But dogs with Ikar’s skills are in high demand because of the amount of time and effort it takes to train them.

So when they returned home in September 2012, Ikar was immediately reclaimed by his trainer.

“When we walked off the plane at Fort Bragg, I had Ikar for long enough for them to take a picture before they took him away from me and sent him back to go back through the TEDD program and back to Afghanistan,” McFarland said. “It sucked. I mean we worked together for a long time. We were really close, then it was just like that, they took him away.”

Ikar did a second tour in Afghanistan with a new handler. But when he returned to the U.S., he and 10 other TEDD dogs were adopted by a private company.

Kristen Maurer, president of Mission K9 Rescue, said all of the dogs were then abandoned at Mt. Hope Kennels in Richmond, Virginia.

“The contract company had told the Army that they had a contract with these dogs to be repurposed and used again. They did not… they did not pay the kennel owner; they kind of gave him a bit of the run-around,” said Maurer.

It was an unbelievable turn of events for these K-9 war heroes.

The kennel’s owner, Greg Meredith, was told the dogs would be with his for 4-5 weeks. But after 17 months and $150,000 of expenses, they were still there. That’s time they could have spent in good homes.

The expense was simply too much for Meredith to keep up with since the private contractor had stopped paying, so in July of 2015, he turned the dogs over to two rescues – the United States War Dogs Association in Burlington, New Jersey and the Mission K9 Rescue in Houston, Texas.

Luckily, they had been well cared for and were still in good health.

When the new shelters got the dogs, they immediately set about trying to find their former handlers via social media in the hopes those soldiers would adopt them.

And that’s when McFarland found out what had happened to Ikar.

“I got Facebook stalked to be honest with you. I woke up one morning and had all kinds of messages on Facebook. People were like, ‘Is this your dog? Were you a dog handler in the Army?’ And I was like ‘Yea! What’s going on?’ That’s when I heard he had been abandoned and then saved and that I get the chance to adopt him now,” said McFarland.

As McFarland waited nervously at the Denver airport in August of 2015. He held a dog toy in his hand for his former partner but was concerned the dog might not remember him after all that time.

But dogs remember – and their reunion might bring a tear to your eye.

Ikar seemed thrilled to see his old pal.

McFarland immediately took Ikar to his forever home.

There, he’ll have lots of new toys and two dog brothers.