War Dogs

by Shane Bryant

  Having waited more than four years to do the explosive detection dog handler’s course, twelve months after I’d passed, I was ready to pack it all in. This wasn’t because of the job itself, it was just being in the army, and probably due to the particular phase of life I was in. I had a young wife at home, and would be away for six weeks at a time, several times a year, on boring field exercises.

  I started thinking that I’d get out of the army and learn a trade, so that I’d have something else to fall back on, later in life. I went to see Mark and my troop commander, and told them how I was feeling. They tried to talk me out of leaving, but by this stage I’d made up my mind, and I put in my papers seeking a discharge.

  There was one more exercise I had to attend, in Darwin, before I could go. Just before we were due to leave, I went to the kennels one morning and, as usual, walked down to the kennels to greet Ziggy. When I got there, he was lying down.

  ‘Hello, boy.’ Ziggy just lay there. ‘Ziggy? Get up, boy.’ He didn’t move.

  I grabbed hold of the diamond mesh fence surrounding the kennels and shook it. The other dogs started barking and carrying on. ‘Ziggy!’ I shouted again. He still lay motionless. I opened the gate and ran inside but, as soon as I knelt and touched him, I knew it was too late and he was dead. Still, it took me a few seconds truly to realise what had happened. When I did, I was devastated and the tears streamed down my face.

  ‘No!’ I yelled. He was a perfectly healthy dog and I couldn’t understand how this had happened. My shock turned to anger. When they saw my face, my mates in the handlers’ building asked me what was wrong and I told them. I smashed my fist into one of the freestanding partition walls in the office.

  I walked back outside and let myself into Ziggy’s kennel again, and sat beside his lifeless form. I still couldn’t really believe he was dead. As I stroked his head, I thought of the months we’d spent together on the training course, and all the time working as a team since then. Ziggy had been like my best friend. I spent more time with him than I did at home; than with anyone else I knew. We shared every working hour. We were mates. And now he was gone.

  The officer commanding, a major, and the troop commander, a lieutenant, heard what had happened and came down to the kennels. They found me there, still sitting with Ziggy, patting him and crying. They were very supportive and, after a time, they walked with me out of the kennels. I went to the car park and just sat there, my head in my hands, still trying to come to terms with the fact that my friend was dead.

  Everyone else in the squadron was really helpful, as they knew how much Ziggy meant to me, and gave me time to grieve. A good friend of mine, Pottsy, who worked as a dog handler before transferring back into the squadron as a field engineer, organised a funeral for Ziggy. Pottsy had actually trained Ziggy from when he was a young dog, so was close to him too. The pair of us went to the vet to fetch his body, after an autopsy was done.

  ‘Ziggy died from something called gastric torsion,’ the vet told us. ‘It’s not uncommon in medium-to-large dogs. If the dog has a full stomach and then jumps suddenly, its whole stomach can swing around and twist. The entrance and exit to the stomach are then closed off, and gas can’t escape. It might have only taken an hour or so for Ziggy to die.’

  ‘But he was fine when I left him,’ I said, still having trouble coming to terms with my loss.

  ‘It’s not your fault. Gastric torsion can happen to perfectly healthy dogs. Was Ziggy ever agitated in his kennel?’

  I thought about this for a few moments. ‘Ziggy was living next to a bitch and there was another male dog on the other side of her. Ziggy and the other male would sometimes snarl and bark at each other.’

  The vet nodded. ‘Maybe Ziggy and the other dog were jumping up on the wire of their enclosures and trying to antagonise each other, and that’s when Ziggy twisted his stomach.’

  Putting the pieces together was little consolation, but it was a valuable lesson about one of the possible risks of keeping dogs the way that we did. The vet said we could take Ziggy, and Pottsy and I found some shovels and dug a hole for him out the front of the dog section kennels.

  It was raining the day we buried Ziggy. The dog handlers belonged to 1 CER’s Specialist Troop and everyone from the troop was there, including the troop commander who’d found me, distraught, in the kennel. Ziggy was as much a part of the troop as any of the soldiers in the unit, and they all wanted to pay their respects.

  Pottsy broke ranks and positioned himself in front of the assembled troop. ‘Thanks for coming along,’ he began. ‘Ziggy was a boisterous dog, as I’m sure you all know, and one of a kind. He was the happiest dog a lot of us had seen in quite a while, and a little eccentric, maybe. He loved what he did, and was very committed. He will be sorely missed by all.’

  Pottsy was sniffling a little as he then took his place with the others. I wiped the rain from my face and moved in front of the troop. I’d rather face bullets than talk before a crowd, but I needed to now. It was hard, and I can’t really remember what I said.

  It’s difficult to explain how much time, love and other emotions you invest in a working relationship like the one I had with Ziggy. The fact that he’d died so suddenly, and not peacefully in old age, just seemed to make his death worse and so much harder to deal with. How can words convey what you feel for a mate who’s been taken from you?

  I pulled my discharge papers, because I didn’t want to leave the army on such a sad note. I told the troop commander I’d hang in for at least another twelve months.

  As I didn’t have a dog, there was no point in me going on the exercise, so, instead, I went back to the School of Military Engineering for six weeks and was re-teamed with a new dog, whose name was K-Lee. She was a cross between a Rottweiler and a border collie. She was tough as nails and smart as well. With the other handlers and the rest of the troop being away, I had time to get to know K-Lee, and walking, playing and training with her helped ease the pain of Ziggy’s death.

  After everyone was back from the exercise, the army dog handlers took part in an open day at Victoria Barracks at Paddington in Sydney. We put on a display of search techniques, and manned a static display for visitors who wanted to look at the dogs and learn more about what we did. There were members of the New South Wales Police on duty as well, and I got talking to one of the coppers. With the Olympics only a few years away, the police were developing their own explosive detection dog capability.

  When I was a kid, I’d been interested in joining the police, but had been put off it because I’d thought that I’d have to have my Higher School Certificate, and as I’d left school in Year Eleven, I’d believed I’d automatically be ruled out. The cop I was talking to at the open day suggested I take a closer look at the application criteria, to see if I could get in because of my army experience.

  I did as he suggested, and found that if I’d made it to the rank of full corporal in the army, I’d be deemed experienced enough to apply for entry to the police. I was still a lance corporal – with one stripe instead of the corporal’s two – although I had passed all the necessary courses to be promoted. As being a dog handler in the army was such a small, specialised trade, there were no full corporal positions available to me at that time. I talked to the officer commanding my squadron and he agreed to write a letter certifying that I was qualified to be a two-striper and that the only thing stopping my promotion was the lack of vacancies in that rank. In fact, he went a step further, saying that as the head of the local dog handling detachment, I had a lot more responsibility than did most of the section commanders employed elsewhere in the engineer regiment.

  I left the army in October 1996 and was accepted for training at the New South Wales Police Academy, at Goulburn in the New South Wales Southern Highlands. The course started the following February.

  The academy was a lot more relaxed than Kapooka was, though there was a shit-load more study to do than in the army. Being at the academy was a good experience, but
I found it hard, mostly because of all the theory work. We studied law and analysed case studies. We’d be given a scenario, and then have to work out how a person would be charged and under which legislation. We had to do exams and write essays. I hate writing essays and, worse still, we’d have to give class presentations.

  The walls of my room at the academy were plastered with bits of paper and cardboard with crib notes all over them. If I’d stuck anything on a wall at Kapooka, I probably would have been shot. I was paying for tutors to help me after hours but, even so, I only scraped through many of the theory subjects as I found writing essays difficult.

  Jane and I had two little boys, Corey and Lachie, by this time. They were all living at her parents’ place and I’d get there at weekends, making the relatively quick drive from Goulburn to the south coast. I also did a couple of weeks’ work experience at Dapto Police Station during the course, which was good fun and, fortunately, was close to home.

  Six months after I’d walked through the gates, I finally graduated from the academy. I was made a probationary constable and sent to Sutherland Police Station in Sydney’s southern suburbs. The study hadn’t finished, as probationary constables still had to sit exams for two years, but at least we were also doing the job of policing. With life becoming more stable, Jane and I started building a house at Albion Park, on the south coast. This was about an hour’s drive to Sutherland, but I would carpool with some other police officers who lived near me.

  There was a lot happening with Lebanese gangs in south- western Sydney at the time, and I was seconded to Bankstown Police Station, in the heart of one of the city’s strongest Muslim areas, for three months. Generally, I found the parents and families of the gang members, and the older people in the Lebanese community, to be really hard-working, upstanding people, but some of the teenagers were a handful. Many had no respect for the law, or for much else, and had fallen in with the gangs. As gang members do, they’d hunt in a pack, but I found that when you dealt with them one-on-one, you broke down that pack mentality and their confidence, and then they weren’t so brave.

  What I liked about life in the police force was that, unlike being in the army, it was always different. You never knew where you’d be going or what you’d be doing next. You could be dealing with a minor traffic accident in a car park one minute, and the next thing you know, you’re facing down an enraged man in a violent domestic dispute.

  When I got to Sutherland, I was assigned to work with a top bloke, a highly experienced police sergeant named Steve Winder. Everyone in the station was respectful and wary of Steve because he had a real no-nonsense reputation. He was switched on, intelligent and hard as, knew his law inside and out, and had seen and done it all. Steve was English, but he’d been in the New South Wales Police for 25 or 30 years. At nearly 50, he was a lot older than me, but more than held his own in the gym and out on the street. He was always on the go and I had my arse hanging out all the time, just trying to keep up with him. It wasn’t unusual for Steve and me to make three arrests a night, whereas other officers might do three in a week. The other young police thought I’d got the rough end of the stick in being lumped with this guy, but Steve and I clicked from the first day. I learned a hell of a lot just watching him – the way he interacted with people, paid attention to everything going on around him, and simply got on with the job of policing. He taught me how to interview people; what questions to ask to get them talking. I nicknamed him Pop.

  Sergeant Winder, and a mate of mine, Nunny, and I were sent to serve an apprehended violence order on a guy in Kirrawee, near Sutherland. He’d been involved in a domestic with his estranged partner and the apprehended violence order against him was to ensure that he kept away from her. We’d received intel from the wife that he was a gun nut who had firearms stashed around his house.

  We parked the car and, as we approached the house, started putting on our bullet-proof vests and doing up the Velcro fastenings on the side. At the back of the house was a granny flat, where another bloke was living; he came to the front fence to meet us and tell us that the owner was inside.

  What we didn’t know was that the man we’d come to serve the apprehended violence order on had also been watching our arrival. The granny flat lodger let us into the house and led the three of us as we moved cautiously down the hallway. We called out to let the owner know we were in there, and asked him to show himself.

  The lodger paused in the hallway. At the end of it was an open door through which he could see a wardrobe mirror. ‘There he is, there he is! He’s under the bed.’

  We flattened ourselves against the wall. As we edged closer, we could see on top of the dressing table a speed loader for a pistol, and it was empty. That probably meant the guy had just loaded a revolver with six bullets.

  ‘Come on out, now,’ Pop said to him.

  The man refused to budge and, if he was armed, there was no way we were just going to charge on into his bedroom and drag him out from under his bed. We were about to declare the incident a siege and call for the tactical response group, when he said he was coming out.

  He slithered out, and I pinned him on the ground and cuffed him. He admitted that he was armed and that when he’d seen the three of us walking up the road, he’d considered opening up on us and going out in a blaze of glory. When I slid underneath the bed, I found a .357 Magnum, a big-arse Dirty Harry gun, which he’d, indeed, loaded as we were approaching. Later, we found rifles throughout his house and a couple more, along with 2000 rounds of ammunition, in the boot of his car. We took him to the cells at Sutherland and he was back out on the street in less than a week.

  On another occasion, Poppy Winder and I had to go to the home of a man with psychiatric problems and schedule him, which was basically an order that said he had to be assessed by a mental health team. When we arrived at his block of flats and found his place on the second floor, a piece of paper covered with gibberish was pinned to the front door.

  Sergeant Winder knocked. ‘Police; open up, please.’

  ‘I’m not coming out,’ a voice yelled back at us. ‘I’ve tipped petrol all over myself and if you come in, I’m going to set fire to myself!’

  Steve called for backup and when the other officers arrived, told them to keep the guy occupied, by talking to him through the door, while Pop and I would go around the back, and try to get in through a window. As the crazy man was two floors up, he wouldn’t be expecting us. It was a typically ballsy plan from the hard-as-nails old cop.

  We left the other police, ambulance crews and the fire brigade, who had also arrived by this time, and went downstairs and around to the rear of the block, and climbed a fire ladder. Steve prided himself on his appearance, and his uniform was always immaculate and his boots spit polished. As we climbed in through the flat’s open kitchen window, Steve first with me following, he cursed, softly. He’d scuffed the toe cap of his polished boot and was bent over in the kitchen, rubbing it with his thumb.

  ‘What are you doing, Pop?’

  ‘Fixing my boot. Why don’t you go sort this bloke out, Shane?’ With that, he continued wiping the toe of his shoe.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  I smelled petrol fumes and when I walked out of the kitchen into the lounge room, there was the mad dude, wet with fuel, wideeyed and holding a cigarette lighter. I put my hands up to calm him, but once he saw me, he gave up straightaway.

  Maybe Steve, with his years of experience, could read the situation accurately and knew the guy wasn’t going to kill himself. Or maybe it came down to his sense of humour, if that’s what it was. His stopping casually to clean his boot while a crazy man was standing there soaking in petrol was designed to ensure I was calm when I approached the man. Steve had given me a chance to take charge and prove myself.

  Knowing that Steve had a sense of humour, though, I did my best to mess with him at every opportunity. When he wasn’t looking, I’d get his hat, and turn his prized cap badge upside down. This was the per
fect way to take the piss out of someone who was a stickler for detail and cared so much about his personal presentation. Someone would always notice, eventually.

  One day, I was driving around Sutherland on patrol with Nunny and we found an old toilet bowl on the side of the road; probably left out there by someone who’d been renovating their bathroom. We pulled over and, making sure no-one was watching, loaded it in the back of the patrol car. When we got back to the station, I asked Steve if I could borrow the keys to his car, as I needed to get the breathalyser out. He tossed them to me, and my mate and I went and moved the toilet from our vehicle to the back seat of Steve’s, wrapping a seatbelt around the commode to keep it in place. When poor old Steve went back out on patrol, he was pulling people over, meeting and talking to them, never noticing the toilet sitting behind him.

  THREE

  Highs and lowlifes

  1999

  When I joined the police, I did so hoping that once I’d done my time in general duties, I could transfer to the dog squad. After nearly three years, I got my chance and was placed in an explosive detection dog handling course in February 1999. I’m sure a few people had their noses out of joint, as other police had to do a suitability test before being accepted into a dog handling course but I went straight into it

  Unlike in the army, we got to choose our own dogs, and I chose a nice little labrador bitch called Nova. She was about eighteen months old at the time, probably the youngest and most immature of the bunch, but she was keen and eager to please. The sergeant in charge asked us why we chose our dogs, and was surprised I’d selected her. I told him that I was up for a challenge and liked her attitude.

  The course went for two months and was different from what I was used to in the army, as we were trained to work the dogs on a lead, rather than the free-moving off-lead style I’d been accustomed to. Instead of rewarding Nova with a tennis ball to play with when she did the right thing, I had to feed her.