Cracker

Cracker starts out at his original owner Willie who loves him very much. They can not keep Cracker anymore because Willie and his family live in an apartment, so they decide to donate Cracker to the U.S. army. Another guy named Rick signs up to be a part of the dog handling group in the army. He gets the dog named Cracker. It was a little hard for the team when they first start their training, but after a while Rick and Cracker formed a good relationship and they start to become really close friends. They do everything together and they depend on each other. Rick thinks Cracker is the best dog in Vietnam. Cracker is trained to smell out bad guys that are hiding in bushes or to point out booby traps. Cracker and Rick start to go on missions together and Cracker never misses a trap. They go in front of the whole group to sniff out the traps. After a couple missions, Cracker is doing a very good job. Rick receives word that he and Cracker will go on a top secret mission with special forces. Rick finds out that his mission is to rescue some other special forces guys that were captured. They finish their mission with a success thanks to Cracker. Right when they get back they have to go to a hot spot. When they get there, machine gunners start shooting. Rick gets shot in the leg and Cracker runs away. Rick has to leave to go back to the U.S. because of his injury. Nobody can find Cracker and Rick starts to get worried. It has been weeks since anyone has seen Cracker and Rick has to go back to the U.S. Meanwhile, Cracker is very dehydrated and hungry. Eventually she makes it to Benwa and some soldiers look at her tattoo in her ear to determine where she's from. When Rick gets home he gets a call from his friend. He found Cracker! They ship Cracker back and Rick invites Willie to come and see him. Rick told Willie that he can come and visit Cracker whenever he wants. In the end, Rick gets to get Cracker (which is extremely rare that a handler gets to keep a dog that's still good) and Rick takes her to his new home.

The Vietnam weather was always very humid and hot. It was always raining there but it still felt hot. There were also a lot of bugs there. One of the risks there was getting malaria from the mosquitoes. The Vietnamese were also expert trap makers. They built booby traps to kill the American soldiers. They built anywhere from a pit with sharp sticks with feces on it to mines buried under the dirt. That is why the Americans had dogs, the dogs were very important to them. - DeAndre

I would recommend this book to people who like dogs. They would enjoy to read about the dogs and what they had to do in the army. I really liked this book because it had a lot of action in it. The action really never stopped throughout the whole book.-DeAndre

This book really described what war is like and how important dogs are for war. It also depicts the strong bond between an owner or trainer and their dog. It was interesting to read how hot, humid, and rainy the weather is in Vietnam. War is very dangerous and the things the enemy did was somewhat surprising, but then again it is war.-Jordin

I really enjoyed this book! It really made it feel like you were there in war as well. I really like dogs and found it interesting to learn their part in the army. This book is so quick and action packed it made me want to keep reading. I've never read a book about war and this was definitely a very well written story. War is dangerous and now that I have an idea of what it's like out there, I have a renewed respect for our fighters!-Jordin