Dayton, Ohio’s National Museum of the U.S. Air Force will be home to the exhibit Canine Warriors – Courage and Sacrifice, Always Beside You starting Nov. 8 and running through Jan. 31, 2020.
The traveling exhibit features eight wounded dog sculptures and four war dog sculptures by James Mellick “to not only bring attention to the service and heroism of military working dogs, but to be symbolic of the courageous sacrifices and wounds suffered during battle by their human companions and to raise awareness about their needs,” says a release.
Mellick, a former New Hampshire teacher, starting creating dog sculptures in the 1980s for his garden. Later, in 2014, he began crafting wounded dogs from wood after hearing about soldiers returning home with severe injuries and launched his “Wounded Warrior Dog Project.”
“What I think is so poetic and so beautiful is this bond or melding that takes place between the handler and the dog of complete dependence, unconditional love, and the will to survive in the most dire of situations amongst the two of them,” Mellick says in a release.
According to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, Mellick spends around 160 hours on each dog sculpture. Visitors to the exhibit will see specific sculptures of dogs, including Cooper and Lucca, who worked in Iraq in 2007.
A release says, “Between patrols, the dogs snoozed together in shady patches or cavorted with a deflated football. On July 6, 2007, Cooper and his handler, Army Cpl. Kory Wiens, were on patrol when an insurgent remotely detonated an IED hidden in a haystack killing both instantly. The dove that Mellick placed on Cooper’s sculpture signifies the angel wings he earned and the football is Cooper’s connection on Earth to Lucca, and celebrates the dogs’ playfulness and camaraderie, which brought joy to the warfighters.”
Lucca completed more than 400 missions over six years and received the Dickin Medal for “conspicuous gallantry” by the British People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals in 2016. The medal is visible on her sculptural rendering.
“I’ve had young veterans put their arms around me weeping, crying and thanking me for doing this,” Mellick says of the exhibit in the same release.
The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force is located at 1100 Spaatz St., Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. The museum is open daily 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and admission to the exhibit is free.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 12, 2019.