Mikey, a brave Alsatian war dog in the elite Israeli Oketz canine unit, who was blown up by a Hamas grenade in November, is back on her feet after becoming the first dog in the world to undergo oxygen therapy, the Daily Mail reports.
Mikey is an explosives sniffer dog trained to scan buildings for traps before Israeli forces enter. The evil Hamas terrorists frequently booby-trap buildings in Gaza, recently even with child’s voices, dolls and backpacks, as Gateway Pundit reported. 8 IDF soldiers of the Golani Brigade were killed by an IED in the Kasbah of Shuja’iyya neighborhood Dec. 13.
Mikey was weeks away from retirement when a Hamas terrorist threw a grenade which blew up in her face. She suffered catastrophic injuries to her face, body and legs, the Daily Mail reported.
The explosives specialist was evacuated to Israel November 12 and vets battled to save her for weeks.
Mikey,Oketz combat dog, returned from the #Gaza with a serious head injury. Shamir Hospital was asked if, for the first time in its history, it would agree to provide treatment in a pressure chamber to a dog, the hospital agreed to the challenge: “We thought about what we would pic.twitter.com/3WqjFPO3uo
— Israel Kicks A** (@Israelkicksass) December 6, 2023
Despite operating to remove shrapnel in her eyes, ears, leg, abdomen and head, the outlook was bleak, the Daily Mail reports. Remnants of explosives in her brain meant the nine-year-old might never walk again. Israeli vets feared for her life.
With no options left, Mikey’s superiors insisted she receive the best treatment possible and called Professor Shai Efrati at Shamir Medical Center near Tel Aviv, the world’s leading Hyperbaric Medicine and Research facility, the Daily Mail reports.
Amazingly, after just a few weeks of treatment, the Alsatian is back on her feet.
Excl: ‘I told them I do not treat dogs. Then they explained to me this is a special dog that was injured in Gaza. I said, ok, now we are listening.’ Special forces Alsatian Mikey, blown up by Hamas, becomes first dog in the world to undergo oxygen therapy https://t.co/ImN5Qvdszp
— Andy Jehring (@AndyJehring) December 21, 2023
“This is even better than we thought,” Professor Efrati told the Daily Mail. “The results are so amazing, it’s like a fast forward with regard to the reaction to the treatment as what’s happening in humans.”
“In each session that she gets it’s like five session in humans. It’s amazing progress that she made.”
Professor Efrati pioneered the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy to treat blast wounds in soldiers, the Daily Mail reports.
However, he was hesitant to use it on an animal, the Mail writes.
“I told them I do not treat dogs,” he said. “They explained to me this is a special dog that was injured in Gaza serving Israel. I said, ok, now we are listening.”
“We want to give Mikey the best of the best treatment that we are given to any soldier that is injured during the battlefield, “ Efrati said. ‘That’s who we are in Israel, we want to give the best to our soldiers. And Mikey, she’s one of our soldiers.”
Hyperbaric therapy works by flooding the blood with oxygen under pressure to bypass damaged blood vessels to induce the stem cells to grow, the Daily Mail reports.
Mikey receives bursts of 100 per cent oxygen through a face mask in a chamber that doubles the atmospheric pressure for two hours, six times a week.
“When she came in, there was a real threat to her life,“ Professor Efrati told the Mail. “She is now better than even we thought she could be. It is just amazing to see.”
Mikey served with the elite Israeli Oketz dog unit since she was a puppy.
Israel has one of the most sophisticated armies in the world, including the Oketz (“Sting”) dog unit, with elite dog warriors trained to sniff out explosives, locate hidden threats and tunnel entrances, and track down and neutralize terrorists.
Highly-trained Belgian Malinois have been utilised by Israel’s army for years – and now they are being deployed on the streets of Gaza and in Hamas’s notorious terror tunnels, Daily Mail reported.
Tragically, one brave dog was killed by Hamas as he saved the lives of several commandos, alerting them to the terrorists’ hiding place on October 7, the Mail wrote: Nero, one of the Oketz dogs which had joined Naval Commando 13 to hunt down Hamas infiltrators, was killed while tracking down terrorists.
“A dog who was with one of our men went in to comb a house,'” a Lieutenant Colonel told Israel Hayom. “He revealed the location of two terrorists, took a burst of gunfire from them, and was killed. That’s how the men in the force realized that there were terrorists in the house, and human lives were saved.”
“The troops fired at the terrorists and brought in engineering machinery that brought the house down on them. Lots of commanders from Naval Commando 13 contacted me and told me that the dog had saved their lives, ” the commander told Israel Hayom.
Any dog in the unit killed in the line of duty is entitled to a full military funeral.
In another case, Oketz forces joined up with the Duvdevan commando unit to scour open territory in the Be’ersheva area.
It managed to locate a terrorist who had set up an ambush for the force in a grove of bushes just a few dozen meters ahead of its unit.
The dog bit the terrorist, the commander said, allowing the Duvdevan force to arrest him.
Following the arrest, he added, “it turned out that he was a terrorist from Hamas’s underground system, and in his interrogation he gave very important information for the continuation of the fighting.”
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