by Mike Ritland
Aaron wasn’t happy being a desk jockey, but orders were orders. One day in 2006, he was asked to send a corpsman to accompany a SEAL team doing dog training. Aaron sent one, but his curiosity was piqued. “Even before our guy came back and told me about how awesome it was to see what they were doing with these dogs, I was asking questions when the request came in,” Aaron said. “After he told me about it, I knew I had to see this for myself.”
The next time a corpsman was needed, Aaron tagged along for a day to watch the training. He watched the handlers working the dogs on explosive-detection scenarios and came away impressed with the dogs’ capabilities. Later, watching bite-work exercises, he was even more impressed. He’d heard about MWDs and had seen a few in Iraq during his four deployments there, but seeing them up close made a major impression on him.
“I’d worked briefly in Iraq with dogs from conventional forces—marines and army—but basically we told their handlers how things were going to go,” Aaron recalled. “We were going to go hit some house, and if a bad guy ran out the back, you sent the dog after him. That was the limit of my interaction with dogs to that point. After seeing those SEAL training exercises, I realized there was a lot more they could do.”
He found out from the OIC that they were looking for volunteers. Aaron asked the question that every military man considering volunteering for a program would, “What’s the catch?”
He was told there was none. He would have to make a two-year commitment at minimum. He’d be given a dog, be trained as a handler himself, then get to deploy. “That was the magic word,” he said. “This was still wartime, and the dogs were guaranteed to deploy to the hottest spots because, obviously, that’s where they were needed the most.”
Aaron wanted to make certain he had things clear in his mind. “So I said to the OIC, ‘So you’re telling me if I come over here right now, you’re going to give me a dog and I’m going to get to go to combat?’ When the OIC said yes, I said, ‘Oh yeah, I am there.’”
In 2007, Aaron was one of the first handlers outside of Seal Team Six to be working with dogs on the East Coast. The program was so new at the time that, as Aaron put it, “you could have asked any SEAL if there was a dog team, and most would have said no. A few would have said, ‘We don’t have one, but Team Six does.’ Basically, we existed before anyone outside our group knew we existed.”
Fortunately for Aaron, and for the dog team members, he was a corpsman by training, and that likely contributed to his transfer request being approved. He served double duty as a corpsman and handler. His medical duties also included caring for the dogs, and he served as a kind of veterinary technician for them. Eventually he took as many courses in canine medicine as he could to get up to speed.
Not everything Aaron had been told by the OIC proved to be true, but that was okay. The program was in its infancy but was well funded. Along with other members of the team, Aaron got to travel to Germany and Holland to observe the basic training regimens the dogs underwent. Aaron needed that kind of exposure since he had never worked with dogs. His family kept dogs as pets, but he wasn’t what he’d consider “a dog guy.” After the first few months of training, he was hooked. “I fell in love with it,” he said. “This was the best time in my career.”
Part of that had to do with being liberated from a desk job, but a lot of it had to do with his interactions with his dog, Castor. Aaron laughingly talks about Castor being a first-round draft pick. At the time, the Special Operations Command realized that there was a great need for dogs all across the SOF spectrum. Vendors were found who could supply dogs, and then representatives of the Green Berets, MARSOF (Marine Special Operations Forces), the SEAL teams, and the Rangers all went on-site to view and select the dogs. At each “draft” camp, one group would be given the first pick, and then at a later one, another group would get to pick first, and so on. Aaron knew going in that the West Coast teams had the first pick.
Before the skills demonstration began, they got to view the candidates. “It was an extremely tight-quarters kennel,” said Aaron, “and the smell was horrendous. The sound level was ridiculous as well. We were all walking through there, and some of the dogs were barking, some were spinning tight circles, and just about every one of them was going nuts in some way. Then I saw Castor. He was sitting there staring back at this group of strangers staring at him. He was just chilling, and nothing fazed him at all. I called him over so that I could pet him, but he just kept staring at me like, ‘Yeah, whatever, I’m not doing that.’ So I bent down and looked at him, and I knew he was the one. I liked his calm demeanor. I’m a pretty calm guy, and pairing with someone like me had a lot of appeal. I told myself I was going to keep my eye on this one.”
During the selection and bite work, Castor stood out. Later, the trainer/vendors confirmed that Castor had great skills. The rest of the Special Operations guys seemed dubious.
“We were all relatively new at this and didn’t have a lot of experience with training dogs and none with working in the field with them,” said Aaron. “Most of the other guys wanted one of those really big and aggressive types that had been so disruptive in the kennel. What convinced me that Castor was the right one was when we got to do some early socialization work with them.”
For this part of the selection process, Castor was muzzled and led out of his kennel. Aaron got Castor to lie down and then joined him on the ground. He’d hop over Castor’s back and then wrap his arms around him. The point was to see what kind of aggression the dog would demonstrate toward a handler. Castor took it all in stride. Aaron also picked Castor up, something that makes even the mildest of dogs edgy, but again Castor showed no discomfort.
“A lot of these dogs, you touch them and they want to eat you. They’re just angry animals,” Aaron explained. “But Castor was like, ‘Yep. Just another day.’ I knew this dog was perfect for me because he was a superstar in the drills and he was completely social.”
Though Aaron wasn’t an experienced dog trainer, he innately understood how important the bond of trust between a dog and his handler is. That Castor allowed himself to be touched and picked up without complaint meant that he’d adapt easily to working with a new person and that the basic level of trust of humans was already in place. Castor sensed that this person wasn’t going to hurt him. That trait was demonstrated later on during helicopter training in preparation for fast-roping insertions.
Aaron had strapped Castor into his tactical vest, which is equipped with a handle on the top of it. To expose the dog to this kind of environment takes some time. Initially, just getting a dog used to the sound of the engines and the wind-whipped air is enough. Eventually, though, you have to get the dog in the chopper and off the ground. Most dogs are resistant to not having all four paws firmly planted on the ground. So you can imagine how difficult it is to get a dog to climb out of a helicopter’s bay and voluntarily go into thin air. Aaron and the other early handler trainees employed a sink-or-swim approach.
“I had to take Castor and grab the handle of his vest, lift him up, and then dangle him out over the lip of the helicopter,” Aaron said. “He thought I was throwing him out of the bird, and he freaked out—paws thrashing, torso twisting. Once I let go of him, and of course he’s tethered to me, so he isn’t going far. He dropped a couple of inches and then just hung there. He was immediately totally calm, and I imagined he was thinking, ‘Oh, okay, cool. This is fine. Dad’s got me.’”
That kind of trust is a perfect example of what is essential in a relationship between an MWD and his handler. Castor and Aaron had it from the outset, and that bond only hardened and deepened as time went on. Much of that was due to Aaron’s dedication. Though admittedly not a dog person when he started and more someone who saw the SEAL team’s use of dogs as a way out of a desk job and back into combat, Aaron used his research and reading skills to help him learn even more about how to work with dogs. Unlike some of his fellow SEAL handlers, Aaron began using positive reinforcement early on,
partly based on his research and partly because of his relationship with Castor. “He was my friend,” said Aaron. “I didn’t want to have to correct him. I didn’t want to have to jerk him around. If I could make him more receptive and get better results without all those negative punishments, then, even though I was going against the grain, nobody could say anything against me. To me, it wasn’t enough to go through the handler program and get dogs to do their jobs. I wanted to know how a dog thought, how he learned, and what I can get him to do without inflicting pain on him.”
Aaron took the same approach to his job as a dog handler as he did everything else in his career as a SEAL. He knew that the job the dogs would eventually do was too important for him not to learn as much as he possibly could. At that point in the early development of the program, the people training the handlers only had fairly limited experience with old-school methods of training and disciplining dogs. Aaron was concerned that those methods might have their limits.
“I want to be the best at every single thing I do,” he said. “I also have a lot of natural curiosity, so I wanted to learn as much as I could. More important, if I show up in Afghanistan or wherever with my dog, and I introduce myself to the unit I’m assigned to, I have a great deal of responsibility on my shoulders. If that dog accidentally bites one of my guys, or if that dog doesn’t detect some explosives and guys get wounded or killed, that’s on me. That’s my fault, not the dog’s. And what if that guy who got bit has to be sent home, and then his replacement comes along and something happens to him?”
The downside of having that kind of bond with a dog, if there is one at all, may be in what Aaron felt as additional pressure—not just for his fellow soldiers but with the dog who he’d come to care so much about. “When you’re walking point with your dog, you’re the first one to see bad guys. If anything happens to anyone else, it’s your fault. That’s a lot of pressure to carry around. Even so, when I’m out walking point and I’ve got my dog in front of me looking for explosives, I’m also worried about his well-being,” Aaron explained. “When you’re doing that detection work, your sole focus is on wind direction. If you’re patrolling down a trail and there’s only one way to enter this trail that is tactically sound and you’re unlucky enough that on that particular night the wind is at your back and not pushing those odors toward you, the stress gets even more intense. Castor could step on a pressure plate even before he smelled those explosives just as easily as a human could—some of those antipersonnel pressure plates are that sensitive. The thought of getting that dog hurt, because he trusted me enough to go there, added to the burden. We love each other. I can honestly say that if Castor got badly injured, I would have as hard a time dealing with that as I would if something happened to other team members.”
Part of the reason why Castor and Aaron bonded is the qualities of courage and tenacity that dog possessed. For instance, on one particular training exercise, Castor and Aaron had been moving through a heavily wooded area. They had been patrolling along a road during a bite-work exercise when Castor came on human odor. Aaron released him, and Castor ripped through the woods in pursuit. Aaron watched as Castor leapt through some brush and then disappeared. Eventually Aaron caught up to the trainer in the bite suit, fully engaged with the dog near a rocky outcropping. Blood spattered the gray stone. Aaron began calling for Castor to release the trainer, fearful that the dog had punctured both the bite suit and the human underneath it. Instead, what he saw was blood gushing out of his dog’s chest. On closer examination, he could see that Castor had impaled himself on a sharp stick. The stick had entered the dog’s body with such force that it was still underneath his skin, extending from the entry point on his chest down his flank for about twelve inches. As horrified as he was, Aaron was also impressed that a wound that severe hadn’t slowed Castor down one bit.
Regulations required that the dogs be kept on-site, even in the case of an injury. In order to treat Castor, Aaron had to drive home to get additional equipment he kept there. He also brought along his wife, a surgical nurse. In the field, Aaron had removed most of the stick, but he could feel that more was still buried beneath his skin and fur. Castor didn’t show great signs of distress, so Aaron didn’t anesthetize him. Even without a muzzle on the dog, Aaron and his wife felt safe performing minor surgery on Castor. They removed the remaining pieces of stick, flushed the wound with various antiseptics, and then sutured him up.
Castor was out of commission for only a week. Obviously, not every handler can provide his dog with that kind of medical treatment, but it’s a potent example of how essential it is that a dog trusts his handler.
In ways large and small, Aaron took care of Castor, and his reward for that was a dog whose performance in the field was outstanding. Aaron also went above and beyond some of the training standards of those early days. He trained Castor to follow a laser pointer’s red dot. Dogs are capable of following our gaze. If we first engage a dog to get his attention and then look elsewhere, the dog will look where we look. In the field that has limited applications, but getting a dog to follow a laser pointer’s red dot is extremely useful.
Here are the basics of how it worked. In the field, Aaron would get Castor’s attention, show him the laser apparatus, point the beam at something specific, and Castor would go to that point. If, for example, Aaron issued the apprehend command to Castor but there were multiple targets in front of them, Aaron could point the laser on the person he wanted Castor to apprehend. Or Aaron could point the laser at a particular door or wall, either in full daylight or in pitch blackness, from a distance of 200 to 300 yards. If the detection command was then issued, Castor would go to the lasered area as soon as he was released from his leash.
That’s a particularly effective clearing method. If Castor did not detect any explosives by that door or wall, the team members could then place ladders against those walls to climb over them, or use a breaching charge to blow a door, without worrying about any IEDs being present.
Aaron also pushed Castor’s apprehension training to the point where he felt 100 percent confident that his dog would not bite anyone dressed similarly to his handler—unless instructed to do so. That was especially important because frequently when on a mission, Castor would enter a confined area with numerous people in it after having been given the command to apprehend someone. Given the potential confusion, a less disciplined dog might take on anyone. Aaron is convinced of, and has seen evidence of, Castor’s ability to distinguish friend from foe. On numerous patrols in Afghanistan, in crowded bazaars, in homes, and in open areas, Castor has learned to sort through the individuals there, running through the legs of people, in pursuit of the bad guy.
* * *
Aaron and Castor worked together on two deployments in Afghanistan, primarily detecting explosives. The two were able to utilize the tools they had learned in training to clear buildings and provide protection for the troops with whom they served.
In some ways Aaron and Castor’s story is unique. Each of their individual attributes meshed well together. They were there at the beginning of the program, before I began providing and training dogs for the teams. Castor is retired from active duty, and Aaron is a trainer at BUD/S. Castor lives with Aaron and his family. When I visited them and sat and talked with Aaron, Castor lay at his feet, waiting. Aaron told me that as soon as we were finished, he was going to go to work and Castor was going with him. That day’s training activities for the next class of SEALs involved some beach running, and Castor liked that. Other days, Castor can be found at Aaron’s wife’s office. He’s taken over a couch there, and he’s content to watch her type away at her computer. Once the tapping sounds end, he looks at her and she at him. It’s lunchtime or break time, and that means a walk around the area. A tennis ball is frequently involved. At quitting time, the two head home, and then Castor hangs out there with both his mom and his dad. He’s seldom alone, and Aaron and his wife take him just about everywhere they go. He’s adjusted well to
his downtime and is about as content as any dog can be in knowing that he’s well cared for and respected for what he’s done for one man and one woman and for their, and his, country.
PART III
ADVENTURES IN BATTLE
12
CAIRO AND LLOYD: AMONG THE FIRST
The Sunni Triangle, Iraq
Cairo and his handler, Lloyd, saw a human figure dash across the dark, desolate landscape, beating feet toward a hut. The other team member with them raised his weapon, but Lloyd stopped him. He said, “I’m going to let Cairo go.”
They were in an area near Lake Tharthar, a large lake that sits in the center of an irregularly shaped rectangle formed by the cities of Haditha, Tikrit, Samarra, and Ramadi. Despite the area’s proximity to water, it was nonetheless typical of a lot of the Iraqi landscape. There was a seemingly endless monotony of sand, broken up by a few rolling hills, palm trees, and scrub. The plant life stuck out like bits of stems in a huge pile of brown rice. There were also low-walled buildings and flat roofs that gave Lloyd the impression they were moving through a boot print, a place where everything had somehow been squashed down and compressed. The area had been hit with a severe drought, and the fields lay fallow.
“It was like being in a ghost town in an old Western movie, except there weren’t any doors slapping in the breeze with their hinges squealing,” Lloyd recalled when I paid him and Cairo a visit. “It was eerie quiet. At this point our platoon had gotten thin, and we were moving in ones and twos. I was with Cairo and one other team member. The wind was crossing, and the dog seemed to pick up something. He was air-scenting, his nose up, and just kind of trembling like they do.