Will "Cheese" Chesney, former DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6) operator and dog handler, and his partner Cairo, the only canine on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
A small-town East Texas kid who joined the Navy in 2002 with a single goal, to become a SEAL, Chesney served 13 years in the Navy, 11 of them as a SEAL, deploying repeatedly through the war on terror before rising to Tier 1. But his story is really about the dog who changed his life.
Chesney met Cairo in 2008 and the two became inseparable, working hundreds of critical operations together where they depended on each other for survival. As he put it, the bond between a handler and a canine SEAL goes well beyond the usual ties between man and dog, a round-the-clock immersion that forges something profound.
In one 2009 firefight, Cairo was shot chasing down fleeing insurgents and dragged himself back to Chesney, who kept him alive. Two years later came the call that made Cairo famous.
On the night of May 2, 2011, Cairo sat between Chesney's legs in a stealth Black Hawk, wearing a Kevlar vest and night vision, as the team flew into Abbottabad for Operation Neptune Spear. He was among the first American assets on the ground, tasked with tracking any squirters and screening for explosives. After the raid, Cairo's was the only name released to the public.
The hardest chapter came later. A 2013 grenade blast left Chesney with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD, and he spiraled through migraines, chronic pain, and depression as modern medicine offered little relief. The one thing that helped was visiting Cairo, by then retired.
Chesney fought to bring the dog home to live with him, and in Cairo's final years the two saved each other, until inoperable cancer forced Chesney to say goodbye in April 2015. He still keeps the bloodstained harness Cairo wore that night in Abbottabad, and the dog's ashes in a place of honor.
Chesney told their story in the bestselling book No Ordinary Dog, and now works to help veterans with traumatic brain injury. A man, his dog, and a bond that outlasted the war.
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