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

by Michael Ritland

  The trainers had assumed that Lloyd and the other members of the SEAL canine group had prior experience in handling working dogs. They shook their heads, wondering at the oddness of it all. They were likely wondering what was going to happen next themselves.

  Lloyd remembers those first few minutes in the hotel room vividly. Cairo trotted in, using that high-stepping gait that the breed is known for, and sniffed around the room, checking every corner of it. After a few minutes, he settled down, lying on the floor, watchful but quiet.

  “I got off easy. That night, in the room next to mine, I could hear his dog going crazy. It sounded like he was just chewing the place to pieces. I could hear things crashing to the floor. The next morning I asked the guy what was going on, and he told me that it wasn’t as bad as what one of the other guys had gone through. After tearing up that room, this handler had put his dog in the car, figuring he could do less damage there. The dog ended up tearing up a headrest, just chewed through the thing until all that was left of it was a metal frame and a pile of stuffing.”

  Lloyd had heard about the program from the master chief, who encouraged him to volunteer; at first he started to wonder if maybe he’d done something to piss off one of his superiors. As time went on, Lloyd came to have a great deal of respect for Cairo’s independent and fierce spirit. “He was tough. He wouldn’t back down. A few simple corrections with the stick often weren’t enough, he was that strong willed. He knew what was right and wrong, but I think he sensed that I was new at this whole deal, and he really tested me. As a result, I think in the end he wound up teaching me much more than I taught him.”

  Lloyd was being a bit modest. It’s clear that the two of them got over their initial rough patch and that they developed that close bond so essential to a successful pairing. Like most of the handlers, Lloyd had a successful career prior to joining the dog program. After graduating from BUD/S, his first assignment was with Seal Delivery Vehicle Team (SDVT) 1 on the West Coast. The SDVT platoons are a subset of the SEAL Teams and also fall under the aegis of the Naval Special Warfare Command. They trace their origins back to World War II, working with Italian and British combat swimmers and wet submersibles.

  Naval Special Warfare began using submersibles in the 1960s. The Coastal Systems Center developed and utilized the Mark 7, a free-flooding SDV (a kind of “convertible” submarine that can be open to the water like an automobile convertible can be open to the air) a lot like those in operation today. The Mark 8 Mod 1 and the soon-to-be-accepted-for-fleet-use Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS), a dry submersible, are launched from submarines especially adapted for the purpose of inserting combat swimmers primarily for reconnaissance missions.

  Lloyd also did a tour on the East Coast at SEAL Team 4, doing jungle work as well as drug interdiction efforts in South America. After two other assignments and an opportunity he passed on to work with the navy’s mammal program, he wound up exactly where he wanted to be with Cairo. Their first deployment was to Iraq. They spent a great deal of time in and around Lake Tharthar, a large body of water that sits in the center of an irregularly shaped rectangle demarcated by Haditha, Tikrit, Samarra, and Ramadi. Most people are more familiar with the term the “Sunni Triangle,” which also covers this same region, including Baghdad and Fallujah. Also known as the Triangle of Death, the area was home to some of Saddam Hussein’s strongest supporters, members of the same minority sect as the deposed dictator, and fellow members of the madman’s Baath party. A number of them thrived under his regime.

  This was one of the hottest zones in the war, and the intermingling of religious conservatives, various insurgent groups, Al-Qaeda members, and fierce anti-American sentiment made life more that difficult (to put it mildly) for our troops there. The efforts to clear dozen and dozens of small towns spread throughout the region—often called Little Fallujah because of the sometimes openly fierce and other times clandestine resistance to our presence there—were critical in the overall effort to curb the violence and provide support for the interim government in Iraq. With anti-American sentiment particularly high in that region, along with high population concentrations in the larger towns and cities, the operational tempo was particularly high, even though this was after the so-called surge.

  Lloyd remembers it this way: “Miles of road clearance. Miles of it. Multiple IED detections. So many that they started to blur together after a while. Cairo was just working and working. After a while, I noticed that he started to show signs of anxiety whenever I wanted him to load up in a vehicle, let alone a helo.”

  That was a strong indication that he was getting stressed. As Lloyd put it, “He definitely loved his helo rides. A lot of the other dogs got spooked in training, but not Cairo. He’d see one sitting there, rotors going or not, and he’d take off like a shot. He always wanted to be the first one on. Or if he saw them coming in to land, he’d spin circles in excitement. I’d just let him loose once they touched ground, and he would jump in the hold and sit in your seat, happy as could be.”

  Lloyd and Cairo hadn’t experienced any helo-related close calls or anything, so Cairo wasn’t associating bad things with the machines themselves. It was a clear case of the rides, on the ground and in the air, meaning one thing—the constant stress of working. Lloyd had to break that chain of associations somehow. He knew that Cairo was fine physically, and he’d noted no decline in his capabilities detecting explosives. Cairo’s mood wasn’t any different, either. Nothing that Lloyd could point to precisely seemed to be the cause of Cairo’s reluctance to mount up.

  He suspected that it might have had something to do with the change in the nature of the operation. Those miles and miles of road clearing were accompanied by search after search through compounds, most of which were empty, but which nevertheless required careful detection work. For a short while, Cairo had made no finds.

  “I wondered if maybe he was like a lot of dogs. When you throw something for them to fetch and they can’t find it, they get upset. They’ve failed to retrieve, and that’s just not their nature.”

  Those long few days of no hits roughly coincided with Cairo’s reluctance. Regardless of the cause, the effect of that delay was potentially dangerous enough that Lloyd needed to do some in-field retraining.

  Lloyd had worked with Cairo long enough that he sensed that this wasn’t a case where a correction, a negative consequence, was going to achieve the desired aim—getting Cairo more comfortable with climbing into an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC), a helo, or anything else that moved. Insertions and extractions were critical times, and any delays could become big problems. Lloyd figured that he had to take a few steps back from the actual boarding routine and replace those newly exhibited negative associations with positive ones.

  “Cairo was, and is, a ball dog. Like most of the dogs in the program, his prey drive was off the charts. That meant ball chasing was a huge reward for him.”

  Lloyd had to solve the problem by returning to a previous point in the training. He put Cairo’s vest on him and let him play with the ball for a bit. Then he attached his lead. He repeated the ball-playing scenario. With every activity that led up to going operational and then actually getting into a vehicle, he let Cairo get his reward. The point was that if Cairo had those positive associations with every step up to and including getting into a vehicle, he’d get over his stalled entrances. Lloyd’s retraining worked, and within a few days, Cairo was back on track.

  That was a good thing, because shortly after that, their string of no-finds was about to end. Despite being near a large lake, their area of operations was typical of the Iraqi topography: a few rolling hills breaking up an endless monotony of sand. The few palm trees and scrub weren’t quite needles in a haystack; they were more like bits of stem in a dry pile of pale brown rice. The low-walled buildings and flat roofs gave Lloyd the impression that they were moving through a boot print, a place where everything had somehow been squashed and compressed. The area had been hit with a severe droug
ht, and the fields lay fallow.

  “This was like being in ghost towns in an old western, except there weren’t any doors slapping in the breeze with their hinges squealing. It was eerie quiet. At one point, our platoon got 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 almost, like they do.”

  Lloyd saw a human figure dashing across the desolate landscape, beating feet toward a hut. The other team member raised his weapon, but Lloyd said, “I’m going to let Cairo go.”

  “You had to figure that anybody out here, with the rest of the place abandoned, had to be up to something. So Cairo was tearing after him, and he was running away from our position, and even with night vision on, it was kind of hard to see him. I could see the clouds of sand he was kicking up but not a whole lot else at that point. He was flooding down, and I could just make out the target going into one of the buildings, nothing more than a hut, really.”

  At that point, Lloyd and his teammate followed Cairo to the entrance. Because he hadn’t indicated any odor but had just stood at the door with his tail fanning, not sitting down, as would be his indicator, the boys felt it was safe to approach. Using techniques they’d been taught and practiced and used hundreds of times, they entered the building following Cairo. He immediately sat down, and inside a group of a dozen or so Iraqis all sat. Seeing the soldiers enter, they immediately put their hands in the air.

  “Cairo could have gone blasting in there and gone after any one of them. There were women and children, a couple of men, and that could have just been a really bad situation for us. In that area especially we were trying to win hearts and minds. The Sunni Triangle was like you’ve probably read about. You could just feel that vibe, that distrust and most likely hatred, being directed at us from all over. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if Cairo had done what he’d been trained to do, but he had some sense, that dog. He just sat there looking fierce as hell, and nobody moved. I could tell they were all scared. They sat there wide-eyed and looking like they were seeing the devil, but Cairo just held them there.”

  Lloyd and his teammate did a quick search of the room, and after a check on the Iraqis, separating them by gender in order to do so, they reunited everyone.

  “Things could have gone down worse in so many ways, but with Cairo leading us in there, we knew that we didn’t have to worry about our access point being rigged or even someone fleeing from that location. We took the guy we’d seen running into that building, and he was later questioned. We never found out the result of that, but we knew this: the guy was alive and could have provided valuable intel to us because of Cairo. Without the dog there, we would have likely opened fire. Who knows how many other people might have been wounded? I can’t say that Cairo saved our lives in this case, but he helped save some of our credibility, and we were able to fully demonstrate our operational commitment in the area. He helped us let folks know that we weren’t going to come in there and kick ass and take names later. The great thing about dogs is that they are nonlethal force. Our being able to apprehend that man who came running was important.”

  While on that three-day operation, Cairo demonstrated his value in another instance. Lloyd and his platoon continued searching buildings in the same area. During that stretch, Cairo went into more than fifty compounds and countless structures to search for explosives. That kind of repetition can dull your senses and your sense of potential dangers lurking. Lloyd was well aware that complacency could set in despite your best efforts to fight against it, especially under those conditions.

  “If you’ve never cleared a building, you can’t know how taxing that is mentally and to some extent physically. That was especially true on that deployment, because we’d heard reports of all kinds of insurgent activity in the area. From car bombs to snipers to IEDs to ambushes, we’d suffered some pretty heavy casualties. That weighs on your mind any time you go into some building. Having Cairo on point eased a lot of that anxiety over the unknown. He’d proved himself to the platoon while doing those road sweeps. They knew that they could trust that Cairo would either hit on the bad guys or their weapons or explosives. Going into a room wondering is not the best way to do it. Cairo minimized that worry.”

  During that operation, he found proof that the platoon’s vigilance was well worth the energy and time they expended.

  “We entered another of the small stone structures, and at first glance it looked just like the previous thirty-five of them had—a wood floor, a carpet, a few pieces of furniture, and not a whole hell of a lot more. Cairo did his thing, and he hit on odor and just sat right down in the middle of one room. We checked the table before moving it, but once it was moved to one side, and Cairo stayed right on that spot, we figured it had to be under the floor.”

  Once they removed some of the flooring, in the space between the floor joists, they found a cache of weapons and ammunition.

  “You know, in conventional warfare, if you find a few AKs and dozens of rounds, that’s probably not a big deal. But fighting the way we were, in our small teams and not knowing if any Iraqi national was an insurgent or Al-Qaeda, getting those few guns and rounds was huge. All it takes is one weapon and one round, and somebody could be killed.”

  Every time Cairo assisted in a successful detection, the men grew more comfortable with him. Call them small victories, but they were a morale boost and made it clear that despite the large number of searches the soldiers had to do, every single one of the victories was important. As Cairo’s find total increased, so did the men’s belief in him and in the operation.

  “Cairo was inspirational in a lot of ways. To see how tirelessly he went after it, running and searching night after night and day after day, you felt like you had to keep up with him. SEAL Team members are a competitive bunch, and nobody wanted a dog to outdo them. Plus, just having him there, let alone making finds, gave everybody a feel good. Maybe this is a bit of an exaggeration, but for me, even if Cairo hadn’t had any finds or apprehensions, he would have been a valuable asset for us. Just having him as a companion, one bit of home out there, was huge for us. And I don’t mean just for me. Cairo was great with all the other team members. You’re out there. You’re hungry. You’re tired. A dog comes up to you, and you feel better.”

  Lloyd and Cairo did a second rotation together, this one in Afghanistan, and the results were the same. As Lloyd said to me, “It’s hard to prove a negative. By that I mean, how can you know how many lives those weapons and explosives might have taken if they’d been used? Since that didn’t happen, then you’ll never really know. In my mind, that doesn’t matter, the exact numbers.”

  Lloyd and Cairo are still together, though Cairo has since retired. Lloyd has worked in training exercises with other dogs, and he has an even greater appreciation for what they’re capable of.

  “We had set up a two-part scenario. First an explosive find, followed by a muzzle/fighting session on the outside of the building we were using. I was in operational simulation clothes, wearing headgear, but not an outfit the dogs could bite into, that is, a bite suit. The way it was supposed to work was that after the dogs found the explosive odor, they were to come around the side of the building, and we’d have a muzzle station set up. The handler would then put the muzzle on the dog. After that, with the muzzle on, the dogs were supposed to then come fight with me. Unfortunately, there was a window open in the building, and the dog caught wind of me prior to the handler taking him outside around the back to put his muzzle on, like we had planned. Out the goddamn window he goes, and pile-drives me like a rag doll. He caught me on my bare left arm with a full-mouth bite, and I felt like my forearm was being run over by a car. He caught me right in that intersection where your forearm and your bicep meet. I could feel his teeth popping through the skin and ripping through muscle. I didn’t want him to release, because that would cause more of the rippin
g instead of just a puncture, so with my right knee, I kind of turned him and lifted him off the ground so he wouldn’t have as much leverage. He had hold of me for thirty or forty seconds until his handler came and got him off.”

  Lloyd’s wounds healed fairly quickly, but he came in for a lot of grief from his fellow handlers. “Everybody wanted to take pictures of the wounds, so of course before I could get on to the hospital, I had to show everybody the punctures with little bits of flesh poking out. I couldn’t be too pissed about what happened, and I have to say I really understood for the first time just how powerful the dogs’ jaws are. With a bite suit on, you get bruises and sores, but this was at another level completely.”

  Now that Cairo is retired, he enjoys his time off but still needs to be worked fairly regularly. When he isn’t doing some variation of his formal training, he still wants to be a working dog. “Cairo helps put the groceries away. I hand him something, and for as powerful as those jaws are, when he carries a carton of milk or whatever, he never busts though the package. I was doing some work around the house, and I had a bunch of lumber delivered, and Cairo was helping out by dragging two-by-fours from the pile to where I was working. He wasn’t about to just sit there and watch me. He also gets along well with my other two dogs, especially my little beagle. Cairo lets that little guy roll him. Cairo probably wouldn’t like me telling people this, but he’s got a thing for pillows: he just tears them up. He also has had this little blanket that he carries around all the time. He’s had it for years now, and I guess having it makes him feel secure.”

  Lloyd laughs at the irony of that statement, knowing that the tables have been turned in a sense. Cairo used to help him feel secure and now one of the things he provides him—a security blanket—helps reassure the dog. “He can still tear after things, but I’ve never tried to see how he’d do in any drills with that blanket in his mouth.”