A GI’S BEST FRIEND

Army Pfc. Adrian Garcia gave a lot in his fight for freedom in Iraq.

Sgt. Ron Portillo, a fellow soldier from Henderson, knows what Garcia is going through and wanted to give something back to him: a four-legged companion who'll get him through the tough times ahead.

Garcia, a 19-year-old El Paso, Texas, soldier, lost both legs when a rocket-propelled grenade ripped through his Humvee on March 21 while on patrol in Ramadi. The projectile sliced through his lower thighs while he stood in the machine gunner's turret, but it didn't detonate.

"Had it exploded, I probably wouldn't be here," he said this week at Green Valley Ranch Resort.

That's where he came to meet his new companion, a pit bull terrier named Moukie.

In time, Moukie, a service dog provided by Portillo's nonprofit public charity, Canines for Combat Wounded, will help him regain his balance when he learns to walk on prosthetic legs.

The organization is designed to facilitate the training and care of dogs from various outlets and match them with soldiers who need them.

"If it could change an old soldier like myself, it could help younger soldiers," the 39-year-old Portillo, himself an amputee, said about the role of service dogs for wounded war veterans.

His dog, Sonya, a Presa Canario, helped him with balance and, on a daily basis, helps him cope with a brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder. He had acquired Sonya as a puppy and trained her before he left for Iraq last December. Upon his return in March, he began fine-tuning her to be his service dog.

When Garcia got back to Texas in the spring and was wheelchair-bound at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, he was in a state of depression.

"I felt lost," he said.

But his spirits changed when he got to know Portillo, a Special Forces engineer serving in the Nevada National Guard who had been at the medical center for about a week.

Portillo lost a leg after an improvised bomb exploded when his search team was ambushed March 13 in Fallujah as they tried to rescue some downed Marines.

"He was upbeat and looking for the good in all this," Garcia said, recalling when they met at the Fisher House at Brooke, a comfort house for military personnel on the mend and their families.

Like Garcia, Portillo was depressed after he was transferred from a Baghdad hospital to one in Landstuhl, Germany.

"I was pretty pissed off because I was paralyzed from my waist down," Portillo said. "But a therapy dog came into my room and changed my whole outlook."

From then on, he was on the road to recovery.

"The dog popped up on my bed. After a few days when the dog came again, I started to get up," he said.

He learned from his rehabilitation experience how important service dogs are for helping wounded soldiers.

"My main goal is to get service dogs to help us live a better lifestyle," Portillo said. "If a soldier has no arms, a service dog will pick up a phone, turn on lights, pick up credit cards, open refrigerators, open the front door, stuff like that."

He said service dogs can help erase the notion of suicide from wounded soldiers' minds.

"I don't want young soldiers to kill themselves or be alone," he said. "I'm making a little difference in their lives, just to be happy. I'm giving back what they gave me. They gave me help when I needed it."

At Fisher House, he asked Garcia if he would like a service dog. At that time, his Canines for Combat Wounded organization had yet to become a reality.

Portillo found Moukie, who was then trained by an expert in Los Angeles. On Tuesday, two months after Portillo's charity was launched, she became its first service dog turned over to a soldier.

A California couple who had heard about Portillo's effort, Elizabeth Szkiba and her husband, James Dowdy, provided a room for Garcia and his mother to stay at Green Valley Ranch Resort and then arranged for him to drive a van to Los Angeles with Portillo to pick up Moukie.

Szkiba said she was glad she could help Garcia. "I'm proud of him. His life is not stopped, and he has to go on," she said.

Garcia smiled as he sat in his wheelchair Wednesday in the hotel's lobby with Moukie at his side.

"I just got her and she doesn't know me. We're barely bonding," he said.

Back in Texas, though, he has another hurdle to overcome. The Fisher House at Fort Sam Houston won't let Moukie stay there while he's learning to walk on his prosthetic legs because other soldiers there might be allergic to dog hair, he said.

"To resolve that issue, I'm going to get an apartment off post," Garcia said.

He said a setback like that won't change his positive attitude.

"I'm lucky," he said. "There are people who have no legs and no arms. A service dog can help them, too. They'll always love you."