Green Country Marine, Bomb Dog Reunited After 3 Years

Marine Combat Veteran, Anthony Marquez, and his dog, Allie, patrolled Afghanistan back in 2011 looking for roadside Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs.

Although their combat days are now over, Anthony's hoping Allie can be trained for one more mission.

We met Anthony and Allie at K9 Manners and More in Broken Arrow where Donna Willis, a professional dog trainer, agreed to do a preliminary evaluation of Allie.

Anthony would like Allie to get some special training to help him with occasional PTSD issues.

Allie and Anthony were deployed together in Afghanistan.

"Everything I went through she went through, now she gets to come home and stay with me," Anthony said.

It wasn't easy. They trained together for five weeks prior to deployment, spent the tour together in Afghanistan, then, they came back to the states together and that's where the relationship ended.

"Within 30 minutes of landing back in the states she was gone,” Anthony said.

She was off to be retrained with another handler and then back to Afghanistan. In fact, she did three more deployments.

They had been separated for three years, but Anthony began to wonder about her. He did some digging and found out she was available for adoption, so he had to go to North Carolina to pick her up.

This is where the story takes another turn; former OU football coach Barry Switzer heard about it, worked out a deal to fly Anthony to North Carolina to pick Allie up.

"Having her back is something special,” Anthony said.

Like many recent veterans Anthony has periodic problems with PTSD.

"There's a lot of different things that would spark it you might say." He said.

He's hoping Allie can be additionally trained to help with that.

Willis told us, based on her quick assessment, things look promising. She has trained other dogs to help veterans with PTSD and said Allie shows promise, but there's a long way to go.