Trident K9 Warriors: My Tale From the Training Ground to the Battlefield With Elite Navy SEAL Canines

by Michael Ritland

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  This book is dedicated to the brotherhood, and the loyal hounds that help keep them safe.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Endnotes

  Photo Insert

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the following people, for without them this book would not have been possible.

  My parents, George and Sandy—Thank you for putting up with me as a kid and instilling the values and foundation that forged me into the man I am today.

  The SEAL Teams—Enlisting at eighteen, I grew up in the teams. There could not have been a finer collection of warriors to be around to set the example of how to live your life. The entire country owes you an infinite debt of gratitude for the violence you bestow on our enemies.

  Marc Resnick, his assistant Kate Canfield, and everyone at St. Martin’s Press—Thank you for your professionalism and pride in what you do. It’s been a pleasure working with you.

  Gary Brozek—Thank you for the countless hours of hard work you have put into this project, bringing my words to life in a way that couldn’t make me prouder.

  Brandon Webb—The brotherhood continues to prove that it takes care of its own, and your friendship and advice are certainly no exception. Thank you for everything, brother.

  Wayne Dodge—Brother, there are no words to give ample thanks for what you have done for me, in more ways than one. Your friendship will be forever appreciated.

  The warriors (both men and dogs) at MPC-1—You guys are the reason I do what I do, and I could not be prouder of the job you guys have done and continue to do.

  Special thanks to:

  The Allon Family

  Happy

  Fro

  BC

  Mike Mike

  Wimbo

  DK

  Shrek

  Del

  Echy

  Dusty

  CP

  SA

  Cinnamon Bear

  Johnny D

  Mrs. Toad

  Mike Suttle

  Darryl Richey

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Since earliest recorded history, dating back to the time when humans first battled over territory or property using rocks and sticks, one other weapon has been used—canines. Whether it was the Ephesians doing battle, the Athenians fending off the advancing Persians at the Battle of Marathon, or the Spanish Conquistadors using Mastiffs against Native Americans, to more modern examples, we have utilized the dogs of war. Not only have they been utilized, they’ve been memorialized for their heroic loyalty and service. This book is my attempt to bring attention and praise to one segment of the military working dog community of warriors. At a time when an operator sitting in a room thousands of miles from a battlefield can direct a drone attack, when billions of dollars are spent developing high-tech weaponry, the one constant in war remains our use of canines. That speaks to their effectiveness as well as their heart, and proves the truth of their being Man’s Best Friend.

  INTRODUCTION

  The tense silence was broken only by the sound of the MH-60’s rotors and blades beating like a quickened pulse. Along with the sixteen other members of a West Coast–based SEAL Team, the multi-purpose K9 Duco sat vigilant and eager. Duco and his handler, Seth, had been assigned to a forward operating base (FOB) in northeastern Afghanistan, close to the Pakistani border in the mountainous region of the Hindu Kush. The area is well known as a porous zone where Taliban terrorists and their leaders travel from training grounds in Pakistan into Afghanistan. A few hours earlier Seth had attended a pre-mission briefing. The Operations Order commanded them to neutralize a high-value target in a nearby village, some fifty kilometers (thirty-one miles) away. The target, as the intelligence report had indicated, was a leading Taliban munitions expert, one of the head trainers who instructed cell leaders and their underlings in the deadly craft of improvised explosive device (IED) making.

  With the communications check complete, Duco sat tucked between Seth’s knees, his chest rising and falling at a slightly agitated rate as he reacted to the others’ heightened sense of anticipation. The copilot radioed that they were several clicks from the landing zone (LZ). In their briefing, they’d learned that they’d have to fast-rope in; no LZ large enough or flat enough to accommodate three helos was in range. Seth stood and commanded Duco to do the same. Seth turned his back and waited. The platoon chief stepped forward and squatted in front of Duco before wrapping his arms around the dog’s rear end and chest. Duco remained alert but impassive while he was being strapped into the harness on Seth’s back.

  Seth felt a thwack on his shoulder, a signal that he and Duco were good to go. Seth spent the next few moments making his way to the end of the line, checking the cams on his descenders, before stepping out of the MH-60’s bay into the darkness. The only sound was the rush of wind past his ears and the high-pitched whirring sound of the rope snaking through the device. After unhooking the line, Seth waited for another team member to release Duco. He grabbed the dog’s lead, double-checked the harness, and proceeded to the head of the formation. Behind him, the other men moved out of their defensive perimeter positions to follow Seth and Duco, all of them careful to maintain their spacing discipline. The SEAL Team members were all on comms, but Duco didn’t need anyone to tell him what to do. All his years of training and experience, coupled with years of genetic fine tuning and his honed instincts, had been held at bay on the flight in and were now released.

  Steadily moving at a pace between a lope and a trot, with his broad snout alternately to the ground and lifted above his shoulder to pick up any target odor, Duco worked along a snakelike path. He’d been trained to detect explosives and was at the head of the line sniffing out the possible locations of IEDs or munitions caches. His nose flaring and recessing like a beating heart, Duco led the platoon on into the night.

  Even though it was pitch-dark, Seth and the others trusted that Duco’s keen senses wouldn’t fail him or them. They all may not have known that a dog’s extraordinary exteroception, its ability to detect stimuli from the environment (including light, sound, chemical agents [taste and smell], heat, cold, and pressure), made the team members’ night-vision goggles seem like tissue-roll binoculars by comparison, but they trusted Duco based on past experience. More than anything the bond of trust that existed between canine and soldier was once again being tested and ultimately proven worthy.

  After several clicks maneuvering along a dirt road, Seth noticed something change in Duco’s demeanor. The handler had anticipated seeing Duco signal that he’d detected the odor of explosives. Normally, if
Duco had smelled explosives, he would have signaled detection by flagging his tail, hoisting it straight up and making it quiver from side to side, nearly like a rattlesnake alerting others to its presence. Along with that, he would become more intense, his movements more rapid, as he zeroed in on the exact location, his body acting as a kind of needle on a scale indicating that the concentration of molecules he was picking up was on the increase.

  What Seth saw instead was Duco’s body go rigid, assuming the posture of a show dog—head lifted, front shoulders at attention and stretched forward, his hips similarly straining forward. Seth also felt that strain on the leash and heard Duco emit a low whiny whimper.

  Duco was letting the rest of the team know that they weren’t alone.

  Seth immediately called out, “Hey, Duco.” The dog looked at him briefly and then resumed his intense staring into the darkness. Seth let the rest of the men know that he was releasing Duco. They knew there was only one reason for that: Duco had detected the presence of other humans. They immediately fell out and assumed an antiambush formation, finding cover behind rocks and trees. Seth waited a moment, touched Duco on the flank and felt the tautness of his muscles, and then unclipped the lead. He held him by the halter and whispered “reviere,” a word his original Dutch handlers used as a command to get a dog to search for a human. Seth released him. The dog eagerly sprang forward, dropping his back hips to give him more of a mechanical advantage to sprint, and then leapt.

  Seth knew that Duco’s eagerness was both bred into him and enhanced by training. In this scenario, detecting human scent meant the promise of being able to receive the ultimate reward, being able to bite down on something, in this case, human flesh. As human beings, we can exert 120 pounds of pressure per square inch with our jaws. A dog like Duco can nearly triple that number, remarkably approaching half the bite capability of a great white shark but paling in comparison to a hyena’s 1,000 pounds and a crocodiles massive 2,500 pounds per square inch.

  Seth and the other team members didn’t know if that was part of the cultural distrust and loathing their enemy had for dogs, nor did they care. They also didn’t sympathize with them when they heard the ferocious commotion coming from down a shallow embankment yards ahead of them. As the forward members of the team approached, they could hear shouts, snarls, and agonized screams. A few moments and a few bursts of gunfire later, and the night was dark and silent again, the stillness only broken by the one of the members saying, “Target is clear.”

  Duco emerged from the melee unscathed. Breathing slightly heavier, his head held high, he trotted back toward Seth. The handler knelt and clipped the dog back into his lead.

  “Braafy!” Seth said, a word his Dutch handlers used in praise, as he pet him and ran has hand along his flanks. Duco curled into him and lifted his snout into the air. A few other men passed by, each thanking Duco with a “Get some!” a “Fuckin’ A, son!” or some other sign of their praise and thanks. Duco sat there taking it all in, just another day at the office.

  The rest of the team busied themselves with defending the perimeter, while a small group checked out the ambush nest. Along with the bodies of the four insurgents, they discovered a Russian PKM machine gun, several AK-47s, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. After clearing the bodies from the site, they detonated the munitions and weapons. Four KIAs and a weapons cache destroyed was a good night’s work for both men and dogs in war.

  1

  The dog lay in the shade of a stunted palm tree, his head up and his ears at attention. He was scanning the desert scrubland, vigilant, the lines of muscle beneath the heavy fur of his flanks taut and ready. Even from behind him, I could see his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, flopping like a pink fish.

  “Duco,” the man beside me said.

  The Malinois, a Belgian herding dog, turned to look at us, his expression keenly alert and his dark eyes intent.

  “Heerre.”

  The dog sprang to his feet and made his way across the dusty terrain that passed for a yard in the desert communities well east of San Diego. Under other circumstances, I might have tensed up at the sight of this seventy-five-pound package of fierce determination approaching. As Duco neared, I could see recognition dawning; a nearly imperceptible softening of the muscles around his eyes let me know that he knew who I was.

  He also knew enough not to approach me first, though the two of us had spent the first few months of his life in the United States together. As commanded, he came up to Seth, formerly his SEAL Team handler and now in his retirement Duco’s caregiver, and sat alongside the man he’d served with on dozens of missions for the past six years. Duco sat, still very much at attention, until Seth told him it was okay.

  Duco looked at me, and I noticed that the fur around his muzzle and eyes had lightened a bit and was no longer the deep ebony that had glowed like a spit-polished dress boot. What hadn’t changed was the slight deflection in one line of the isosceles triangle of his large ears. Some scuffle as a pup in his kennel outside of Tilburg, in the Netherlands, had left him with an identifying mark. In my mind it wasn’t a flaw, an imperfection, but a mark of distinction. I gave his head a few rubs with the flat of my hand and then ran it down his shoulder and along his rib cage. He was still in fine fighting trim, but I noticed that he relaxed out of his posture a bit and leaned into me. I smiled at this sign of affection and appreciation for the attention I was giving him.

  “He’s doing good,” I said to Seth.

  “Always. He’s a good ol’ boy.” Seth pushed his sunglasses up and squinted into the distance. “He likes it here. Looks a little like the sandbox, but there’s a lot less action. I think we both miss it—but don’t at all.”

  Seth had spent more than a dozen years as a West Coast SEAL Team member, the last of it as a handler working with Duco. Now they both spent their time together on a small ranch property outside of Ranchita, his property bordering on, fittingly enough, Hellhole Palms and the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

  Having also served my time as a SEAL Team member and seen my share of action, I knew just exactly what Seth meant.

  Now that I was working as a private contractor providing military working dogs (MWDs) to the navy and training them and their handlers, I was slightly removed from all that. Seth and Duco had ceased being active-duty military only three months earlier, and both would have chafed at the idea that they were “retired” and at all the associations we have of folks living in planned communities and riding around in golf carts or some such. Still, the transition for both man and dog isn’t an easy one, and having trained SEAL Team members and their canine counterparts, I felt a deep empathy for both sides of the partnership. I can’t really say that it was a formal part of my job or that it was written into my contract with the government that I pay these visits to my former trainees. It was a privilege and an honor, and more than that, a great pleasure to see them still together.

  In most ways, Duco was still fitter and more capable than 99.9 percent of the dogs in this country, but that wasn’t good enough for the kind of demands that he had to meet downrange in places like Afghanistan. Not only was the work so demanding but also the stakes were so high that anything less than the absolute best fell short of the requirement. It wasn’t a question of heart. Duco still had the drive and determination, but the inevitable toll from age and years of stress was starting to creep in.

  I knelt down alongside Duco and draped my arm around him. “Braafy,” I said. It always amazed me that something as simple as that short statement of approval meant so much to a dog, that over the years teams like Seth and Duco had developed such a bond of trust that the dog would willingly and gladly place himself in positions of peril.

  A few minutes later, Seth and I sat down on the deck he’d recently built. Duco resumed his perimeter position in the shade. Seth told me a little bit about the enclosure he had built, split rail and wire, and he nodded out past the line of postholes he’d dug, the piles of dirt like overturned
funnels flanking them.

  “I’m not sure if I’m keeping the coyotes from getting in or Duco from getting out. I’m likely doing those varmints a favor either way. Duco would give them more than they bargained for, no doubt.” Seth’s voice still possessed a mild twang, revealing his Smoky Mountain roots.

  “Damn straight he would.”

  “They wouldn’t know what hit them.”

  Inevitably the talk turned to war stories. Seth shared with me an incident that forged the bond that existed between him and his dog.

  “That time you took us out on that training exercise, doing the house-to-house maneuvers”—Seth shook his head and smiled—“he got hold of that target, and I thought I was going to have to choke him out to get him to release.”

  “They do like to bite,” I said flatly, underscoring my understatement, “and Duco does more than most.”

  “I remember looking him in the eye, neither of us willing to give in, and then it dawned on that dog that he was the one who was going to give in, on account of me, and not because he wanted to. Then I knew I had him.”

  Seth went on to say that he believed that was the moment when he and Duco came to a better understanding. “I think of it this way: my daddy raised me to fear and respect him, and I did. But with what you helped us with, Duco obeyed because he got the idea that was the right thing to do and not ’cause I was going to beat his ass. Never in my life would I have thought a dog could communicate so much with a look and his posture.”

  “It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it almost defies explanation,” I said.

  “Hard work and love,” Seth added, summing it up pretty nicely, I thought.

  “Hey, Bud.” Duco turned toward Seth, his eyes and ears alert. Seth smiled. “Good boy.”

  No matter that the navy had invested more than fifty thousand dollars in the acquisition, training, and care of Duco before Seth spent that year in our program pre-deployment, Duco was still “his.” That was as it should be; unfortunately, it isn’t always. I’ve trained hundreds of dogs for a variety of purposes, and it’s not always easy to let them go to another home, especially a quality dog like Duco. Training dogs to be of service to us is my job, and it’s also my passion. Seeing how a pair like Seth and Duco continue to operate does my heart good.