HERCULANEUM, Missouri -- A soldier was reunited with the dog that saved his life. Army Specialist Brent Grommet and a German Shepherd named Matty worked as a bomb detection team in Afghanistan until a roadside blast in June 2013 ended both their careers, according to Fox2Now.com.
While Grommet was in the hospital, he filed papers to adopt Matty, and had it approved, but then for reasons still unclear, the army allowed someone else to adopt the dog.
Ever since, Grommet has been trying to get the army to tell him who adopted Matty so he could explain the situation and to them and try to get him back, but Grommet says all he got was the run around.
'I was starting to believe it wasn`t going to happen and then everything all of a sudden started turning around for the better,' Grommet said.
After an initial report on FOX 2, the story was picked up by the national media including Fox News Channel, which did a live interview with Grommet`s father Don, Thursday evening.
Thirty minutes after the broadcast, the situation suddenly improved.
"I was just getting home when (Don) called and I walked through the door and he was yelling `we got Matty!'" said Brent Grommet`s mother, Debbie. "We both threw our arms up and cried."
North Carolina congressman Richard Hudson, who had heard about the story earlier in the week, used his contacts to find the dog and persuaded the family that adopted Matty to return him to Grommet.
And this weekend, they did, through a third party in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
'They went and let him out,' Grommet said. 'He went as fast as he physically could over to me, about tackled me to the ground and we were just rolling around having a good time.'
Grommet gets out of the army in two months, but is trying to arrange it so Matty can live with him on base at Fort Campbell, KY, until his army service ends.
"It is like a fairy tale," Grommet said.
"This doesn`t happen but once in a lifetime that something this great can come about."
