Dog Names Ending in bi

Sarbi was an explosives detection dog for the Australian Special Operations Engineer Regiment and she went missing in action (MIA) for 14 months in Afghanistan in 2008. But Sarbi was not always a soldier. She started out as a homeless Labrador Newfie on the streets of Australia but, luckily, she was adopted by a family in the NSW Southern Highlands where she lived for two years until her family advertised her in the paper to be a service dog.

Corporal Murray Young, who was looking for new canine recruits found the advertisement and took Sarbi to Moorebank where she graduated from the explosives detection dog training in November of 2005. Sarbi was excellent at her job and saved many lives of her Australian soldier brothers, but on September 2, 2008, during a massive attack by the Taliban in Afghanistan, Sarbi was lost as she ran from the gunfire. Her leash was severed by the bullets and her handler, Corporal David Simpson, was injured as was Sarbi and she got lost in the confusion. 

There have been many military dogs in Australia as well as the United States but none that have ever lived through the type of horrors that Sarbi lived through when living on the streets of Afghanistan after being separated from her handler and their regiment in the Uruzgan province ambush. The battle lasted for nine hours, and when the soldiers were finally taken to the hospital, she was nowhere to be found. The remaining soldiers spent hours looking for their hero dog but they eventually had to return to Australia and Sarbi was declared Missing in Action (MIA). 

For over a year, Sarbi was missing in Uruzgan, Afghanistan and although the other soldiers who remained at the base in Uruzgan continued to keep an eye out for her and even put some of Simpson’s sweaty uniforms outside the base to try to get her back, she was not found until 13 months later. The news about Sarbi missing was known by all the troops in Afghanistan, and one day an American soldier thought he saw her in an Afghan village. After testing her with some military commands, the soldier knew it was her and negotiated with the village chief to get her back. 

Sarbi was in very good condition, and she had even gained some weight, and after spending a few months in quarantine, she was reunited with her handler, Simpson, in Australia. She was retired from the service and lived with Simpson’s family for the next five years until she died from a brain tumor. She was preserved by a taxidermist and put on display at the Australian War Memorial where she will never get lost again.