undergo within the harsh circumstances of the areas the place they need to patrol — together with the lengthy winter freeze and clouds of mosquitoes in summer season.

From June to August, the detachment has to patrol forests during which some 1,700 mosquitoes per cubic meter swarm the troopers and their canine companions. Seven army canine have died from mosquito bites. Nonetheless, Yanlong overcame all of the difficulties and have become well-known for tenacity.