Dog Daily News

Some people live for their 15 minutes of fame. Others could live without it. Four years ago, the wife of a soldier returning from five months in Afghanistan took a heartwarming video of their dog Gracie’s utter joy that her man, Lt. Andrew Schmidt, was finally home.

In April 2008 Schmidt posted the video on YouTube for friends and family to see. Until this week, it lay fairly dormant, with maybe 400 views. But suddenly it has gone viral,  with nearly 600,000 views. This has left Schmidt feeling a bit shell-shocked.

“O-kaaaaay. This is getting crazy,” he wrote on the video’s home page yesterday. “They ran this on the Today show today. I’m not a public person … this is getting a little intimidating.”

Was Sabi's incredible reunion with his troops in Afghanistan the cause of Gracie's video going viral?

How did the video gain more than a half million viewers in a few days? Certainly the Today spot pushed it into high gear, but a day or two before it aired on Today, the video had somehow scored 30,000 views. We think it may have had a lot to do with people looking for the amazing story of Sabi, the bomb-sniffing dog who disappeared during a brutal gun battle in Afghanistan, and was found and returned to his unit 14 months later. Probably enough people did searches for “Afghanistan, soldier, dogs, reunion,” that the video was unearthed.

Schmidt, who is now a captain in the Air National Guard, is being redeployed to Afghanistan in the spring. He has a message for people: “I’m glad that this clip of Gracie has made so many people happy. If it makes you smile, it’s a good thing,” he wrote. “But please remember the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan right now.”

We wonder if Pres. Obama has seen this video yet.