Soldier Dogs (13 page)

Pretending that an old .40-caliber metal ammo can is actually a dog.

For three days or so.

In front of all their classmates and anyone else who walks by.

These cans are referred to as buckets—not to be confused with the bucket that Fred had to wear over his head. The buckets were once used to safely transport ammunition, but now, through the
magic of the imagination, and the embarrassment of the majority of the students in the class, they have been transformed into dogs.

The buckets are shaped sort of like extra tall shoe boxes and are usually olive or khaki colored. They have two handles at the top and sometimes writing or lettering on the side. They look nothing whatsoever like dogs.

But that’s the whole point. Just as medical students don’t start out operating on living humans, handler students don’t begin their training with a real live dog. It’s too risky for the dogs and the students.

The real dogs the handlers train with aren’t actually military working dogs, either. These dogs are “training aids.” They live at Lackland and are assigned to handler classes throughout the year. Most training-aid dogs are here because they didn’t quite cut it as working military dogs. Some washed out of dog school but are perfectly good as canine partners at the school. Others may have already served overseas or at their home bases but, for health or behavioral reasons, cannot work as fully functioning working dogs in the field. Even though they’re not deployable, they’re valuable assets to the military, and the dog program doesn’t want any green handlers messing them up.

By the time they meet their buckets, the students have already gone through a few days of classroom work. These are small, intimate groupings, with twelve students maximum per class. They get plenty of hands-on time with three stuffed German shepherd toy dogs, learning the very basics, like how to put choke collars on them the right way, how to talk to them, and some basic commands. The dogs, though, are stuck in the sitting position, get knocked down
easily, and get dirty far too quickly for anything more than classroom training. Since function is far more important than form around here, the buckets are dragged out for the next step in training handlers.

Handlers name their buckets to make these exercises more realistic. Brandon Liebert, the former marine dog handler we met earlier in the book, called his bucket Cananine (pronounced Can-a-nine) because it was a can and it had a 9 spray-painted on the side. “It helped make it a little more believable that this was a dog,” he says.

The idea is to do with the buckets just about everything handlers would normally do in the beginning stages of working with a canine training aid. Students have to tell the buckets to sit and lie down; they put two collars on their bucket’s handles, making sure they have the choke chain going in the right direction and learning how to change from a dual collar to just a choke. They learn to keep proper safety distance from other students’ buckets. They even do drill movements (for those not in the military, that’s the “left
face
” business)—no easy feat with a bucket, or a dog.

One of the first things students are taught when working with these military working buckets is how to offer praise. Genuine, heartfelt praise is essential to building a bond between dog and handler. In the working world of these dogs, you don’t just say “Good boy!” in a slightly enthusiastic tone. You go crazy for the great deed the dog has done. Your voice goes up at least an octave, often more, just about as high as you can get it and not sound squeaky. You talk fast, and the vowels of your words are pulled longer, and sometimes you’re not even understandable, and you’re so enthusiastic that if you had a tail it would be wagging like mad. Many experienced handlers even throw in a “Woooo!” At Lackland, the trainers of new
MWDs often add an exuberant “Yeeeehawwwww, hoooo dogggyyyyyyy!” in cowboy fashion. And for extra emphasis, on occasion, “Touch
down
Texas!”

When in the presence of handlers and trainers working their dogs—as opposed to buckets—you’ll sometimes hear what sounds like the most enthusiastic praise, but then you realize that the words are all wrong. The tone is thrilled, but instead of words like “What a good boyyyy! Great fiiiiiiiiiiind!” they go something to the effect of “Oh my goddddd! How come you took so long to find that, you little dummy?!” It’s a handler’s way of expressing a little frustration while the dog remains encouraged about his efforts.

Talking to a real dog with such gusto can take some getting used to. Praising a bucket in such a fashion makes for a real challenge.

“A lot of students get embarrassed. They get red-faced. Some get real quiet, even if they didn’t start out that way,” says Air Force Technical Sergeant Justin Marshall, instructor supervisor at Lackland. “We let them know that every single canine handler out there right now has gone through this. That seems to help a little.”

And heaven forbid a bucket gets loose. Someone yells out “loose dog,” and everyone who hears it has to repeat it so everyone else can know what exactly is going on. Handlers who have a bucket on leash have to choke up (grab as close to the leash clasp as possible) on the leash. If the leashed bucket were a real dog, the handlers would then have to put their dog’s face in their crotch area so the dog wouldn’t see the loose dog coming, and therefore would likely not react aggressively. (Military working dogs are often aggressive with each other, and fights can break out in an instant. Practicing these maneuvers with buckets is best for everyone’s sake.)

Bucket training goes on until the students all seem to have a firm grasp of techniques. It usually takes two or three days. At the end, there’s a friendly competition in which students try to make the fewest mistakes in handling their buckets. The prize is a good one: The winner gets to choose which real dog he will be working with for the detection portion of the handler course. Other students can decide on their dogs based on how they ranked in the game, but sometimes instructors match students with dogs themselves, especially if they feel a student will do better with a certain type of dog personality. (A timid handler and an extra-bold, assertive dog may not make the best pairing, for instance.)

The buckets are stored away for the next class, and the bucket graduates head to the kennels to get their dogs. Most students are thrilled to finally be working with a flesh-and-blood dog. But for a few—usually those who had little experience with dogs before—it can be daunting. “Some just get scared when they get to the kennel and have to get the dog out. They feel overwhelmed, especially if the dog is really excited,” says Marshall. Buckets don’t spin in mad circles, and they don’t accidentally bite you or bark until your eardrums throb. The energy of these dogs can prove too much for these students, and they turn in their leash shortly after being introduced to their dog.

For the most part, the dogs who work as training aids are old hands at this. They’ve done this before, sometimes many times before, and some almost seem to try to help students get through the training: “C’mon, just follow me, and I’ll find the explosive and I’ll make you look good, pal. Then you praise me up and give me my Kong and we’ll be square.”

For the remainder of the handler course, the dogs will help
their students learn the basics of dog handling. Collars will inevitably be pulled too tight, commands won’t be clear, students will balk or move the wrong way when doing bite training, but the dogs persevere. They’re happy to be out of their kennels and working. They relish a handler’s enthusiasm and praise, and the Kong or ball they get whenever there’s a job well done, and the daily, long grooming/bonding sessions from their temporary assignment.

Most students make it through the eleven-week program. By graduation, a couple of students may already have the makings of scars from when a body part was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Seasoned handlers usually have several, all with good stories attached.

Graduation is held in a large fluorescently lit auditorium with mustard-colored walls. On the walls are photographs of handlers who died in the line of duty—a somber reminder of the reality of the noble profession they are entering. It doesn’t stop the high fives and cheering of the small band of green handlers who are about to embark on a career with a built-in best friend.

     19     

I
t takes about five weeks longer to create a standard-issue dual-purpose military working dog than it does to graduate a handler. During this time, dog school instructors teach dogs fundamental obedience, detection, and patrol work. In the end, the dog will have a set of basic skills that can be built upon when he is assigned to a home base, where the dog will expand on the previous training.

Air Force Technical Sergeant Jason Barken, a master trainer and training team leader at Lackland, likens dog school to an assembly line. With eighteen to twenty-two dogs per team of trainers, and nine or ten teams of trainers at a time, some two hundred dogs can be going through training here, albeit at different stages of dog school. They’re staggered so not all dogs end up in one place at one time.

Each team is made up of five to seven trainers, including a “red patch,” or training supervisor. The red patches wear a red triangular-shaped patch on their tan overalls, which distinguishes them from all the other trainers wearing tan overalls on the team. When a team gets a trailer of dogs, they divvy them up. So for a
typical trailer of eighteen dogs and a six-trainer team that will teach them the ropes, each trainer ends up with three.

While many dogs will already have some familiarity with bite training because the Department of Defense won’t buy them if they don’t have a decent bite, many don’t know even the most elemental obedience. Most don’t even know the command for “sit” or “lie down.” And if they do, it may well be in Dutch or German.

Dogs go through detection training first. They’ll learn eight explosives scents here (or a variety of narcotic scents), starting out in much the same fashion they did when they were chosen for this work from the vendors. Only this time instead of vanilla or licorice, trainers use real commercial explosives.

A dog may have a slight change of behavior when he smells a new scent like potassium chlorate—kind of like a “Whoa, that was weird! Let me give that an extra sniff” reaction. It can be very subtle. Sometimes it’s just a little extra time spent on a scent. When the dog has clearly detected the odor, a trainer “pays on sniff” by throwing a Kong over the dog’s head so it lands on the scent. It seems to the dog like it’s not the trainer who pays him, but the scent.

That dogs can believe the scent of potassium chlorate magically creates a bouncing Kong is just one of those things that makes them lovable. The trainer doing the high-pitched happy cheerleading for the dog’s deed might seem a little odd to the dog at first. One wonders if the dog thinks the handler is just as happy to see the Kong appear from the explosive as the dog himself is.

The reason for the ball coming from the odor and not from a trainer at this early stage is that the dog shouldn’t always be looking to the trainer to see if he’s on the right track. A dog can’t have this kind of dependence in theater, since handlers have no idea where
IEDs may be. Looking for approval or reward in a wartime situation can lead to a dog stepping onto an IED instead of detecting it first.

After a while, when a dog detects the scent, he’ll stare at it, which of course leads to the reward. Trainers then introduce the “sit” command when a dog sniffs an odor, because it’s important that dogs don’t keep wandering around once they’ve detected something, and because sitting makes it clear that the dog isn’t just staring at a passing beetle. The technique where a dog sits and stares at an odor is known as deferred final response. Some dogs may lie down instead if the odor source is low or it’s under something like a car.

Once a dog learns the technique for one scent, other scents can be fairly quick to follow. It’s as if a lightbulb goes off: “Ah, here’s a new, weird, unnatural, potent scent. Let’s see if a Kong comes out of it!” After a while, the Kong doesn’t even have to be used in this manner anymore, but it’s inevitably part of the reward. The scents that dogs learn to detect at the 341st are just the start of a bouquet of narcotic or explosives scents they’ll be able to uncover. Many more will be added as they continue their training at their home bases and beyond.