When U.S. soldiers come home from abroad, they often have to leave their adopted mascots behind—but Mark Feffer just couldn’t part with a furry piece of his heart

When a puppy named Cinnamon went MIA en route to the U.S. from Afghanistan, Christine Sullivan ran to the bathroom and retched. The harrowing events of the following seven weeks are documented in her debut work, 44 Days Out of Kandahar: The Amazing Journey of a Missing Military Puppy and the Desperate Search to Find Her.

Sullivan’s brother, Mark Feffer, was posted in Kandahar and had raised the stray puppy from 2006, when she’d foraged her way to his U.S. military base. But when it came time for him to rotate out of the region, Feffer refused to leave Cinnamon behind, and resolved to send her home to his wife in Maryland.

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