[link:https://www.npr.org/2019/09/18/761591604/bolivia-is-fighting-major-forest-fires-nearly-as-large-as-brazils?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news|

The bad news never stops these days.

Source: Washington Post

Mencey, a pointy-eared, caramel-colored Belgian Malinois, was ready to sniff out bombs when he arrived in Jordan in July 2017.

The 3-year-old did not get much of a chance. Mencey was bombarded with ticks and sandflies while under Jordanian care, and he was evacuated back to a facility in Virginia. A vector-borne disease ravaged his body. His kidneys failed. And less than a year after he left, Mencey was euthanized at the same facility where he trained to help secure a country that ultimately killed him.

The State Department sent dozens of highly skilled explosive-detection dogs to Jordan, even after the agency assessed a high degree of mistreatment and failure to care for the animals in 2016, according to an inspector general report concluded last week. It ultimately led to their early deaths and crushed their spirits so brutally that the dogs “lost the will to work,” the report says.

At least 10 dogs provided to Jordan died of “various medical problems” out of at least 100 canines sent there between 2008 and 2016, the report found, and surviving dogs were starved in kennels smeared with feces and dirt. Dogs were overworked in the desert, suffered hip dysplasia and other conditions. Engorged ticks ringed their ears.

Read more: https://beta.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/09/16/us-officials-knew-bomb-sniffing-dogs-were-dying-neglect-jordan-they-sent-more/

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Warning! The pictures and commentary which accompany this story are not for the faint of heart. I am sick to my stomach after reading this. Never mind the fact that these dogs are literally worth their weight in gold, continuing to ship them off to countries where they will be treated in the cruelest possible ways is simply immoral. I'll be writing my elected representatives and everyone else I can think of about this. It figures that something this awful would happen under the administration of a president* who has no problem caging children. The cruelty never stops if you happened to be named Trump.