by Mike Ritland
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As the weeks passed, life took on a kind of routine—a combat normalcy that had you hypervigilant and never fully able to rest at any time. We had no FOB established, no outposts, and no real security perimeter. We spent nights sleeping under Humvees and eventually set up tents beneath large camouflage-netting hills we constructed. An hour of sleep here, and a twenty-minute nap there, was about all the shut-eye anyone got. Nearly every moment was punctuated by gunfire, shouts, or some other disruption. We’d all endured sleep deprivation before, but this time it was definitely taking its toll.
The clearing operations we were doing to neutralize mines and remove other obstacles were particularly difficult. The potential for these operations to become mind-numbing was certainly there, due largely to the combination of the repetitive nature of this work, our lack of sleep, and even the absence of basic creature comforts. Clearing operations are highly dangerous, but they are also, obviously, of critical importance.
At one point, we were in a more rural area outside the city, and I observed as a small group of marines came upon a small cavelike structure. It was a kind of hut with a very small entrance. We’d all encountered other structures similar to that one and had already searched thousands of buildings without any issues. The natural inclination might be to assume that everything was okay here as well, but we all knew we could never give in to that kind of thinking.
This platoon had been assigned an explosive-detection dog, and he and his handler went up to the hut’s doorway. Immediately, the dog alerted—his ears went up and he sat down. I was on the security perimeter and watched all this through a pair of binoculars.
Later, talking to the marines who had investigated that cave, I learned that a grenade booby trap had been set in that doorway. The dog detected the explosives. Sitting down was his way to alert his handler that explosives were present. Because of the way the structure was situated, and because of the way the explosives were placed, without question, the first two or three marines going in would have been killed. The next one or two behind them probably would have been injured fairly badly. This incident was literally and figuratively life-changing.
Seeing for myself how that dog had just gone about his business and had instantly identified the danger, and then hearing more about it, made me want to never go anywhere without a dog out ahead of me ever again. Explosives, IEDs, booby traps, and trip wires are all easy to place and sometimes hard for humans to detect. At the pace that we were moving, it was impossible to sweep everywhere with a metal detector or have an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) guy pull open the ground. It’s not going to happen. A metal detector doesn’t cover everything anyway, because some of the devices use plastic or wood to house the explosives, so there’s no metal to detect.
I also realized this: Had there been somebody 20 feet inside that hut with an AK ready to shoot those marines as soon as they came in, the dog would have alerted them to that, too. Many other times on duty in Iraq, I would come to witness the incredible ability that these dogs have to detect explosives, smell human beings in hiding, and hear and smell other sources of danger.
I also recognized something else about these dogs that makes them effective fighters. Unlike us, they don’t really know they are in a foreign environment, and that works to their advantage. In some respects, they don’t know whether they are in training in the United States or in combat zones overseas. The mountains of Afghanistan or the deserts of Iraq aren’t any more out of the dogs’ routine than the mountains east of San Diego. They’re all mountains with steep, jagged rocks. For them, the only difference in Afghanistan and Iraq is the constant presence of excessively loud noises. Even then, the dogs remain focused and concentrate on sniffing out explosive odors or people as they have been trained to do.
Watching that dog alert the marines to the booby-trapped hut was a “lightbulb” moment for me. I immediately saw a way to combine my passion for protecting and defending people with my lifelong passion for and fascination with dogs. I wanted to better comprehend dogs’ amazing abilities and work to harness them so the dogs could become effective weapons against the tools of modern warfare. I wanted to train dogs for Navy SEAL teams and other parts of the military. Eventually, that’s just what I did.
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I spent years operating with SEAL Team Three based out of Coronado, in San Diego, completing multiple deployments to the Middle East. I loved every minute of it. It was an incredibly intense, fast-paced, and rewarding career that challenged me constantly but made me realize who I was.
The men that I worked and served with as a member of SEAL Team Three were an incredibly diverse bunch of guys, but we did have some things in common. Many of us were raised in either suburban or rural areas, and the majority of us liked “outdoor enthusiast” activities: hunting, fishing, climbing, hiking, and so on. Almost all of us had played some sort of organized sports.
On the other hand, some guys I met in my time made me do a mental double take and think, You did what before joining up? For example, in my first platoon, there was a guy who had been an Ivy Leaguer, a Columbia University grad. He had been a Wall Street investor for several years, got bored, decided to quit, and joined the navy. He was thirty-one years old when he went through BUD/S. I’d also been on a team with a guy who had previously been a rodeo clown.
Eventually I left SEAL Team Three and went to be an advanced training instructor at SEAL Qualification Training. I spent about eighteen months there, and during a training trip to a desert environment I contracted valley fever. Valley fever is a fungal infection that spreads in your lungs like mold and scars your lung tissue permanently, causing you to lose lung capacity. After recovering from that as much as my body was capable of, I transferred over to BUD/S to be an instructor. I spent almost four years there selecting, teaching, and forging some of the finest warriors our nation has to offer. I have always admired what the SEALs bring to the table as a force protection enhancement, and during that time I learned as much as I could about it.
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Meanwhile, in 2004, as U.S. military activity in Afghanistan and Iraq intensified, the SEALs had begun to use specially trained dogs to meet the specific needs of the Navy SEAL teams. The use of MWDs has evolved around the world over time (for a brief overview of the history of canines in combat prior to this, see the appendix at the back of the book), but what SEAL teams in these two conflicts especially needed was Special Operations Forces (SOF) dogs that could be trained to sniff out explosives, just like that dog had done for its marine unit at that little hut outside Tikrit, Iraq. They also needed dogs that could detect and apprehend the enemy.
Trainers, breeders, and handlers use lots of different methods to train dogs and have lots of different opinions about the best way to do so, but there is one thing they all agree on, and that is this: Dogs are better detection tools than any machines—be it for sniffing out explosives or using their extraordinary sense of smell to locate enemy troops or snipers. There have been numerous attempts to build machines that can replicate what a dog’s nose does, but to this point, none of them have come close.
At first, the demand for dogs far outweighed the supply, as the SEAL K-9 program was essentially starting from scratch. At the same time, other branches of the military—as well as many U.S. cities, in the wake of 9/11—were looking to ramp up their use of explosive-detection dogs. One way to obtain dogs quickly was to get them from the regular military, where patrol dogs and detection dogs were already being used, but it quickly became apparent that there was a substantial difference between how MWDs operated and what SOF dogs needed to do. The tactical movements of a SEAL team required SOF dogs that were trained to function at higher speeds and at a more advanced level, for instance, than dogs working for the military police.
Navy SEAL dogs needed unique training, and as with most things to do with SEAL teams, be it technology or tactics, SEAL Team Six pioneered the way. They created and refined the canine program, and their tr
aining procedures and other elements of SOF canines trickled down to the East Coast and West Coast teams.
As I was leaving the navy in 2009, the SEAL canine program was going into even higher gear in and around Coronado, California. I’d already purchased property and had plans in place to create the best dog-training facility I could. My eleven years as a SEAL team member and other experiences allowed me to begin my business with contracts to train SOF dogs. I am proud to train highly skilled multipurpose dogs that succeed downrange, and am grateful that I can continue to contribute to the SEALs’ ongoing efforts, however indirectly.
Those of us who train SOF canines are a very small and very tight-knit community. We assist one another in every way we can. We sometimes trade dogs among ourselves when the need arises. There’s no room for us to let ego or dollars get in the way of succeeding at job one—training dogs who will save the lives of our brothers in combat.
PART II
ON MAKING THE GRADE
5
NOT YOUR TYPICAL HOUSE PET
The dogs that we procure and train for the SEALs are all herding dogs—pointy-eared shepherds, usually Dutch Shepherds or Belgian Malinois. A herding dog is any of a variety of different breeds that historically have helped farmers herd groups of animals such as sheep. Herding dogs are working dogs, and they need to have a job to do.
Chopper, the ex-SOF dog that saved Brett and his platoon from insurgents in Iraq, is a Belgian Malinois. The breed gets its name from both the country (Belgium) and the city (Malines) where they were first bred. Although the breed’s history extends back earlier, it was first registered in Belgium and in France in 1891. There are four different varieties, or coat colors and patterns, of Malinois, but many of them are beige with a black mask. They look, at first glance, a lot like the more commonly known German shepherd, but the Malinois is a lighter, leaner dog.
A dedicated early group of breeders and trainers in Europe refined the breed so that it is prized not only for its work ethic but also for its intelligence, stamina, and trainability. According to the American Kennel Club (AKC) the Belgian Malinois was first registered in the United States in 1911, but it has always been one of the breeds with the smallest number of registrants. For instance, only 107 dogs were registered with the AKC in the ten years between 1959 and 1969. While they do enjoy a nearly fanatical following here, they are still relatively rare.
Because they do have a long history of breeding, training, and competing in Europe, we most often import the Malinois we train for the military. There are some very good breeders and trainers here, but we want to be able to take advantage of those long ancestral lines and the rich tradition found in dogs from Belgium, Holland, and elsewhere. It would take generations and generations and countless dollars to begin a selective breeding program using those bloodlines here in the United States and we just don’t have the time to wait. We’d rather sacrifice the “Made in the USA” label than potentially lose American lives or waste taxpayer dollars. As it is, the navy invests well over $50,000 in the acquisition, training, and care of a single dog, like Chopper, before the animal gets deployed with his handler. The bottom line is that we all want the best for our troops, and at this point that means importing the dogs from overseas.
It is important to point out that when I acquire a Malinois from a European breeder, I’m not getting a very young puppy that hasn’t been trained at all. The dog is already about two to three years old and has gone through rigorous training. Some of the dogs even have become what is referred to as “titled dogs.” That means that they’ve not only been trained but have also earned certification in one of several different European dog sports. One of the better known of these is Schutzhund, a dog sport popular in Germany. Originally, a dog that had completed Schutzhund training and had become certified in the sport was also essentially qualified to become a German police dog. That is no longer necessarily the case, partially because the sport is so popular that many different breeds now enter and compete.
Schutzhund competition results reveal to what degree dogs possess traits like courage, intelligence, perseverance, and the protective instinct. There are three levels of achievement, and the tests cover three aspects of the dog’s abilities: tracking, obedience, and protection. A dog must pass all three phases of the test in order to receive certification and become titled.
So the dogs we acquire have already earned some measure of distinction. Typically, they have had some obedience training and some bite work (including controlled bite work, where they have to release their grip on command) and have completed an article search/tracking exercise that requires them to go through numerous obstacles and then find a person or an object.
While this all sounds good in theory, and there are obvious benefits to acquiring dogs with this kind of training, problems can arise because each dog’s original trainer had his or her own way of doing things. We may come back with five titled dogs, but because each trainer used different methods we have to retrain the dogs to do things our way. In some cases the dogs recognize another language for commands, and most often we continue to use that language. For example, the “Reviere” and “Braafy,” commands that Brett used with Chopper are Dutch words.
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What exactly makes an individual dog, be it a Belgian Malinois or another breed, the right dog to be a Navy SEAL dog? It takes a combination of different physical traits and specific qualities of temperament. The dropout/failure rate among humans who want to qualify as Navy SEALs is very high. The rate among the dogs we select and train is even higher.
The single most desirable quality in a dog that will do SOF work has to do with temperament. It happens to be the same for humans who want to be Navy SEALs: They just won’t quit.
A dog must be physically fit, well bred, and well trained, but it must also be highly motivated and extremely energetic. To put this in some context, think of the most ball-crazy dog you’ve ever seen. You know the type, the one who will pursue a ball faster, for greater amounts of time, and with a maniacal determination that seems endless. Well, to make it through the program and qualify to join the SEAL teams on their missions, dogs must be even more energetic, focused, and relentless.
Here’s the analogy I often use to describe the difference between a ball-crazy dog and a Navy SEAL dog. A lot of people want to be professional athletes. They start playing a sport early on. A few of them become big-deal high school athletes, and even fewer go on to play in college. A very, very small percentage of those athletes realize their dream to play professionally. From that select group who make it into Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, or another pro sport league, an even more minute percentage become stars, Hall of Famers, legends. Every dog we work with is as physically gifted as a LeBron James or a Michael Phelps.
Obviously, though, great athletes are great for more reasons than their physical abilities alone. They are tenacious competitors, driven by something inside them that wants to not just succeed but dominate. That doesn’t mean that they are arrogant or malicious—they just want to be better than you or anyone else. The Belgian Malinois I work with have to have that component. They have to have some inner fire that you can control and unleash to the best advantage.
That inner fire can be described as enthusiasm or tenacity. It’s what a coach looking to recruit an athlete looks for, and it’s what I look for in an SOF dog. In a dog I call it “drive.” It is the combination of their unwillingness to quit and their willingness to go after something like a ball unrelentingly that I look for when evaluating dogs. It may sound like the same thing, but the example that follows should shed some light on the differences between not quitting and really going after it.
For most pet owners, the drive I’m talking about can best be observed when you have in your possession a favorite toy that your dog likes to play with. For a lot of dogs, the toy of choice is a tennis ball. When I go to look at dogs, physically mature dogs in most cases, wha
t I want to see is behaviors that would drive most pet owners nuts. The dog should express its desire in leaping, barking, turning, and spinning—not just for a little while but persistently, for a long period of time. The dog’s desire must be over the top, and it literally exhibits that trait by jumping up to nearly my eye level to get to that ball. The dog is, as I said, relentless, and would very definitely cross the line between what we consider acceptable and unacceptable pet behavior. I want to see a dog that is willing and able to use its only real weapon—its mouth—to get that ball. Simply put, the dog must have so much desire and be so unwilling to give in and lose the battle for that ball that it will actually bite a human to get it.
If you’ve ever seen a dog that just shivers with excitement and pent-up desire to get a toy, then you have some idea of what I’m talking about. It’s as if every fiber of that dog’s being is twitching with its built-in, hardwired desire to get at the ball, which it sees as prey. For the dogs at the top of my list, the object of desire is nearly immaterial. I could be holding a piece of pipe, a length of rebar, a stick, it doesn’t matter. The dog wants whatever it is and will do nearly anything to get it.
In addition to wanting it while it’s in your possession, the dog will tear off after the object at high speed as soon as you throw it. The aggressive pursuit of that object, the speed at which the dog goes after it, is off the charts. To say that the dog goes after it is an understatement. Rather, the dog launches itself like a rocket.
When the dog reaches the object, it plants its forelegs so forcefully that its hind legs rise up off the ground, kicking dust and debris all over the place. The dog will then grab the object, wrap its front legs and paws around it, and assume a guarding position, not allowing anyone near its prize.