Man’s best friend became man’s best dog at a wedding in Florida this weekend.
U.S. Army veteran Justin Lansford had a special wedding on Saturday, marrying his long-term girlfriend Carol Balmes at the Bayou Club in Largo, Florida. But what made this wedding extra special was that Lansford’s best man wasn’t a man at all — it was his 4-year-old golden retriever service dog, Gabe.
When asked how the guests responded to Gabe, Balmes told Mashable in an email, “I was behind closed doors but from what I could hear everyone said ‘aww’ kind of simultaneously.”
Gabe was assigned Lansford as his service dog after he suffered an injury from an IED while serving in Afghanistan, ABC reports.
“We struck an IED and it flipped my truck completely. I had bilaterally severed femurs which resulted in the amputation of my left leg,” Lansford told ABC.
Lansford, who now has a prosthetic leg, says that Gabe aids him in his day-to-day life.
“He helps me with one thing to the next. I can use him as a stable surface to lean on, as I get to and from the ground,” Lansford told ABC. “If I fall, he’ll come up running next to me and I can use him to push off of to get up off the ground.”
See the full story here on Mashable.
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See this and sleep way better tonight.
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