Soldier Dogs (16 page)

With the way that dogs have become a deeply integral part of our families and our lives in the last couple of decades, it’s natural to think that the military’s stand on positive reinforcement training is a recent development—one that adheres to philosophies like the following, from a book about training war dogs:

Modern thinking, to be sure. Only the author, Lieutenant Colonel Edwin H. Richardson, founder of the British War Dog School, wrote it in 1920. It’s from his book
British War Dogs: Their Training and Psychology
, which—together with his articles and influence during both World War I and II—helped set the stage for how the U.S. would train war dogs when this country finally got our program going during World War II.

Richardson believed that positive reinforcement was the only way to successfully train a dog, that in the end you had to appeal to a dog’s good nature and desire to please. War-dog historian Michael Lemish says that the military followed this doctrine of positive reinforcement and never supported brutality or harsh treatment. But it hasn’t all been ear scratches and rubber balls for soldier dogs. For instance, mine-detecting dogs in World War II were frequently trained using electric shock collars.

And one form of training for sentry dogs in Vietnam sounds pretty crazy. It was called the agitation method and is described as “getting the dog excited about attacking his prey. Usually a small branch would be used and whacked across his backside to make the
dog even more excited about going after his prey. It was not punishment.”

Those were some of the few real sticks officially used. These days, carrots are everything.

A handler told me about the first bomb dog he had. The dog was a veteran and knew exactly what was expected of him. “He’d be like, ‘Get my Kong ready and get set to praise me up, and I’ll go find a bomb for you.’ When you think of what this rubber toy inspires, it’s just incredible.”

The training and handling of military working dogs today just wouldn’t be the same without the Kong. It was, fittingly, a retired police dog named Fritz who inspired the creation of this hard rubber toy. Back in the mid-1970s, the German shepherd was always chewing rocks, cans, anything hard he could get his mouth around. It frustrated his owner, Joe Markham, to no end. One day, as Markham was doing some repairs to his 1967 Volkswagen van, Fritz started chewing rocks again. To distract him, Markham threw Fritz various van parts he was through with. The dog took no interest in the radiator hoses and other bits flying toward him, until Markham tossed a hard rubber suspension part to his dog. Fritz went mad for it.

Markham knew he was on to something. He finessed a design and found a rubber manufacturing plant near his Colorado home. After seeing the prototype, his business partner said it looked like an earplug for King Kong, and a name was born. Kongs are still made in Colorado, of a proprietary superstrong rubber. They dominate the dog-toy market.

Kongs are ubiquitous in the military working dog world. You’ll find Kongs at every military kennel and, really, anyplace in the world where there are U.S. military dogs. Lackland ordered nearly one thousand Kong toys in 2010, just for the dog school and handler course. Kongs even show up all over Afghanistan now, thanks to the presence of working dogs there. A Kong representative says the company donates thousands of Kongs annually to military dog facilities and handlers.

Kong is not one toy but actually a line of hard rubber dog toys. The most popular Kongs in the military are red or black, with what looks like three balls of different sizes fused together in a snowmanlike configuration. They’re hollow inside, and many civilians like to stuff treats into them to keep their dogs occupied with getting them out.

But in the military, Kongs are not used in this manner. They’re bouncy rewards that supplement the dog’s primary reward of pleasing the handler. (Some trainers say that the reverse is true—that handlers are secondary rewards to Kongs and other toys. It likely depends on the dog and handler.) Kongs gratify a dog’s prey and play drives. Toss a Kong on the ground, and it doesn’t bounce true, as a tennis ball does. (Military dogs also get tennis balls as rewards. Even a glove will do in a pinch.) Its odd shape causes the Kong to bounce and skip erratically, much like a fleeing rabbit or other prey. Dogs chase, catch, and experience what’s apparently the unparalleled feeling of the toy/prey in their mouths.

“To the dog with a high prey drive, the Kong is a million-dollar paycheck. You throw it and it’s run, chase, bite! They can’t help themselves,” says Gunnery Sergeant Kristopher Knight. But there are soldier dogs whose prey drive isn’t so strong. Kongs or praise or
even food rewards may not be enough pay for them to do their jobs well. These dogs may certify at dog school and even do passably well at their home bases. But when they deploy to a place like Afghanistan, the motivation to sniff for IEDs can be the sole factor that separates life and death—for the dogs, their handlers, and anyone nearby.

Gunfire, mortar blasts, IED explosions, and intense heat are part of the canvas of extreme conditions troops and dogs have to deal with in that war-ravaged country. Even dogs with fine prey drives can have difficulty functioning well once they deploy to this foreign, oft-hostile setting.

Fortunately, soldier dogs and handlers have a Stateside location where they go to prepare for the rigors of deploying to this kind of environment. If you were blindfolded and taken there, you could easily think you were already deployed.

     22     

W
hen you walk by an empty dog trailer, it’s supposed to be silent. And when Marine Gunnery Sergeant Kristopher Knight—known to his commanding officer, Captain John “Brandon” Bowe, as “the smartest and most amazing man on the planet to train dogs”—passes within two feet of a trailer’s empty kennels on a 110-degree August afternoon at the Yuma Proving Ground, it is indeed mute. But when I walk past it a few seconds later, I’m surprised when a series of hefty barks fly out of a lone dog, Rocky P506. He’s waiting in semi air-conditioned comfort while the rest of his class tracks faux bad guys in the distance. He is there as backup, in case any of the dogs are too spooked to track well after a hair-raising helicopter ride that was part of the day’s training. He won’t stop barking at me, even when I’m twenty feet away.

“Hey, Gunny, why didn’t that dog bark at
you
?” I ask.

“Heh heh,” he answers and we walk on.

We return about an hour later after watching the dog’s colleagues at work, and Gunny passes by the trailer. Once again,
silence. As soon as I get within a few feet, a deep
RAW RAW RAW
staccatos at me.

“Gunny, why is he only barking at
me
?” Dogs always like me. What’s up with this one?

“Could be any number of factors, even something like you’re not in a uniform. He’s used to people in uniform,” he explains.

The barking continues and Gunny Knight walks toward the trailer. “Watch this. You can breathe on him and calm him down.” He goes up to the German shepherd, who is still barking in my direction behind the metal bars of his kennel. Gunny blows a stream of air gently on his head, and the dog almost instantaneously quiets down and sits.

Bowe told me that Gunny has a way with dogs that no one else has. “He talks dog. That’s the thing about Gunny Knight. He speaks their language. He speaks dog slang. He speaks dog En-glish. He speaks dog Ebonics. No matter what language, he knows how to read dogs, talk dogs, train dogs, and I’ve never seen in all my years in the Marine Corps—and that’s going on twenty—anyone who can work with dogs like him.”

I get closer to look at this transformed canine, in awe of what Gunny has done. Suddenly Rocky starts in at me again.

“Go ahead, breathe on him,” Gunny instructs. “Let him smell that you are calm and can control him, you are in charge.”

I conjure up the words “I’m the calm boss” in my brain, and I exhale gently on Rocky’s head. It doesn’t work. I realize that while I’m calm, I’m not feeling like the boss, just making up the words. So I channel Gunny Knight as my persona. No words this time, just a feeling—a benevolent authority; I am momentarily muscle-bound,
with a big cocky grin. I exhale, briefly becoming Gunny Knight, breathing Gunny Knight vibes onto Rocky’s head.

Rocky suddenly stops. He sits and looks at me, mouth slightly open, seeming almost relaxed. He stays like that even as I walk away with Gunny.

What just happened?

Gunny tells me that he uses this technique to calm down dogs and let them smell the chemical cocktail that is uniquely him. “By doing so, the dog is able to determine multiple factors about me—confidence, fear, threatening behaviors, trust, calm nature, etc.”

I later ran the incident by canine cognition expert Alexandra Horowitz. I thought she’d know exactly what magic Gunny had worked. But somewhat surprisingly, she said that it’s common wisdom in dog circles that blowing on a dog’s face is an aggressive action. “I could conjecture that a dog who is blown on might stop being restless, but not necessarily because they feel calm. They might feel alarmed, too. I would have to see the rest of the dog’s behavior and posture in context to get a read on this marine’s dogs.”