and shook his head when he told me, “I think they do it on purpose.”
This would account for a brave war dog, Davy, whom we’ve already met. The name wouldn’t be a problem, except, as you may recall, Davy is a girl. So is Bob. The gender switching seems to go the other way around most of the time, though, with big, tough boy dogs getting girly names. To wit: Freida, Kitty, and Judy. “Calling him Freida bothered me,” former handler John Engstrom said. “It was just wrong.”
I’ve heard stories about two male dogs named Kitty in the military. Both had reputations as very aggressive dogs. Remember Johnny Cash’s song “A Boy Named Sue”? Same syndrome, perhaps.
Then there are the awkward names, including a dog named Bad. Talk about sending mixed messages when calling your dog. And let’s not forget Sid. “Anytime you said Sid, it sat,” Engstrom told me.
It seems that breeders in foreign countries are greatly influenced by American pop culture for kids. Perhaps they even let their children name the dogs. On a list of thousands of military working dog names from the last several years, there are the requisite
Let’s not forget the oddball names. Some are embarrassing, others are just weird. Imagine being downrange in a life-or-death situation and shouting for “Baby Cakes!” “Baby Bear!” “Busty!” or “Moo!” Breeders may have been hungry or thirsty when they named Cheddar, Cherry, Chips, Cider, Coffee, Cookie, Ihop, and Kimchee.
Some names seem to be commentaries on a dog’s personality: Bleak, Calamity, Funny, Grief (RIP: he died in Afghanistan not long ago), Grim, and Icky. Wait a minute. Icky?! Time for a serious, calm chat with one’s commanding officer about just changing this poor dog’s name.
15
BORN IN THE USA
Going to Europe to buy dogs is a necessity, says Doc Hilliard, because there just aren’t enough strong military dog candidates in the United States. Thanks to the long tradition of dog sports like Schutzhund and institutions like the Royal Dutch Police Dog Association, Europeans have a deeply entrenched source of dogs cut out for the types of duties military working dogs perform. “I’d love nothing better than to be able to buy American, but the dogs just aren’t here,” Doc says.
American vendors sell dogs to Lackland in much the same fashion as European vendors do, but because they sell in rather small numbers, the vendors usually go to Lackland with their dogs rather than have a buy team visit. Ironically, most of the dogs the U.S. vendors sell to the Defense Department were purchased in Europe.
The dog program still has a policy of accepting donations from average citizens or breeders. Every now and then, Doc and his people get a phone call from Ma and Pa wanting to donate their German shepherd to protect the U.S. But the odds the dog can pass the tests are astronomically low, he says. The genetics and intensive training just aren’t there. The dog program won’t take a dog in if it can’t use him, so Ma and Pa—if they’ve come all the way to Lackland even after all the warnings about the testing—will likely end up driving home with their dog, who couldn’t meet program standards.
What about shelters? Aren’t they filled with dogs who are available for next to nothing and are highly trainable? The British military has been saving the lives of shelter dogs for years, training them and providing them for its armed forces, according to animal scientist John Bradshaw, who has done extensive work with England’s Defence Animal Centre in Melton Mowbray, near Leicester. (It is roughly the equivalent of Lackland Air Force Base as far as dog procurement and training goes.)
The Defence Animal Centre also relies heavily on public donations of dogs. There’s even a Web site with FAQs for those who want to donate. The Centre is interested in German shepherds, Belgian shepherds, or “gun dog” breeds between the ages of one and three years of age. The intake procedure is relatively easy, and on the Web site there’s even space devoted to reassuring potential donors that their dogs will be in good hands:
If you are considering donating or selling your dog to us, rest assured that your dog will be cared for, stimulated and trained through positive reward-based training, i.e., plenty of ball work, play and focused games.
When you have made the decision to support your country by donating your dog and the dog has passed all the necessary assessments you can rest assured that they are being well cared for. The Defence Animal Centre pledges to endeavour to meet The Five Freedoms:
• Freedom from hunger
• Freedom from pain, injury and disease
• Freedom from fear and distress
• Freedom from physical discomfort
• Freedom to perform most normal forms of behaviour
The U.S. Department of Defense has recently begun making limited experiments obtaining dogs from shelters. But this has not proven successful. In the last year, consignment evaluators have been going to shelters in the San Antonio area and looking at hundreds of dogs. Only one has passed. His name is Lucky, and he’s a Labrador. The program is not encouraged by the high-labor, low-yield results, so don’t expect to see dogs flying out of shelters and into the armed forces in the U.S. anytime soon. Our standards, it seems, are different from those in the UK.
So if we have a desire to procure dogs closer to home but just can’t, are there any other options? Yes, and as it turns out, it’s the reason anyone who enters Hilliard’s building has to dip his or her feet in green disinfectant.
The Defense Department is making its very own Belgian Malinois puppies: Seventy-five were whelped here in 2010, 115 in 2009. The goal is to whelp two hundred puppies a year. About half the puppies won’t make the cut, so once the goal is reached, there will be one hundred fewer dogs to buy overseas.
Why the Malinois? Mostly because they tend to be more durable than German shepherds, who are known for their hip, elbow, and back problems. Plus, according to some trainers I’ve spoken with, it’s because the Malinois don’t let thinking get in their way. They say that a shepherd will often think about what you tell him to do, or about his situation, but a Malinois just acts as he’s trained to. Many prefer this. I don’t know if Rin Tin Tin would applaud this rationale, but there’s no turning back now. The program has been in place since 1998, at first as an experimental one and now as a full-fledged program, run by Doc Hilliard himself.
We head downstairs from our meeting place to go see the puppies. To get access, we have to dip our soles at another disinfectant station. I’m not allowed to stop in at the whelping kennels to see the newest litter, because I spent the morning in the company of other dogs, and I could end up carrying disease to the vulnerable pups. But I do get to visit a batch of seven-week-old puppies from the pairing of a Netherlands stud named Robbie—who has sired some serious champion working dogs—and a bitch named Heska. Hilliard bought Heska overseas and bred her to Robbie while in the Netherlands. She came to Lackland to be monitored through her pregnancy and have her puppies on U.S. soil.
Her pups are fawn-colored, with downy fur and dark brown/black faces that look up from their exercise pen with a plaintive “Pick me up, please!” expression. Some still have a floppy ear or two, but for the most part, their ears have become upright. They’re from the A litter, so every pup’s name will start with the letter A. To distinguish puppy-program dogs from other MWDs, all dogs from the puppy program are given double letters to start their name. So this litter is made up of dogs with names like Aangus, Aatlas, and Aalice.
Aalice has caught my eye. She is still floppy-eared, and she appears extremely social, making eye contact and standing with paws propped on the enclosure to get my attention. But since I’ve been with other dogs earlier in the day, I can’t hold her. The pups are still not fully immunized, and it wouldn’t be safe.
So Doc Hilliard picks her up instead, and she snuggles right into his arms, and then uses his arms as a place to prop her paw, and starts licking his neck and then up to his jaw and cheek. It’s hard for him to carry on the
