Soldier Dogs (21 page)

(A Jerry leg is a realistic, large, furry, fake dog leg that handlers can use for practicing placing IVs, bandaging, splinting, and giving injections. Complete Jerry dogs are also used for training. They have an artificial pulse and expandable lungs for mouth-to-snout resuscitation. There are also dogs that can be intubated, but the program doesn’t currently have any of those.)

Predeployment training does not get much more realistic than
this. Miller would later tell me that he was exhausted when he got Tina to the building, and his adrenaline was pumping almost as it would have in a real-life war emergency with Tina. “It’s the best canine training I’ve ever had. The hardest, too,” he says. “If this doesn’t prepare you for Afghanistan, nothing will.”

The woman who is helping Miller patch up his dog is Army Captain Emily Pieracci. She is a veterinarian, and one of her main jobs is to prepare handlers here in every aspect of emergency care possible, as well as in the prevention of problems to begin with. She also makes sure all dogs who come through here are ready for deployment—medically fit and not suffering from heat casualties.

Pieracci grew up with dogs. Her mother was a police dog handler for the Washington State Patrol. Pieracci graduated Washington State University’s veterinary school in 2009 and spent several months working in the private sector in the field of emergency medicine in order to pay back her student loans.

She joined the army in 2010. She has found her calling. “The army offered something different from regular civilian practice. I got to jump out of airplanes, shoot weapons, and get lost doing land navigation. I could be a vet and also do a lot of active stuff that didn’t involve veterinary medicine.” (The army also repaid her vet school loans, which in this economy was a huge blessing.)

Within her first month at Yuma, she knew this was the place for her. She loves working with the handlers and their dogs. “I could not imagine being anywhere else other than the military. To me, this job carries so much meaning. I have such a strong sense of purpose when I care for these dogs. Keeping them healthy saves our troops’ lives. It’s both powerful and humbling all at the same time.”

Pieracci enjoys the heat here, too. But it’s this very heat that can
also do in the best dogs. Heat injuries among working dogs are not uncommon here or at Lackland or in Afghanistan. On warm days, handlers take their dogs’ temperatures (rectally, with digital thermometers; a dog’s normal body temperature is between about 101 and 102.5) every two hours, sometimes more. But temperature tolerance can vary greatly. It’s not necessarily how hot the dogs get, but how well they can compensate. One MWD went down out here at only 104. Some dogs hit 109 and do fine after they get cooled off quickly. It all depends on the individual dog. Just as important an indicator as temperature, or more so, is how a dog acts.

As Pieracci explains it, heat injury has three categories: heat stress, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke. The signs progress very rapidly, and heat stress and heat exhaustion can be missed by handlers if they are not looking for these. Heat stroke is the most severe form. Signs include rectal temps above 108, unwillingness to work, lethargy, vomiting, diarrhea, uncontrolled panting, and seizures.

Reaching a level defined as heat stroke is different for every dog. But most military working dogs have very high drive, which works against those looking out for them; these dogs would rather work than not. That means handlers have to be extremely vigilant for early warning signs.

Dogs here always have patches shaved on their front legs. That’s for easier access to the cephalic vein if a dog goes down during training. It’s a precautionary measure Pieracci takes to save time in the field during an emergency, and she encourages handlers to shave this area every two weeks while deployed. She uses the vein to administer IV fluids, which help cool the dog quickly, support stable blood pressure, and help avoid shock. On deployment, if no medics or vets are around, the handler will have to do this. That’s
why they insert all IVs during veterinary procedures. It helps keep them ready just in case they need to act quickly on their own.

Pieracci says that dogs who go through Yuma tend to fare better with heat injuries downrange than other MWDs. That’s mostly due to handler knowledge. Part of the reason the dogs train out here is to show handlers what their dogs look like when they’re getting hot: Does the dog seek shade? Does she quit working, or will she keep working no matter how hot it gets? Having the handlers see how their dogs react in Yuma helps them identify when their dog might be overheating in Afghanistan.

Coming to Yuma also makes handlers hyperaware of the need to check dog trailers every ten minutes to ensure the air-conditioning is working when dogs are inside. (It’s not very cold air, but just enough to make it somewhat comfortable—or at least tolerable.) “There’s a side of me no one wants to see if you kill your dog in one of these,” Gunny says as he knocks on an empty trailer.

In late September 2011, two marine IDDs were being transported to Yuma from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The contractors (the dogs were not with their handlers) responsible for the dogs’ care during transport stopped overnight in Phoenix and allegedly left the dogs in the travel trailer unattended. They found IDD Ace dead the next morning, and IDD Max was in critical condition.

According to Pieracci, Max was taken to a Phoenix emergency veterinary hospital, where he received three blood transfusions and massive amounts of fluid and medication. He was in kidney failure and bleeding internally from the heat stroke. He was severely dehydrated, and the vets were worried about his brain swelling from the high levels of sodium in his blood. He remained in critical condition for ten days, but he pulled through.

“He was a real fighter. He was discharged just three days ago and is on his way to Lackland, where he will most likely be adopted out. I don’t think he’ll ever be able to deploy to a hot environment again after the severity of his case. He may have some long-term kidney and brain damage, and quite frankly, he’s been through enough,” says Pieracci. “He deployed in 2009 and 2010, and I know he served his country honorably. He deserves a nice comfy couch for as long as he’s got left, if you ask me.” She has never met Max, but she was on the phone with the Phoenix vets every two to four hours while he fought back from the brink of death. “I feel quite attached to him even though I’ve never met him. I would love to meet him before he retires, but I’m not sure that will happen.”

Those contractors may want to stay out of Gunny Knight’s way.

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M
ore parachutists drop in front of us as we round a bend later toward the kennels. “Hollywood, that’s what they are,” Gunny spits.

“I don’t know how many frickin’ millions of dollars they spend every year to let these guys jump out of planes. Dogs save so many lives out there, this course has saved untold numbers, and as of now, we have no funding after October 2012.”

Finally, perhaps, we’ve come to the reason he feels disdain for the jumpers.

It costs the DOD about $750,000 a year to run the IASK Course. Some 225 handlers go through the course annually. Despite the tremendous (if unquantifiable) success of the course, it’s on the chopping block because of the same major budget cuts causing pain everywhere in the military. The program is currently considered a Tier III course, which means it’s looked at as “extra” in times of budget crises.

But what is $750,000 when it comes to saving lives? If you have to put a life in terms of dollars, it costs the government $400,000 to
$500,000 in death benefits for every soldier, sailor, airman, or marine killed in action. The Defense Department would have been shelling out more money for the lives Patrick saved that day than it costs to run the IASK Course for an entire year.

“It’s astronomical the number of lives that are being saved because of this Yuma program,” says Bowe. “And I will panhandle to get this if I have to.”

The idea is for the course—which began in late 2005 as an “urgent need” program—to become a formal, required course. This would guarantee funding for awhile. Bowe had exhausted two of three options by the time this book went to press. “The program absolutely must not, cannot go away,” Bowe says. “Too many people and dogs will die.”

I would not be surprised if dogs around here smell a little extra fear these days.

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T
he mind of a soldier, the nose of a trained dog: a perfect partnership,” dog behaviorist and anthrozoologist John Bradshaw wrote me one day during a round of e-mails about a dog’s sense of smell. It was a refreshing change from the mound of complex scientific journal articles that had accumulated on my desk about the subject of a dog’s sense of smell, including one I was trying to get through at the moment: “The Fluid Dynamics of Canine Olfaction: Unique Nasal Airflow Patterns as an Explanation of Macrosmia.”

If dogs had noses like yours or mine, they would have an utterly different and diminished role in today’s military. The Department of Defense would still likely use some dogs for patrol purposes (although there are currently no “patrol only” dogs), but as it is now, those skills are rarely called upon. And say what you will about companionship or the value of a unit having another set of eyes, we are involved in a war where IEDs are the number one killer. If soldier dogs didn’t have such excellent noses, they would be a rare breed.

Dog owners are all too aware that there’s something different about the way dogs sense the world. For instance, there’s the old “Nice to meet you! Now I’ll sniff your crotch and learn more about you!” business that embarrasses many of us when we have company over. And it’s a dog’s sense of smell that’s at least partly responsible for why walks that would take ten minutes without a dog take at least twice as long (especially with a male dog) if you let the dog set the tempo. On walks, I find myself asking Jake things like “How could you possibly smell that tuft of grass for an entire minute? Can’t you see it’s just grass?”

In a way, dogs are wonderful travel companions because they do force you to slow down from the madcap pace many of us maintain on vacation. We try to fit in too many activities, too many sites, and then we return feeling more exhausted than when we left.