War Dogs

by Rebecca Frankel

  Determining which fledgling handlers have the most potential is not always easy, even for the most experienced in the trade. Kevin Behan was never very good at picking out which of the handlers he was training would be the strong ones. Good at reading the dogs, yes, but he was never quite as good at reading the people.

  Behan, a career dog trainer and author of Natural Dog Training and Your Dog Is Your Mirror, began working with his first dog, a poodle named Onyx, when he was only ten years old. But then, dog training was in his blood. His father, John Behan, was one of the most renowned dog trainers of his time. When the US military first started using dogs in the 1940s, they brought Behan’s father in as a training expert to help prepare dogs and handlers alike. John Behan wrote about his time training dogs and military handlers during World War II in his 1946 book Dogs of War. But Kevin realized at a young age that he had his own way of handling dogs, one that worked and strayed far outside the methods his father employed. And over the course of his long career, Behan has trained thousands of dogs, from household dogs to police dogs and of course their owners and handlers.

  But it wasn’t until Behan worked with dog handlers in the Connecticut police department that he began to take stock of these handlers on the scale of their egos. Personally, he had always favored the quiet, introspective handlers over the loud bombastic ones, even if he recognized that there wasn’t any room for passivity in handling dogs and so often dismissed anyone who appeared to lack voluminous confidence. But he soon realized that his initial impressions of these officers had skewed his expectations. Over time, Behan saw how the soft-spoken handlers proved to be the most intuitive, and when the occasion called for it, they exhibited an unexpected resilience, revealing an inner strength that he found surprising. The most talented handlers have to possess a dynamic aspect to their personalities. So, in the end what he would look for with these handlers was a balance.

  It struck him as he watched these officers work—if a handler were to think of the dog only as a tool, this, Behan found, was limiting. But when a handler considered the dog a projection of his ego, that was even worse.

  But if there’s one thing not lacking in the dog-handling field, it’s ego. The term “dog whisperer” gets thrown around a lot. Get a group of young handlers together, and there’s bound to be some jockeying around who is the handler with the biggest, baddest dog, the one who hits and bites the hardest.

  A good rule of thumb in gauging a handler on the job—Is he being too aggressive? Is he being too passive?—I found, is simply to watch the dog.

  When Lackland Air Force base in Texas hosts its interservice Iron Dog Competition in May 2012, I join Chris Jakubin, who has brought along Mack and some of his handlers. The competition is designed to test a variety of skills over the course of the two-day trials—the very essence of the collective education a handler and his dog have developed together as a team, whether in training or during deployment. The course stretches across many miles and is meant to challenge the handler and the dog physically as well as mentally; it includes a low river crossing, an obstacle where handlers have to carry their dogs up and down a hill, as well as a basic obstacle course that includes an “injured soldier,” a heavy dummy that handlers must carry or drag to “safety” while still managing their dogs and their weapons.

  In addition to the competition there are a series of classroom seminars and a host of hands-on courses. In the San Antonio morning heat, I stand alongside a group of handlers who’ve circled around to watch an outdoor demonstration. The man leading the exercise is not a military handler but a private vendor. He is attempting to illustrate his theory that the way to maximize a dog’s defensive drive is to heighten the threat at the peak of the dog’s response. As he explains to the group, this extra push will elicit the “defender” in the dog, the ultimate “fighter.”

  The man invites a handler from the group to bring his dog onto the field and instructs him to hold the dog’s leash taut. Then, like a bullfighter, the man begins to slowly advance on the dog and his handler, his face drawn into an expression of sheer aggression—mean and contorted. In one hand he holds a baton, in the other the red top to a water cooler that he brandishes like a shield. He is the aggressor picking a fight. If this dog is prepared to face this “attacker” he will exhibit the telltale signs: the strong, deep bark that says, “I am not afraid of you”; the straight back; the excited tail; and a forward lurching motion—all showing he is ready to engage this threat. But this dog’s bark is high and shrill, and his tail is tucked in a downward loop, a half circle pointing to the ground. Instead of straining at his leash to get closer, he dances uncertainly from side to side. This dog is signaling fear, but the man continues to advance. And then the foul smell of excrement fills the air. The dog has literally just had the shit scared out of him.

  Handlers might call this “melting the dog,” meaning that a dog has been pushed beyond his limits. While it doesn’t indicate necessarily that a dog’s will to work has been broken, “melting” a dog is far from ideal and it’s something handlers want to avoid. You can take a weak dog and build confidence, but you can just as easily push a fragile dog deeper into his insecurities. With the right amount of patience and attention a handler can work a dog through his fears and overcome his reluctance. But it’s a fine line to navigate, pushing the limits of a dog’s confidence, and a crucial one to maintain. An experienced handler can determine, just by observing a dog, whether he possesses the will to defend himself in a compromising situation, an assessment that can help protect not just the dog but whoever may be on the other end of the leash.

  During his seminar in Texas, Jakubin shows the assembled handlers a video of just such a dog teetering on that line. On the screen, the handlers are conducting a routine traffic stop. Jakubin, in the role of the aggressor, is dressed like a bank robber: he’s outfitted all in black and wears a ski mask, carrying a big black rubber baton. After refusing to heed the warnings of the dog handler, Jakubin “the criminal” advances on the dog. At first the dog tries to defend himself, starting forward toward Jakubin, but then he retreats, skirting backward, trying to hide behind his handler. Jakubin backs off, taking a few steps away and lowers his weapon. After another minute or so he advances toward the handler and the dog with his voice raised, giving the dog another chance to engage and defend himself. But again the dog shows a clear lack of confidence—he gives a few short barks but ultimately retreats. Jakubin pulls off the ski mask. He didn’t need to be tough on the dog and there was no need to try again; he knew the dog was done.

  When the video cuts out, Jakubin turns back to his audience and explains to his seminar attendees that what they just saw was a dog who didn’t have the right kind of fight to be a patrol dog. But, he says, that’s okay. Not all dogs are meant to be patrol dogs. It’s no reflection on a handler’s ability. Just because the dog had failed to pass this test, it didn’t mean the handler had.

  And this is where Behan’s concern that a handler should not see his dog as an extension of his own pride comes in. Egos can be a problem. Egos can get in the way of judging a dog’s true ability. Egos, Jakubin believes, should be checked as soon as handlers walk in the training arena; they don’t make for good students or good teachers.

  During another training seminar at Langley Air Force Base in Newport News, Virginia, I watch Jakubin coach a handler. She is working on a drill with her dog. The cool of the morning hours has simmered away in the humidity and her face is beet red, the edges of her hair are dark with sweat that drips down her temples. Most of the other handlers have given up for the day, already put their dogs up, and are now just milling around the yard, clustering in the shade. But she continues to struggle with the task in front of her, focusing on each note Jakubin gives, her face crinkling in concentration. Later, when the seminar breaks for the day, Jakubin is impressed: what the handler lacked in skill, she more than made up for in persistence. In this career, the
handler’s drive to learn is just as crucial as the dog’s, perhaps even more important.

  The next day, I find myself sitting on the picnic bench under the only shade in the training yard. The handler on the bench beside me has a hardness to him that makes me uncomfortable. He is good looking, like a really angry, muscle-inflated version of Matt Damon; he’s done the majority of the shit-talking that morning during training in the small yard, and his tone rings more snide to me than supportive. I get the distinct impression that he has little interest in what I was doing here. But still he sits next to me on the bench. We sit in silence for a while, as a team works a drill over by the chain-link fence in the corner of the yard. And just when the quiet seems the most unbearable he starts to talk. He tells me how much he loved handling dogs, that he’d had the best job in the world. As he talks he stares ahead. Fuck all the lazy assholes in it for the quick promotion and the paycheck, he says. The day he had to trade in his dog for the position of kennel master was the saddest day of his life.

  What he says reminds me of something Richardson wrote. It was his recommendation, in fact, that each officer appointed to the post of keeper be done so on a temporary basis, first having to prove himself during a probationary period and not fully integrated or assigned to canine-related duties until the “result of the man’s work”—his aptitude for working with dogs—was proven.3

  That same afternoon Colonel Alan Metzler visits the clinic, dropping by the Langley training field to speak to the handlers assembled. As he walks across the yard, the air shifts; all the handlers pop up from their seats on the picnic bench. If they were leaning into the chain-link fence, they stand up away from it.

  Metzler is upbeat but intense, his moves with a tight decisiveness as he addresses the group. He is quick to tell the group to speak freely, to tell him directly what they need, what they would change if they could. There is a pause but then a few hands are raised. Some ask about funding, another handler suggests more training time and more special seminars like Jakubin’s. The colonel nods, his head bobbing efficiently; he is a serious listener. And then Staff Sergeant Kaluza, the handler from the picnic bench, starts to speak. He wants to know if they could do more to weed out the handlers who are in the job for the quick rope-climb up the totem pole, the ones who are in it for the high pay, the ones who lack the passion and intensity of the diehard handlers. He is frank and deadly serious. He wants them gone.

  Canine training can be a rough-and-tumble business. It takes a toll on the body. The resulting scratches, knuckle nicks, and bite marks—like scorecards or bedpost notches—are brands of the job and worn with pride. The badder the dog, the bigger the bite; the deeper the scar, the better the story.

  On a training field one young handler pulls off his shirt and upends his bandages to reveal the bite he received the day before. In this case, the dog hadn’t taken a temperamental turn; rather, it was the handler who’d made a move in the wrong direction during their bite-work training so that the dog, aiming for the protective layers, missed, and ended up raking off a good bit of skin right under the handler’s rib cage. Because the dog’s teeth only grazed the handler’s side, the marks look more like scratches—angry red and all the deeper where the canines had pierced the flesh.

  In the PowerPoint presentation Jakubin uses during the class portion of his seminar, one of the slides shows a particularly heinous dog bite. The label over the photo reads: “Super Epic Failure!!”

  The skin in the photo is ripped so completely, it looks as though a crude blade had sliced a square patch of skin from the sweetest, fleshiest section of this handler’s forearm. The blood pools in the wound, threatening to spill over edge; the rest of her arm is spotted with drops of red. Jakubin was with Staff Sergeant Ciara Gavin before she was rushed to the hospital. It’s the worst dog bite he’s ever seen.

  Gavin worked in Jakubin’s kennel at the Air Force Academy. She’d been partnered with a long-haired German shepherd who had a sweet temper. While this sweet dog had been competent in detection work, he never took to bite work, so Jakubin traded him to another base that was having trouble with a dog named Kelly, notorious for her volatile temperament and erratic moods. Not so fondly referred to as a “nasty little bitch,” Kelly had bitten at least three handlers and sent them each to the hospital. When she came to the Air Force Academy kennels, Gavin became her handler. It was Kelly who tore that piece out of Gavin’s arm.

  Kelly’s K-9 portrait hangs in the hallway of the Academy’s kennel with the others. Her forehead is stout and square, her ears lean at a somewhat sharper bend, turning out at their own stubborn angle. The lids of her eyes have a reddish hue and actually seem to glow. There is no other way to describe it—the dog looks demonic. Gavin, on the other hand, appears almost angelic in a cherry red fleece; the softness of it seems to warm the space around her. Her brown eyes radiate kindness.

  At best Kelly was merely unpredictable. Her moods changed suddenly and without warning or provocation; one minute Kelly was vicious and the next compliant, lying on her back offering her belly up for a scratch. Gavin would see the devil flash and then it would disappear again. And when Kelly went to that instant and ferocious place, snarling and bucking, it was like a rodeo, and wrangling her back down into submission was no easy feat.

  There was nothing especially foreboding about the day Kelly bit Gavin. She and Jakubin were just trying to work the dog through the fierce possessiveness she showed for her toys, attempting to establish trust and consistency by showing the dog that if she released the toy she would get it back again.

  Gavin was only standing behind Kelly, raising her arms and lifting the dog by the collar when Kelly whipped her head around, sinking in her teeth. It was the day Kelly beat Gavin at the rodeo.

  It was six weeks before Gavin was able to use her hand again. When she returned to work, Jakubin put Kelly’s leash back in Gavin’s hand, and she took it without thinking twice. Gavin could have refused, but in her mind, picking up Kelly’s leash wasn’t a choice. Pure pride and ego kept her going. In the end, it was the good kind of ego that prevented her from letting her fear override her confidence. It’s this side of ego in a canine handler that inspires persistence and the kind of commitment that separates a good handler from a great one. It was essential in the end that she get right back to work, to push through her fears of working with Kelly. It made Gavin a better handler.

  Kelly eventually went to a different kennel. Gavin completed her career as an Air Force handler in 2008. And though Gavin is no longer an MWD handler, she will never forget that bite. Even from a distance the twisted lines of the scar shine a pearly white on her wrist. She saw Kelly recently. The dog seemed calm and under control. But for a few seconds, the old devil in Kelly showed through. When the dog growled and snapped at her new handler, adrenaline coursed through Gavin and her heart thundered as if it would never settle back down.

  But as they say in K-9, it’s not a matter of if you’ll get bitten, only when.

  I can feel the soggy Virginia heat on my face, but it’s actually cool inside the enormous black bite suit I’m wearing. This luxurious damp is, I’m fully aware, lingering sweat from the bodies that had worn it during drills the day before, but I don’t care. This suit is my big, bulky armor of protection.

  The horses that had been grazing serenely just outside the fence the previous afternoon are now galloping in wide loops, stopping abruptly to shake out their manes and stamp the ground, their hooves setting off clouds of golden dust. Hurricane Irene is careening her way up the eastern coastline, and though it’s hours away from hitting the area around Langley Air Force Base, the horses have caught wind of the approaching storm. Their restlessness and unease is palpable and does little to quiet the loud thumping of my heart. Still, they are more calming than the ribbing calls coming from the crowd gathered inside the smaller training yard to watch me catch my first bite.

  “Catching a Bi
te” is exactly what it sounds like. It is essentially the act of becoming the animated human equivalent of a chew toy. And it’s a crucial part of a handler’s role in preparing his dog for patrol work. Bite-work training is learned in stages. This is for everyone’s safety—the dog’s, the handler’s, and the decoy’s. (The decoy—a handler—plays the role of “perpetrator” so the dog can learn how to detain a fleeing suspect during patrol work.) If a decoy catches a dog incorrectly—turns the wrong way or keeps his body too rigid—he can really hurt the dog, or himself. The decoy will wear a bite sleeve or a full bite suit. Bite suits vary in size and bulk, but ultimately their weight is gradually reduced until the decoy is wearing something thin enough to hide under street clothes. This way the dog learns to associate the bite with a perpetrator, rather than with the suit.

  The first suit I try on is huge. Two women handlers—the only other women besides myself in this group—do me a kindness, whether out of pity or female solidarity, and help me get into the gear. They hold out their arms so I have something to hang on to and work the zippers running down the side of the pant legs to squash them low to the ground, so that I can climb into them. Jakubin, who so far has been keeping a polite distance, looks relieved that I’m managing without his interference. The jacket is easier to get on but not easy to wear. It is very heavy and very large. This is when Jakubin steps in, shaking his head, and hands me a tack suit jacket, which is just as big but not as bulky and thick. It doesn’t fit exactly but it’s close enough. Under the weight of the jacket and the pants, I feel like I’m walking neck-deep through a pool, pushing against a wall of water. In a few minutes, I’m supposed to act the part of a fleeing suspect, and “run” away from a dog. I can hardly manage a respectable walk.