Soldier Dogs

by Maria Goodavage

  The veterinarian decided at that point that Rex would not come out of his anesthesia. Ingraham burst into tears. The vet administered the dose of euthanasia solution. Everyone left the room so Ingraham could be alone with him. She tried to keep it together, for his sake. She kissed him, stroked his head, and talked to him like old times.

  Then she leaned down, snuggled into his fur, and told him, “I love you, Rex. Everything from your big feet to your stinky breath.”

  And he drifted off.

  Less than a month later, and still raw from the loss of Rex, Ingraham learned that the army had assigned her to work with a new dog, Cinte M401. She was aghast. “Of all the dogs, why him?” she once again wondered.

  She had seen the Belgian Malinois in the kennels and had been grateful he was not her dog. The four-year-old dog was clearly slow on the uptake. Much to Ingraham’s dismay, he bonded with her almost immediately, following her around and always wanting to nuzzle up to her. But she didn’t want him touching her. She was still aching from losing Rex. And besides, this dog was just annoying.

  Her mother said to give it time, said she thought this sounded like a nice dog, but Ingraham knew she’d never like this dog.

  In autumn of 2011, when we last communicated, Ingraham and Cinte had been in Germany for a couple of months. And as her mother predicted, Cinte was starting to grow on Ingraham. “His quirkiness has found a place in my heart.”

  Here’s what she wrote me about this dog:

  “He’s a bit skittish so everyday noise is a challenge full of new things for him. For example, he was searching a box and he touched it and it moved, so he jumped like a cat onto a cart next to him as if he’d never seen a box move before.

  “As he searches, every time he finds what he’s looking for he gets this shocked look on his face that seems to say, ‘OMG did you know that was there?’ Also he tends to overthink things as simple as a command of sit.

  “Then, there are children. He is terrified to the core. Even if the children are at a distance he will hide behind me or try to run as far away from them as he can, often without looking where he is going and running into anything in his path. He is a challenge but every day holds new surprises and it’s never dull.

  “Cinte is very clumsy and careless when he runs or fetches his toy and has repeatedly smashed his snout, so we are looking to make sure some of his issues aren’t medical. He’s a great dog and knows his job and loves doing it, but he seems to have a harder time doing it when compared to the other working dogs. His nose is weaker than any of his breed we have seen, but he seems to know and works harder. In a deployment situation I would trust him; he has no problems finding the mass odors of IEDs and other caches, but he may miss a single magazine of ammo.

  “It may be a while before we are proficient enough to go to Afghanistan, but when we go, it will be a good deployment.”

  43

  ALWAYS AROUND

  The kind of tender relationship Ingraham and Rex developed, and the kind that seems to be blossoming with her and Cinte, is not unique to this war.

  Robert Kollar was a handler with the Fifty-eighth Infantry Platoon Scout Dog Unit in Vietnam, during 1968–69. He was based at Camp Evans and given a German shepherd named Rebel. According to the Vietnam Dog Handler Association, there were fifty-two dogs named Rebel who served in Vietnam. Few fates are known, but at least five were killed in action, four were put down because of their injuries, one retired, and one died of heat stress. That was Kollar’s dog, who died three weeks after Kollar, who was a sergeant, returned home.

  He remembers so vividly when he and Rebel would be dropped off to walk around the jungle for five days at a time, walking point, and how it seemed like you were always assigned to a unit where you didn’t know anybody. You’re on the point in front of strangers, and so in all senses it’s just you and the dog. In the monsoon season and the dead heat of summer. On good days and bad—like the night Kollar was part of a night ambush, but he could not keep Rebel up. The dog just would not stay awake, and Kollar had to keep pulling him up to keep watch. It’s all about teamwork, of course, but in this kind of work the team is less you and the patrol, more you and the one other soul in the world who, after weeks or months together, understands who you are and what this is all about, and that when you put on the scouting harness the real game is about to begin.

  “With Rebel I was always going to his hooch,” Kollar remembers. “What a sweet dog. A real pussycat. Not aggressive at all, but then he didn’t need to be. I was always going to see how he was doing; I’d sit with him, talk to him, we’d listen to the audiocassettes from home. He was my main man. I don’t know how else to tell you. A dog like that is a real friend; it’s also the one link you have with home.”

  In between patrols, which might last for days, Kollar would work with the dog constantly, to keep him tuned, to keep the game going. They would practice basic obedience and hand signals, and they might go down the “training lane” to see what had been planted, to keep the dog razor-sharp. Kollar found the ritual of taking care of the dog each day helpful and morale-boosting.

  It’s been forty-three years since Kollar worked with Rebel, but he’s never forgotten it, and of the fifty or so photos and mementos hanging on the walls of his bedroom, eight or nine show Rebel. And Kollar’s got his collar and choke chain mounted.

  For Kollar, “Rebel is always around.”

  He likes to point out the photos of him and Rebel that appear on Michael Lemish’s Web site, k9writer.com. One page features photos of handlers and their dogs from different wars.

  Kollar’s favorite photo from that collection is not from Vietnam but rather a photo taken during World War II, at battle of Peleliu, which is sometimes called “the bitterest battle of the war for the marines.” Fought in the fall of 1944, the battle’s casualties were among the highest of any Pacific War battle. Eight marines from the battle were given the Medal of Honor—five posthumously. Some of the fighting was hand-to-hand, throwing whatever you had at the enemy. And all to take an island with dubious military value.

  The photo is of a young marine from the Fifth Marine War Dog Platoon, Corporal William Scott, and his Doberman pinscher, Prince, in what looks like a foxhole on the beach. The soldier is on his knees, rifle in his right hand, left hand on the dog’s shoulder. The soldier is looking up and not at the camera. It is not an unusual photo. Others on Lemish’s site are more interesting or just better quality photos, but for some reason, for Kollar this photo catches everything one might say about being a handler. But he cannot explain it, even to his wife.

  If there is a key to the appeal, perhaps it’s the soldier’s expression, blank at first glance, but look at it for a moment and you see fatigue and also confidence. A brashness even. And then it all becomes a little clearer. Look at the photo for what it implies: a soldier and his dog and nothing else, beyond all other identities, alone, the two of them against the world.

  The history of dogs in relation to war is almost entirely about how dogs have been used for thousands of years to protect, detect, or attack, and about the glory or terror dogs bring to the fight. The bond that makes this all possible is implied but rarely described.

  But if you look beyond traditional tales of war, in the footnotes of famous battles, you can get an interesting perspective on the importance of this bond. Two of my favorite stories are not about war dogs, per se, but about the effect that a dog found on a battlefield had on renowned military leaders.

  George Washington, whose many canines included hunting dogs by the name of Sweet Lips, Venus, Truelove, Taster, Tippler, and Drunkard, understood the emotional bond between dogs and their owners. Dogs were both his passion and his hobby.

  During the Battle of Germantown in October 1777, when things were not going well for the Americans, a little terrier was found wandering between American and British lines. A check of his collar revealed him to be the dog of British General William Howe. He had somehow become lost on the battlefield. />
  Against the desires of some soldiers who wanted to keep the dog as a spoil, or to weaken Howe’s resolve, Washington ordered a cease-fire. An aide wrote this note and attached it to the dog’s collar: “General Washington’s compliments to General Howe. He does himself the pleasure to return him a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the Collar appears to belong to General Howe.”

  The shooting stopped on both sides, and under a flag of truce, Washington’s aides brought the little dog back to his rightful owner. In some versions of the story, Howe was so impressed by Washington’s honor that he began to take a more compassionate view of colonists, and eventually resigned his post.

  Napoléon Bonaparte had a similar experience. The famously hard-hearted military leader was brought to tears as he inspected the battlefield after the Battle of Castiglione in 1796. He came across a dog mourning a dead soldier. The loyal dog sat by the soldier’s corpse after everyone else had fled. He was groaning and licking the soldier’s hand, then trying to draw Napoléon to the soldier’s side.

  The scene deeply affected the emperor, who wrote about it during his long exile:

  No occurrence of any of my other battlefields impressed me so keenly. I halted on my tour to gaze at the spectacle and reflect on its meaning…. This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog…. I had looked on, unmoved, at battles, which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? The grief of one dog.

  44

  BEYOND DEATH

  In Afghanistan, war-related deaths are an everyday occurrence. Those of us not directly involved with the military read about the numbers, the names, the condensed stories of a too-short life, and we shake our heads, we feel the sting of another tragic loss, or many losses, and maybe we think about the families back home and how their lives are forever changed. And then we move on, our day perhaps a bit heavier. After years of this, the names and stories tend to blend together, and it’s hard to remember what or where or especially why.

  But when a soldier dog is involved, when news media come out with details of a dog being any part of a fight, especially one that ends in tragedy, for some reason the story is not easily forgotten.

  I have met people who know little about what’s going on in Afghanistan, but who can tell you months after it happened about the soldier dog who died, or the dog who protected his best friend to the end. It doesn’t mean these people don’t care about the countless men and women making the ultimate sacrifice. There’s just something about these soldier dogs and their loyalty and devotion….

  Explosives-detection dog Eli, a black Labrador retriever, was a vital part of his handler’s life, both on and off patrol in Afghanistan. Marine Private First Class Colton Rusk shared meals and his cot with the dog. Eli liked to stretch out when he slept, and the dog would often end up with more of the cot than Rusk.

  Rusk didn’t mind at all. “Whatever is mine is his,” he wrote on his Facebook page. When he called home to talk to his family, it was always about Eli. When he sent pictures, the dog was inevitably in them. It made his mother feel better knowing her twenty-year-old son wasn’t alone.

  On December 6, 2010, they were on a mission in Sangin, in the Helmand Province—one of the most deadly areas in the region at that point. Eli had already sniffed out two explosives. It was looking like a good mission for the team.

  But then there was a firefight. Rusk went down. Eli ran over to him. According to marine accounts, the dog crawled on top of Rusk in what could only be interpreted as an attempt to protect him. He snapped at other marines who ran over to move Rusk away from the battle, and even bit one of them.

  This Labrador retriever, who had become such an essential part of Rusk’s life, did not want to give him up so easily in death.

  In Rusk’s obituary, Eli was listed first among his survivors.

  A true bond knows no direction. A dog loves his handler who loves his dog, back and forth and on and on. A dog helps his dying handler. A handler helps his dying dog. The lyrics may be different but the melody is the same.

  About two weeks after Rusk died, Marine Lance Corporal William “Billy” Crouse IV was on patrol with his chocolate Lab, a bomb-detection dog named Cane. They were looking for IEDs along a roadway so others could follow safely. An IED found them first.

  A helicopter rushed in. As Crouse was being evacuated, he cried out, “Get Cane in the Black Hawk!” Then he lost consciousness.

  They were his last words.

  His dog, terribly wounded, died as well.

  At an auditorium at Lackland Air Force Base—the same auditorium where new handlers graduate from the dog program—memorial plaques for Rusk and Crouse hang side by side, in order of their deaths, in a row of plaques honoring fallen handlers. They are no longer at the end of the row.

  You look at the row and find yourself trying not to wonder who will fill the next space. Will any of the men and women who are picking up their diplomas right now on the stage end up on this wall? You can’t think about that. It’s not right. They look so thrilled to be starting their careers as soldier dog handlers. You don’t go there.

  So you switch to a better track. Who will their dogs be? What kinds of bonds will they form? Will their dogs nestle into their sleeping bags on frigid nights at their patrol bases and keep them safe against those who would do them harm? Will the handlers survive, physically and mentally? How about their dogs?

  45

  AFTER THE TRAUMATIC STRESS

  I’m walking down the aisle between two long rows of kennels at Lackland Air Force Base’s adoption kennels. The dogs, as always seems to be the case at large kennels, are going nuts. The cacophony of excited barks makes me wish I’d taken up someone’s offer of earplugs before we entered. Several dogs are spinning in fast circles like whirling dervishes. Others run back and forth. And then I come to Buck P027.

  Buck is a chocolate Lab. Labs are normally rambunctious, happy dogs, and I would have expected him to be woofing with the rest. But he is curled up in a tight ball toward the back of his kennel. He seems like the only normal, calm one among these super-energetic dogs. But there is something about his eyes, his demeanor, that seems almost sad. He doesn’t lift his head; he just looks at me unblinkingly, and then stares out again, eyes not seeming to focus on anything much.

  Buck, it turns out, was in Afghanistan as a marine IED detector dog (IDD). The man taking me through the kennels tells me, “He heard one too many explosions.” Buck has been diagnosed with canine post-traumatic stress disorder. He did not respond well enough to treatment, so tomorrow he will be picked up by thrilled new owners and given a new life as a civilian dog.

  Months after I met poor Buck, his new people, Larry Sargent and his wife, Lynette, updated me on how he’s doing. “We love him to death, and we’re seeing his inner puppy a lot the way he plays,” says Larry, a San Antonio pastor. “But we still have a lot we’re trying to figure out about him.” Buck is pretty clingy with him and needs to be attached to him by a leash when people come by, or the dog gets too nervous. And once, on a visit to the veterinary hospital at Lackland, Buck “completely froze” when he saw some soldiers in uniform. “He just lay down. He wouldn’t even take treats from them,” he says. Only after they walked past did Buck move again.

  The Sargents wonder if it brought back memories of war—or perhaps worse yet, if Buck thought maybe his days of happiness on his quiet acre of land with this doting couple were over, and that he was going back to war. “It’s a heartbreaking thought,” says Lynette.

  Until early 2011, PTSD was not officially recognized in dogs. A few years earlier, veterinarian Walter Burghardt, chief of behavioral medicine and military working dog studies at Lackland’s Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dog Hospital, had seen a number of dogs come back from deployment with what looke
d like clear signs of PTSD. He and colleague Kelly Mann, a veterinary radiologist and director of the veterinary hospital, developed a survey for handlers to track possible signs of PTSD. For the next two years they collected data and weeded out dogs with preexisting issues, like fear of thunderstorms, or post-event problems, like short-term anxiety. The result: About 5 percent of dogs were coming back with signs of what they could diagnose as PTSD.

  Burghardt held a blue-ribbon panel meeting in January 2011 to see if nearly three dozen top experts and researchers could come to a conclusion about whether or not canine PTSD exists. The result was a consensus statement that some dogs do, indeed, qualify for the diagnosis.

  Panel members weighed in on whether to use the term PTSD, because it might be considered an affront to people who have served their country and been diagnosed with the syndrome themselves. It was decided to officially call it canine PTSD to at least partially mitigate the issue.

  Signs of canine PTSD include hypervigilance, increased startle response, attempts to run away or escape, withdrawal, changes in rapport with a handler, and problems performing trained tasks—like a bomb dog who just can’t focus on sniffing out bombs anymore. These are variations of PTSD’s symptoms in humans.

  Burghardt points out a misnomer in one piece of the name PTSD: the word stress. “It’s more distress; stress that can’t be mediated.” And as with PTSD, the causes of the canine version are highly variable. What may result in problems in one individual may not affect another at all. Just as different people react to events in different ways, some dogs shrug off what could shut others down.