San Francisco residents Kevin Zuniga and Eddie Valadez welcomed a friendly black Labrador retriever to their home in 2012, they knew something of their four-legged companion’s capacity to care of others. Fresh from more than four years of military service, Zuniga, a sergeant with the U.S. Marine Corps and Valadez’s stepson, was discharged around the same time as K-9 Sgt. Taker, the bomb-sniffing dog with whom he spent some seven months in Afghanistan in 2010. K9 Sgt.Taker is one of the recipients of the American Humane Association’s Lois Pope LIFE K-9 Medal of Courage Awards for 2018.