What Wiens always left out was that on his way to a job on July 5, 2007, his son Kory called from Iraq. He put him on speakerphone, and the cab filled with his voice. The elder Wiens caught Kory up on family news, and Kory told him about his latest missions. Most of all, they talked about Cooper.
It would be their last conversation. The next day Kory and Cooper perished in the IED blast near the haystack. The cab of this truck was the last place Kevin Wiens had heard his son’s voice. It had touched the cab’s ceiling, the steering column, the seats, the upholstery. It was as if the cab contained the last precious molecules of his son. Even years later, when he climbed into the cab to go to a job, he felt like Kory was still there with him.
It was the same with Kory’s 1972 Dodge Dart Swinger. Kory and his brother Kyle had worked on it just about every day, all day, when he came home for a couple of weeks before he deployed. He loved that green car and was determined to make it not only drivable, but every bit the hot muscle car he knew it still had the potential to be. It was a work in progress, and he’d continue when he came back for a visit after Iraq.
When he died, some friends, all girls, covered it with flowers.
Kevin Wiens was determined to fulfill his son’s dream for that car. It was falling apart in the elements, even under the canopy Kory had put up to protect it. So Kevin Wiens built a large shop with the intent of devoting a good portion of it to the car and its parts. In lieu of flowers at the funeral, he asked for money for restoration. He got enough to buy a carburetor and some other parts, but the donations barely made a dent. He keeps chipping away at the project with a friend.
One day, when it’s all done, he will put it to good use accompanying Patriot Guard Riders when they go to the funerals of other fallen heroes.
The living room of his double-wide, where he had thrown a shoe when the military casualty notification team came to tell him of Kory’s death, has become a peaceful haven for him and his best friend, a yellow Lab named Cooper. Cooper is one of five yellow Labs he has acquired since Kory’s death. Most of the others have Kory’s initials, KDW. The first was Kitty Dog Wiens. He got her about three months after Kory died. He wanted something—something living—to keep the memory of Kory and Cooper as vibrant and within reach as possible.
The instant he laid eyes on Cooper a year or so later, he wanted to bestow him with the name of his son’s beloved dog. There was something about him, an intangible quality that reminded him of the kind of dog Cooper must have been. They bonded quickly. Friends and family started hearing a great deal about Cooper, who achieved “best dog in the world” status within a few months.
There are qualities about Cooper, though, that have proven even more comforting than having a dog who reminds Kevin Wiens of the original Cooper. The dog, it seems, has many of Kory’s traits.
Cooper loves walking from room to room holding on to something—a pair of socks, a newspaper, anything. When Kory was young, he did the same. It was usually his Batman doll, but it could be anything. Even rolled-up socks.
Then there’s the bullying thing. Kory never liked it, and he stepped in whenever someone was getting picked on. Cooper does that, too, especially when Kitty hassles one of the other dogs. He’ll physically block Kitty and hang out for a while with the other dog.
At night, after a long day of driving the concrete mixer, Wiens likes to come home, put his feet up in the recliner, and watch a little TV. He gives the dogs turns sitting with him, but they generally don’t stick around too long. But Cooper—he’s another story. He drapes across Wiens’s lap, or snuggles into his side, and stays for as long as Wiens stays.
Wiens doesn’t believe in reincarnation. Really, he doesn’t, he’ll tell you. . . . Well, he never did before. He doesn’t want to seem strange, and he doesn’t like admitting it’s something he would even really consider.
“But you never know,” he says. “If there were a way he could do it, I wouldn’t put it past Kory to come back to his dad as a dog named Cooper.”
LUCCA STOOD ON the pavement and looked at the work that lay ahead. A row of about ten cars, parked with their trunk ends lined up with each other, needed her attention. She looked at the cars, then looked up at Willingham. He knew what she needed to do and cut her off leash to do her work.
She trotted from one car to the next, giving the back half of every car a few sniffs to make sure they didn’t harbor explosives. She moved along with the grace and precision of a seasoned pro, dipping in between the cars and back out and around the next one. There was no dawdling over unimportant scents, and the candy wrapper by the passenger door of the fourth car was ignored.
In just over one minute, she was done. No bombs. No makings of IEDs. Nothing to report.
But she had done the work, and that always gets a reward. “Good girl!” Willingham cheered in the high voice she loved. He bounced the Kong on the pavement and she caught it and worked it in her mouth as they got into their car and drove away.
The people at Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Stafford, Virginia, will be glad to know that, at least on that chilly afternoon, when Willingham dropped off a friend to rent a car, their cars were all bomb-free.
CORNHOLE, THE OUTDOOR beanbag toss game known in some circles as “lawn darts for drunks,” is purported to have been invented in Ohio, Kris Knight’s home state. In hindsight, Willingham wished he’d known that before telling Knight how he was going to slaughter him at the game when he stopped by his house after an official visit to Yuma Proving Ground in early 2014.
Knight had been working there for years, first running the dog team predeployment program, and then being shifted to a non-dog job, taking it in stride because it’s the best way to roll in the military. He and Willingham calculated they hadn’t seen each other for four or five years. They’d each become gunnery sergeants in the interim, and they had a lot of catching up to do.
Willingham had brought along a fellow Marine Security Guard recruiter, and Knight invited an old marine friend he’d known since childhood in Ohio. Rinat Knight, his wife, whom he’d fallen in love with during his time in Israel, came home from school and brought with her a couple of large pepperoni pizzas from the YPG bowling alley down the street. The old friends washed it down with Bud Light and Coors Light.
After a while they set up the cornhole boards at opposite ends of the front lawn. Willingham recalled being quite the stud at cornhole when he and the other dog guys played it at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan. But Knight’s two-man team beat Willingham’s more than handily.
“These guys got their asses handed to them ten out of ten times,” Knight dutifully reported to Rinat.
Later, while sitting around the dining room, the handlers exchanged old stories. Willingham regaled the others with the tale of the time a nineteen-year-old Israeli dog handler who wanted Knight, thirty-four at the time, to spar with him. Knight tried to warn the kid about his martial arts black belt. Willingham tried to warn the kid not to mess with him. But there was no relenting.
“So Knight’s there, almost twice his age and half his height. OK, not the height part. But he’s standing in his Crocs and shorts, and the kid makes a move to hit him. Then boom, boom, boom, it’s over in two seconds. Rib, armpit, ear! He could’ve made the kid meat, but he took it easy on him.”
They also talked dogs. Willingham and Knight knew they probably would have talked dogs the whole time because that’s what handlers—former or current—do when they get together. But the others were there, and they wanted to keep them in the conversation.
Bram’s ashes rested in peace in the next room over, the military memorabilia room, in a polished wooden box. The urn sits beside a concrete square with an impression of Bram’s paw print and his full name—BRAM K457—roughly engraved in the concrete, along with his birth and death dates, JUNE ’03–JAN. ’12.
Bram and Knight had to go their separate ways after their second deployment to
gether, in Afghanistan. He hated to leave his dog, but that’s how the dog program usually operates. When assignments don’t mesh, and handlers are moved to another location or make a rank that precludes their working as handlers, teams are separated. Dogs and handlers don’t usually get more than one deployment together, but specialized search dog handlers tend to have more time with their dogs.
It was rough on Knight, but worse was when he found out two weeks too late that Bram had been deemed unadoptable and euthanized at Camp Lejeune. Knight couldn’t have adopted him because Bram couldn’t be trusted not to bite Rinat or anyone else, no matter how much Knight worked with him. But he would have tried hard to find a single dog handler who lived in the country and could take him in.
“Bram was an amazing, crazy-ass dog,” Willingham said. “He lived life to the fullest.”
“That he did,” Knight said.
CLAIRE WILLINGHAM, AGE six, loved all things princess and anything beautiful, really. The subjects of her drawings, when they weren’t of her family, often involved flowers, castles, and rainbows. One evening while wearing her fluffy pink pajamas, she sat down at a little table in the living room and gathered four markers. Green, red, black, brown. Not her standard palette of pink and purple. They were slightly dried out, but fine for drawing a visitor a surprise on a piece of yellow construction paper.
As she drew, her brother, Michael, age four, played with his plastic Superman, running around the room holding him high, leaping tall cushions in a single bound.
Lucca moved closer to Claire and settled in next to her feet. From her first days as a live-in member of the Willingham family, it was clear she didn’t have much patience for energetic boys. When Michael and his friends came her way, she tended to get up and move somewhere else. Often, there was a sigh involved.
His parents didn’t force the issue. Lucca had put in her time. They figured she’d eventually come around to him, especially as he got a little older.
Claire brought the visitor her drawing. It was a picture of a girl and a dog. They were both smiling. At first glance, they seemed like any happy girl and dog.
But if you looked carefully, you would notice something a little different about this drawing. The smiling dog with the pointy ears and the big brown tail had only three legs.
EVERYONE WAS IN bed except for Lucca and Willingham. His late night started when he got a hankering to see some videos of Lucca joyfully running through the snow in Finland. One video led to another, and then came the photographs. Family photos, but mostly photos of deployments with Lucca.
It got him to thinking about some old war gear that he kept in the garage. He went out to take a look, and Lucca followed. He flicked on a light and walked over to the sea bag and small backpack he had brought to Iraq. He hadn’t opened them since his last deployment with her. Lucca watched with interest as he knelt down and unzipped the front pouch. He pulled out his old gloves and the bandana he sometimes wore around his head to catch the sweat.
Then he unzipped the main compartment. Lucca was now standing at his side, ears tipping forward as she looked down at it. Fast sniffs mixed with longer inhalations. He pulled out her portable water bowl, her canine medical kit, and her old harness. It was the original harness, the one with the BADASS name tape on the side.
Something in her look—he didn’t know just what, but there was something different—told him that she was transported back to their time in Iraq. He realized that the scent of those days must have been everywhere. She looked almost nostalgic to him, like someone poring through long-lost photographs.
After giving the gear a thorough inspection, she sat and looked at Willingham, who was just a couple of feet away, still kneeling by the pack. Her ears were at attention, her eyes alert, her little dark brows slightly raised, and her mouth closed, serious. He thought she looked like a warrior remembering old times, and he knew exactly what she was telling him.
I used to be a badass. We had some good times together, didn’t we?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
GETTING TO KNOW the Willinghams—the two-legged ones and the amazing three-legged one with the expressive eyebrows—has been a real joy. They welcomed me into their home, where, much to my amazement, Lucca chose to become my part-time roommate in the spacious basement guest room they generously provided during my eleven days with them. Living alongside this hero dog who canters about the house as if nothing has happened gave me a true insight into her character that I may not have had without this time we spent together.
That Lucca decided to hang out with me for hours at a time instead of constantly shadowing Chris Willingham, as is her tradition, made me think I must be pretty special. The doggy salmon treats I kept at my bedside table for her had nothing to do with her loyalty to me during my visit. The fact that every time she came in my room, she plopped down and positioned herself facing the bag of treats was mere coincidence. Same for when I ran out of treats and she ran back upstairs to be with Chris and family. Coincidence! No, Lucca was crazy about her biographer, and the feeling was mutual.
And yes, she snores, and it’s endearing as hell.
It’s hard to describe being in the presence of Lucca. You look into her eyes and realize how much this dog has seen, smelled, heard, and experienced: Her youth in the Netherlands, formative months in Israel, war in Iraq twice, war in Afghanistan, the death of her best friend, chaos and turmoil, night air assaults, the thrill of the Kong, the aroma of red chicken stew in Afghanistan, mortars, the scent of firefights and fear, IEDs and IEDs and IEDs, losing a leg, visiting wounded warriors, family life, waking up to the scent of pancakes and bacon on Sunday mornings. It’s all inside this hero, and I’m happy to have had a hand in helping unlock her experiences for readers. Thank you, Lucca, for everything you have done in your life and for all the lives you have saved.
Jill Willingham, a devoted nurse, badass athlete, and great mom, was an incredible resource for this book. Her insights and her candor helped give Top Dog a depth it wouldn’t have otherwise had.
She describes Lucca as a calm leader. Jill could just as easily be describing her husband, Chris. Chris Willingham is one of the most level-headed, nice, genuine, and positive people I’ve ever met. He cares deeply about family, including all his marine dog-handler brothers. He has a quiet confidence mixed with true humility. He says those same words about his father and personal hero, Elden Willingham. I am grateful that apple fell close to the tree. Chris’s unwavering work ethic, patience, smarts, sense of humor, organizational skills, love of Lucca, and enthusiasm for telling her story are really at the heart of why this book is in your hands. Without him being there every step of the way—and almost every day—this book would not have come to be.
A salute to Elden Willingham for raising a fine son with Martha Willingham and for his service during the Vietnam War. I’m pleased that his own war story, which he has kept close to his chest for so long, can finally be told. In relating his story, I hope to honor others who served in the Vietnam War and to bring awareness to the kinds of experiences they had to come through with little or no support.
Juan “Rod” Rodriguez, Lucca’s “other dad,” was clearly a fantastic choice for Lucca’s second handler. The first time I met him was via a three-hour Skype conversation with Chris and me when I was staying with the Willinghams. I could sense his deep devotion to this dog even through the grainy video. Like Chris, he is as humble as they get. Lucca, who was lying between Chris’s chair and mine for most of the Skype conversation, seemed delighted to see Rod on the laptop screen and recognized his voice immediately, wagging her tail and angling her head when he first appeared. Despite his busy schedule of work and school, he managed to be there for me anytime I needed to interview him.
Hats off to Rod’s mom, Elsa Nolasco, for doing what it took as a single mother who moved from Puerto Rico to Massachusetts to help make a better life for her children and help made Rod the great gu
y he is today. A book scene with her fell through, and I want her in this book, so here’s to you, Elsa!
I’ve taken up a lot of book real estate to thank Lucca’s immediate “family,” so I’ll try to keep the rest of the acknowledgments a bit shorter.
Jake Parker, the pseudonym for the Special Forces soldier who worked alongside Rod, was an immense help in putting together the scenes for Lucca’s Afghanistan deployment. His experience as a Green Beret, with his knowledge of Pashto and insight into local culture, proved invaluable to the manuscript.
Kris Knight—what can I say? Larger than life, a main character in my book Soldier Dogs, and now a featured player in Lucca’s story. You can’t talk to this guy and not smile. He is a born storyteller and generously gave his time to our many interviews and countless texts. He and his wife, Rinat, visited my family in San Francisco right after the deadline for this book, and after they left, my daughter commented on his hug, which was also larger than life: “He’s like a giant rock hugging you with two giant rock arms.”
A huge thanks to army veterinarian Jim Giles, the head of the crack team that got Lucca through her surgery. He helped me understand every minute of the surgery and what happened before and after. We had an initial three-plus-hour interview about the surgery and several follow-ups. Lucca’s surgery took less time than it took for him to painstakingly describe the details so I could make that scene come to life.
In a similar vein, I’d like to thank army veterinarian Shane Chumbler, who was in charge of the veterinary clinic at Leatherneck when Lucca showed up. He was an enormous help with descriptions of medical procedures. Lucca was in fantastic hands with everyone who dealt with her during this time, from the medic in the field onward.
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