Moe is frustrated.

He’s wandering in circles, tugging at the end of his leash, bobbing his head from ground to air and back to the ground. He looks concerned, worried even. The wind is blowing hard, confusing the scent trails. Moe has been moving back towards the car, which his quarry exited just 10 or so minutes ago, but not where he’s going to be found right now.

“Where’s your boy?” Tina Longoria, who’s holding the other end of the leash, asks him. “Where’s your boy?” She repeats the question over and over, driving a single-minded focus into the 13-month-old half-Lab, half-golden retriever.

Suddenly, he picks something up. He lunges forward, racing after it. Tina is nearly dragged from her feet – she wears a heavy work glove on her leash hand for just such an occasion. There’s no confusion from here; he beelines toward his quarry, who is hiding out of sight in a concrete enclosure on the other end of the soccer field by the pond near Hunter’s Crossing

Inside the enclosure, waiting for Moe, are Jesse Longoria, two-year-old Lia and son Isreal, Moe’s boy, who he’s been trained to find should Isreal ever get lost. Moe is given a tennis ball and some puppy sausages for his success. The whole family pets him and even Lia repeats the phrase “Good job, Moe.”

Isreal

Isreal was five months old when Tina began to see some developmental delays and what appeared to be excessive hiccupping, sometimes as often as 40 or 50 times a day. The hiccups were diagnosed as infantile spasms or seizures and were later categorized as epilepsy. Isreal has seizures only rarely now – one every two years or so. As he grew older, Isreal began displaying many characteristics of autism. He is active and Jesse says they have to play as a family in enclosed areas – such as a baseball field – to keep him from wandering or running off. He is uncomfortable in new environments and is non-verbal, expressing his frustration at not being understood by hitting or throwing himself to the ground. At 4’11” and 87 pounds, he’s not exactly easy to get back on his feet. Tina says for years the family avoided public places, particularly ones that might be loud or crowded, for fear of upsetting Isreal.

Israel attends Emile Elementary, where his teacher, Cyndee Johnson, and one-on-one aide Kenneth Goode help him through the day.

Like any kid, he has his likes and dislikes. He enjoys Thomas the Train and Dora the Explorer and movies such as the “Toy Story” series and “Shark Tale.” He also loves the water, be that a pool in the backyard or a long bath or the beach.

Isreal has little sense of safety awareness, which, combined with the wandering means his parents or teachers need to be able to direct him physically or – if it comes to it – grab him in order to keep him from accidentally hurting himself. That’s especially hard on Jesse, who can only use one hand to direct or otherwise manage Isreal in public.

Jesse

Jesse had been in the Marines for seven years before his first tour of duty in Iraq. He spent five months  as a sniper team leader in the city of Ramadi, about 60 miles west of Baghdad, before the night of July 24, 2004, when, returning to base after a mission, the Humvee he was in was struck by a roadside bomb roughly a quarter of a mile from the base.

His right arm took the brunt of the explosion. Jesse says he doesn’t even remember hearing it, just seeing the flash.

Jesse was medevaced to Al Taqaddum Airbase, where he had the first of around 13 surgeries – he can’t remember the exact number – on his arm. He was taken to Baghdad, then to Germany, then brought back to the U.S., first to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington D.C., then eventually to Balboa, Calif.

Doctors removed muscles from Jesse’s stomach and attached them to his arm and replaced the skin with skin taken from his hip down to his knee. After the surgeries, he was medically retired from the Marine Corps. Eventually, Jesse says, the arm is going to have to be amputated.

“It’s my decision when I want to do it,” he said. He’s not ready yet.

Today, Jesse has little use of his right arm or hand. He can grip things that he places in the hand – a glass at a restaurant or a cell phone while he texts with his left hand – but his wrist has fused and doesn’t bend and his right hand feels like it’s constantly asleep. More than anything else, Jesse says he misses basketball and the Marine Corps.

“If I had a chance, I’d still be in right now,” he said.

Today he works in construction, doing business development for Segovia Group Corporations. That job, he says, is more flexible than Tina’s, and so he’ll have time over the summer to spend with Isreal and the couple’s two other children, Jayden and Lia. He wants to spend more time outside with Isreal, taking him for long walks or perhaps even camping. If he ends up doing that, it’ll be because of the help he can count on from Moe.

Moe

The Longoria’s waited two years for Moe. They contacted a number of service dog agencies, looking for one who would train an animal who could help not just Isreal, but also Jesse. Eventually, they were referred to 4 Paws for Ability by the Pets for Patriots program.

They sent a video of Isreal to 4 Paws, so their eventual dog could be trained specifically to his behavior. Finally, one year after they learned they were getting an animal, Tina, Jesse and Isreal traveled to Xenia, Ohio to meet the newest member of their family.

The family spent ten days in Xenia training with Moe. They learned the commands Moe responded to and practiced acclimating the dog to Isreal’s behaviors. They also went over his two most important tasks – tracking and tethering.

Moe has the ability to track Isreal up to a quarter-mile away, something Jesse says they practiced by walking Isreal through malls or in parks and having Moe search for him. To ensure Moe was tracking the right person, Isreal would walk with Moe’s trainer – someone Moe was used to following – so that Moe would become familiar with Isreal’s scent as he followed that of his trainer. Eventually, the trainer stepped out of the picture, and Moe was able to follow Isreal’s trail. Now, when he sees Isreal going off without him – even to school – he makes a loud whine, an early warning for Isreal’s parents.

To tether, Tina or Jesse attach a harness to Moe and a harness to Isreal. They command Moe to “heel,” so he follows close to their knees and Isreal stays close to Moe. Should he try to pull away, Moe stays planted, and at 82 pounds isn’t easy to budge. With Moe there, Jesse can use his hand for shopping or eating and doesn’t have to worry as much about losing Isreal.

Moe can sense the hormones given off just before a seizure and he’s trained to bark as a warning. He fetches items, opens drawers, pushes the handicapped buttons on doors and turn lights on and off with a simple command – “Light” for on, “Switch” for off. The latter comes in handy, as Isreal has gotten into the habit of turning the light on in his room when he’s not ready to go to bed. A simple “Switch,” and Moe takes care of it. He also knows to stop any disruptive behaviors, using his nose to push Isreal’s hands away from his face if he’s shouting or crying into them.

“Basically, Moe can do everything,” Tina says.

His only behavioral issue, she says, is a tendency to chew on toys and things he’s not supposed to, not unnatural for an animal who, even with all his responsibility, is still only 7-dog-years-old.

“He’s better than my kids actually,” Tina says. “He’s so well behaved.”

Isreal is slowly becoming acclimated to Moe’s presence, though Tina is worried that he’s regressed since their training period, maybe because he spends so many hours apart from Moe while he’s in school. The goal, Jesse says, is for Isreal to eventually bring Moe to school with him, where he can serve as a “third assistant” in the school.

There are concerns of course, about allergies or how the other children in Isreal’s class will react to having a dog in the classroom every day. For those reasons, Jesse and Tina have not yet gotten approval to bring Moe into Emile, but they say Johnson and Goode are both in favor of it.

“The first year is the bonding year,” Tina says. “Right now it’s been slowing down.”

For now, while Isreal is at school and Jesse and Tina are working, Moe has some time to spend off the clock, with Lia at Tina’s mother’s house. After school and on weekends, the family is working on erasing the conception that service dog equals seeing-eye dog, that if a dog is in a store or restaurant or public place it must be there with a blind person or else it shouldn’t be there.

As far as they know, Moe is the first of his kind in Bastrop and that has led to more than a few tight smiles from adults and children urging their parents to “Look at the big dog!”

Moe is more than that. He’s a member of the family.