Also among Lackland’s newcomers every year are the 340 relatively young dogs who will be trained as military working dogs and the 460 two-legged students who come through Lackland to learn the basics of dog handling.
The boot camp program where trainers build military working dogs from the ground up is referred to as dog school. The program that teaches handler skills is called the handler course. Pretty much all soldier dogs and handlers across the military are trained here. (The exceptions are Special Operations dogs and dogs for the IDD and TEDD programs, which are dedicated to a faster turnaround time for certain explosives detector dogs. These dogs are trained by contractors.)
Dogs who are selected to go the dual-purpose route—and that’s the vast majority of the dogs—will have a total of 120 days to learn all the skills necessary to certify in explosives or narcotics detection as well as patrol work. Single-purpose detection-only dogs do it in about 90. Contrary to what many on the outside think, with the exception of a couple of smaller programs (combat tracking dogs and specialized search dogs), dogs are not matched up with handlers at Lackland; they’re assigned to handlers once they’re shipped to the bases that request them.
But before the dogs can even start to get the rigorous training they need in order to one day become soldier dogs, they have to go through a rather grueling initial time at Lackland—one that may make boot camp for their two-legged friends look like a walk in the park.
Every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine must go through some form of induction when entering the military. A haircut, health exams, reams of paperwork—all the less glamorous aspects of serving one’s country need to be taken care of before getting down to the business of boot camp.
Soldier dogs go through a more rigorous induction process, including time on the operating table. The road to becoming a military working dog entails being poked, prodded, cut open, sealed shut, and wearing a bucket around your head for a few days.
After a ten-day quarantine, during which they’re visually evaluated every two hours, the dogs get physicals, blood work, vaccinations, and flea and heartworm treatments. The rest of a dog’s induction is done under full anesthesia. Female dogs get spayed, males with undescended testicles get neutered. (The U.S. has one of the few militaries that will purchase these “cryptorchid” dogs.) But otherwise males generally remain intact. The thinking is that these dogs are more aggressive and primed for action with those hormones coursing through their bodies. Also on the list of induction events: Both sexes get their tattoo number inked into the inside of their left ear while anesthetized.
And these days, every dog over thirty-five pounds also undergoes a potentially lifesaving surgery called a gastropexy. The surgery will prevent a syndrome known as bloat from becoming fatal. Not long ago, 9 percent of U.S. military working dog losses resulted from complications of bloat. That number has dropped to zero since all large dogs started getting “pexied,” as it’s called in soldier dog circles.
Bloat, aka gastric dilation-volvulus, is a dangerous condition that mainly affects large, deep-chested dogs—precisely the kind the military favors. Bloat occurs when the stomach becomes overdistended with gas for any of a variety of reasons—not all known. This alone can be deadly, since it can cut off normal circulation when the enlarged stomach presses against major veins. Respiration can also be affected, since the stomach is pressing against the lungs. If you ever ate way too much in one sitting and found it hard to take a good breath, you’ll have a feel for what the beginning of that phase of bloat can feel like.
But it’s when the stomach twists at both ends (at the top the esophagus and at the bottom the pyloric valve) that bloat becomes especially lethal. Gas in the stomach can no longer escape either way, and circulation is severely impaired, leaving irreversible cell damage. Shock and cardiac arrest can occur within hours without emergency treatment.
On a visit to Lackland’s brand-new Medina Military Working Dog Clinic—so new you can still smell the happy scent of paint over the scent of dog—I watch Nye operate on his reluctant patient. He has done at least four hundred of these surgeries in the last few years. Fred may not realize it, but he is in good hands.
As Michael Jackson’s “Ben” cuts through the static of the radio that’s propped up on a shelf, Nye makes the incision. It’s only about three inches long. The surgery will take no more than an hour, and in the end, Fred’s stomach will be sutured to his ventral abdominal wall. His chances of dying of bloat will have been virtually eliminated.
Nye stitches Fred’s abdomen, the dog’s paws are unstrapped, tubes are withdrawn, and Fred is taken back to a recovery kennel. He will be checked frequently to make sure the Rimadyl and opiates he’s getting are keeping the pain at bay and that the incision is healing well.
To keep Fred’s mouth and teeth from exploring the surgery site, and to prevent his back paws from scratching at his fresh tattoo, Fred will wear a bucket over his head for the next several days. It’s an old, scratched-up, dark blue plastic bucket with the bottom cut out, and it’s fitted with ties that secure it to his collar so he won’t be able to get it off. Not exactly the traditional “Elizabethan” collar civilian dogs wear after surgical procedures, but Fred doesn’t mind.
Air Force Staff Sergeant Richard Crotty was stationed in Iraq when he got in touch with me. He wanted to relate this story of his first working dog, Ben B190, a German shepherd.
For seven months in 2006 Crotty and Ben served at the Eskan Village Air Base in Saudi Arabia, with the Sixty-fourth Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron. Their main duties were to search vehicles, conduct foot patrols, and participate in random antiterrorism exercises in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. They lived the life of expats, in a villa on base where they could have Chinese food or pizza delivered. Ben spent most nights on Crotty’s bed. It was the good life for the pair, who preferred being together nearly 24/7 to life in the States, where dogs have to spend most of their days and nights in kennels.
They returned to Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico in August 2006, and Ben’s nights were once again spent in kennels. Crotty missed the camaraderie of those days and nights in Saudi Arabia, but he knew there was nothing he could do to keep his dog with him Stateside. On the night of January 7, 2007, Crotty went to say good night to Ben in his kennel and found Ben lying on his side—something the dog never did. When Crotty went to pet him, Ben urinated. Crotty noticed that the dog’s stomach was rock hard—a sign he could have bloat. Ben had not had prophylactic gastropexy. Most male dogs back then hadn’t.
With no time to lose, Crotty picked Ben up, put him in a patrol truck, and raced to the vet, sirens blaring. The immediate diagnosis called for emergency surgery. As he looked down at his dog on the operating table, Crotty’s eyes were so filled with tears that “I could not see him as I was looking down. It was like it was my child. When the vet finally cut him open, the floor turned completely red.”
It was too much. Crotty left the operating room. “When my kennel master came out of the operating room, he just shook his head. I lost it right there. My best friend for the last two years was gone.”
In the end, the cause of Ben’s fatal condition was not bloat. The vet had found inflammation of many organs, which had caused internal bleeding. Crotty was never told the reason for Ben’s death, and he’s not sure the veterinarian ever figured it out.
18
HANDLERS WITH BUCKETS
Students enrolled in the handler course at Lackland have paid their dues typically for months, but sometimes years, helping around kennels at their bases, cleaning poop, working the dogs, assisting handlers with their duties, and generally proving to their field commanders and kennel masters that they are devoted.
Nearly all students in the handler course are military police. They’ve had to go through some intensive training in order to get to become MPs (or MAs—masters-at-arms—in the navy, or security forces in the air force). But little can prepare them for one of their first exercises:
/> Pretending that an old .40-caliber metal ammo can is actually a dog.
For three days or so.
In front of all their classmates and anyone else who walks by.
These cans are referred to as buckets—not to be confused with the bucket that Fred had to wear over his head. The buckets were once used to safely transport ammunition, but now, through the magic of the imagination, and the embarrassment of the majority of the students in the class, they have been transformed into dogs.
The buckets are shaped sort of like extra tall shoe boxes and are usually olive or khaki colored. They have two handles at the top and sometimes writing or lettering on the side. They look nothing whatsoever like dogs.
But that’s the whole point. Just as medical students don’t start out operating on living humans, handler students don’t begin their training with a real live dog. It’s too risky for the dogs and the students.
The real dogs the handlers train with aren’t actually military working dogs, either. These dogs are “training aids.” They live at Lackland and are assigned to handler classes throughout the year. Most training-aid dogs are here because they didn’t quite cut it as working military dogs. Some washed out of dog school but are perfectly good as canine partners at the school. Others may have already served overseas or at their home bases but, for health or behavioral reasons, cannot work as fully functioning working dogs in the field. Even though they’re not deployable, they’re valuable assets to the military, and the dog program doesn’t want any green handlers messing them up.
By the time they meet their buckets, the students have already gone through a few days of classroom work. These are small, intimate groupings, with twelve students maximum per class. They get plenty of hands-on time with three stuffed German shepherd toy dogs, learning the very basics, like how to put choke collars on them the right way, how to talk to them, and some basic commands. The dogs, though, are stuck in the sitting position, get knocked down easily, and get dirty far too quickly for anything more than classroom training. Since function is far more important than form around here, the buckets are dragged out for the next step in training handlers.
Handlers name their buckets to make these exercises more realistic. Brandon Liebert, the former marine dog handler we met earlier in the book, called his bucket Cananine (pronounced Can-a-nine) because it was a can and it had a 9 spray-painted on the side. “It helped make it a little more believable that this was a dog,” he says.
The idea is to do with the buckets just about everything handlers would normally do in the beginning stages of working with a canine training aid. Students have to tell the buckets to sit and lie down; they put two collars on their bucket’s handles, making sure they have the choke chain going in the right direction and learning how to change from a dual collar to just a choke. They learn to keep proper safety distance from other students’ buckets. They even do drill movements (for those not in the military, that’s the “left face” business)—no easy feat with a bucket, or a dog.
One of the first things students are taught when working with these military working buckets is how to offer praise. Genuine, heartfelt praise is essential to building a bond between dog and handler. In the working world of these dogs, you don’t just say “Good boy!” in a slightly enthusiastic tone. You go crazy for the great deed the dog has done. Your voice goes up at least an octave, often more, just about as high as you can get it and not sound squeaky. You talk fast, and the vowels of your words are pulled longer, and sometimes you’re not even understandable, and you’re so enthusiastic that if you had a tail it would be wagging like mad. Many experienced handlers even throw in a “Woooo!” At Lackland, the trainers of new MWDs often add an exuberant “Yeeeehawwwww, hoooo dogggyyyyyyy!” in cowboy fashion. And for extra emphasis, on occasion, “Touchdown Texas!”
When in the presence of handlers and trainers working their dogs—as opposed to buckets—you’ll sometimes hear what sounds like the most enthusiastic praise, but then you realize that the words are all wrong. The tone is thrilled, but instead of words like “What a good boyyyy! Great fiiiiiiiiiiind!” they go something to the effect of “Oh my goddddd! How come you took so long to find that, you little dummy?!” It’s a handler’s way of expressing a little frustration while the dog remains encouraged about his efforts.
Talking to a real dog with such gusto can take some getting used to. Praising a bucket in such a fashion makes for a real challenge.
“A lot of students get embarrassed. They get red-faced. Some get real quiet, even if they didn’t start out that way,” says Air Force Technical Sergeant Justin Marshall, instructor supervisor at Lackland. “We let them know that every single canine handler out there right now has gone through this. That seems to help a little.”
And heaven forbid a bucket gets loose. Someone yells out “loose dog,” and everyone who hears it has to repeat it so everyone else can know what exactly is going on. Handlers who have a bucket on leash have to choke up (grab as close to the leash clasp as possible) on the leash. If the leashed bucket were a real dog, the handlers would then have to put their dog’s face in their crotch area so the dog wouldn’t see the loose dog coming, and therefore would likely not react aggressively. (Military working dogs are often aggressive with each other, and fights can break out in an instant. Practicing these maneuvers with buckets is best for everyone’s sake.)
Bucket training goes on until the students all seem to have a firm grasp of techniques. It usually takes two or three days. At the end, there’s a friendly competition in which students try to make the fewest mistakes in handling their buckets. The prize is a good one: The winner gets to choose which real dog he will be working with for the detection portion of the handler course. Other students can decide on their dogs based on how they ranked in the game, but sometimes instructors match students with dogs themselves, especially if they feel a student will do better with a certain type of dog personality. (A timid handler and an extra-bold, assertive dog may not make the best pairing, for instance.)
The buckets are stored away for the next class, and the bucket graduates head to the kennels to get their dogs. Most students are thrilled to finally be working with a flesh-and-blood dog. But for a few—usually those who had little experience with dogs before—it can be daunting. “Some just get scared when they get to the kennel and have to get the dog out. They feel overwhelmed, especially if the dog is really excited,” says Marshall. Buckets don’t spin in mad circles, and they don’t accidentally bite you or bark until your eardrums throb. The energy of these dogs can prove too much for these students, and they turn in their leash shortly after being introduced to their dog.
For the most part, the dogs who work as training aids are old hands at this. They’ve done this before, sometimes many times before, and some almost seem to try to help students get through the training: “C’mon, just follow me, and I’ll find the explosive and I’ll make you look good, pal. Then you praise me up and give me my Kong and we’ll be square.”
For the remainder of the handler course, the dogs will help their students learn the basics of dog handling. Collars will inevitably be pulled too tight, commands won’t be clear, students will balk or move the wrong way when doing bite training, but the dogs persevere. They’re happy to be out of their kennels and working. They relish a handler’s enthusiasm and praise, and the Kong or ball they get whenever there’s a job well done, and the daily, long grooming/bonding sessions from their temporary assignment.
Most students make it through the eleven-week program. By graduation, a couple of students may already have the makings of scars from when a body part was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Seasoned handlers usually have several, all with good stories attached.
Graduation is held in a large fluorescently lit auditorium with mustard-colored walls. On the walls are photographs of handlers who died in the line of duty—a somber reminder of the reality of the noble profession they are entering. It doesn’t stop the high fives an
d cheering of the small band of green handlers who are about to embark on a career with a built-in best friend.
19
DOG SCHOOL
It takes about five weeks longer to create a standard-issue dual-purpose military working dog than it does to graduate a handler. During this time, dog school instructors teach dogs fundamental obedience, detection, and patrol work. In the end, the dog will have a set of basic skills that can be built upon when he is assigned to a home base, where the dog will expand on the previous training.
Air Force Technical Sergeant Jason Barken, a master trainer and training team leader at Lackland, likens dog school to an assembly line. With eighteen to twenty-two dogs per team of trainers, and nine or ten teams of trainers at a time, some two hundred dogs can be going through training here, albeit at different stages of dog school. They’re staggered so not all dogs end up in one place at one time.
Each team is made up of five to seven trainers, including a “red patch,” or training supervisor. The red patches wear a red triangular-shaped patch on their tan overalls, which distinguishes them from all the other trainers wearing tan overalls on the team. When a team gets a trailer of dogs, they divvy them up. So for a typical trailer of eighteen dogs and a six-trainer team that will teach them the ropes, each trainer ends up with three.
While many dogs will already have some familiarity with bite training because the Department of Defense won’t buy them if they don’t have a decent bite, many don’t know even the most elemental obedience. Most don’t even know the command for “sit” or “lie down.” And if they do, it may well be in Dutch or German.
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