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.
The detection portion of dog school takes about sixty days. In order to certify as a detection dog, drug dogs need to have 90 percent accuracy. Explosives dogs must have 95 percent, missing a maximum of one out of the twenty aids.
Then it’s on to the patrol section of schooling. This starts with basic obedience, then ramps up to an obstacle course, with tunnels, a jump, stairs, and other structures similar to what dogs might encounter during a mission. Labradors and other dogs destined for a single-purpose career stop training here.
The shepherds and Malinois move on to the next phase of the dog school syllabus: the bite. Most dual- purpose dogs these days seldom need to use their bite skills in real life. But the deterrent factor may be part of the reason the dogs so rarely have to go into bite mode. Most people will back off when they see these dogs, or when the barking begins.
The dual-purpose dogs the Department of Defense purchases are already trained to bite, so the bite work is finessed and taken to the next level at Lackland. The dogs generally know how to run and attack a decoy’s arm that’s protected by a bite sleeve. It is deeply satisfying for a dog to chomp into it; in fact, the bite is the reward—no Kong needed.
But what about stopping someone who’s running away? The dogs here work on an exercise called a field interview, where the handler is questioning a “bad guy,” maybe frisking him. The decoy in this scenario is often clad in full-body protective gear, known affectionately as a marshmallow suit. It makes him look rather like the Michelin Man wearing a dark-colored coverall with thick fabric. The wearer’s head is usually the only part that’s not protected.
The dog stands guard. The person bolts. The handler shouts for him to stop, but he doesn’t. Meanwhile the dog is completely at attention, ears forward, body stiff, tail rigid, eyes focused. The decoy is like a giant rabbit, and to a dog with a strong prey, hunt, or play drive, it’s one of the most fun games there is.
(In case you ever get apprehended by a MWD or any law-enforcement canine, you might like to note that these dogs tend to bite the part of you that’s moving the most. When you’re sprawled out on the ground after a dog knocks you down, consider waving a white flag. And don’t think about playing dead. The dog will liven you up very quickly.)
“Git him!” the trainer exhorts. Music to a dog’s ears. The dog gallops to his quarry and grabs whatever body part is convenient. The force often knocks down the decoy. Whether the decoy remains standing or gets sent to the ground, a well-trained dog will bite and hang on until the trainer calls him off. Most dogs don’t want to give up the bite. Some release immediately, others grab and shake until more firmly commanded—or even physically pried off. With more training, the release comes more quickly.
And what happens if, during the initial pursuit, the “bad guy” gives up and stops running? The dog needs to be able to stop in his tracks and resist every urge to finish the pursuit and bite the crap out of him until told to stop. This is called a standoff. The handler or trainer yells, “
I’ve watched this type of dramatic exercise at a few different military bases, with the big padded man or woman flouting the law and running away. It made me wonder if dogs think that all bad guys are obese. The message seems to be “Great big person runs away, I get to bite.” I’ve been assured that this isn’t the case. It’s the chase that kicks in a dog’s instincts, not the size of the person. In fact, as a dog gets more advanced, there’s special protective gear that’s a lot less bulky than the marshmallow suit. It doesn’t protect as well, so it’s not used that much. But it helps make the scenario more realistic.
My question about bite-protection gear wasn’t entirely unfounded, as it turned out. Over lunch at Chili’s, Air Force Technical Sergeant Joe Null, the noncommissioned officer in charge of military working dog logistics, told me that there are some dogs who are so used to an obvious padded target—like a bite sleeve or full-body gear—that they’re flummoxed when these are absent.
He pointed me to a grainy video on YouTube that shows what appears to be a real-life situation, taken from a helicopter camera that doesn’t have the world’s best zoom, of a police dog chasing a suspect. But as the dog gets ready to take down the man, you can see by the dog’s body language that he’s a little confused. Null says the dog is wondering, “Where’s the bite sleeve? Where’s the padding?” He passes the man by, slows his pace, and for the remainder of the short video, man and dog weave around each other along the road, the dog now looking like he’s merrily cantering around—no longer an aggressor but more a happy cartoon character. When the music shifts from a dramatic chase riff to the Looney Tunes theme, it fits perfectly.
“The moral for handlers,” says Null. “Don’t let this happen to you.”
But it’s easy to see why some dogs are motivated by the sight and scent of a good bite sleeve—a big, thick, almost castlike arm protector. Everywhere I went at Lackland’s patrol area, dogs with heads held high and tails wagging hard paraded around with what looked like giant, stiff arms. After certain types of exercises—like finding a bad guy behind a closed door in a barren building with many doors—dogs would get the sleeve as a reward for about a minute, and they’d beam as they toted around the biggest and most outlandish “bones” ever. It’s no wonder the dog in the video was holding out for his. (Another theory about that dog is that he didn’t want to hurt the man. He probably learned that handlers are not happy when you bite into a body part that’s not protected.)
What starts as a fun game propelled by a dog’s play, prey, and hunt drives develops over months and even years into a drive to defend and protect. “The goal is to develop the ultimate working dog that will defend itself and its pack members under any condition,” Arod says. If a handler is wounded and unable to speak, the dog won’t just stand there waiting for the command. He’ll go into full protection mode.
The trainers at Lackland plant the seeds of this drive. They teach a dog to attack when the “bad guy” starts fighting, or even when a suspect raises his arm while being questioned in a mock field interview.
Not all dogs will make it through this part of dog school. Patrol is not for everyone. Just as Ferdinand the fictional bull preferred to just sit and sniff the flowers, some tough-looking military working dogs really don’t want to attack people. There are softies in the dog world, and no matter what you do, they’re not going to be reliable aggressors. “They just want to be your friend,” says Null.
The military knows this, which is why dogs certify in detection work first. These dogs can be perfectly good sniffer dogs, and they have the bonus feature of looking like they could eat you for lunch, even if they’d rather just come over for a good ear rub.
20
I TRY NOT TO NOTICE THE BLOOD
I’ve been watching bite-training work at Lackland for much of the morning when I meet up with Navy Master-at-Arms First Class Ekali Brooks. He’s training new students at the handler course on the basics of “catching” a dog.
When you catch a dog, the dog—generally a German shepherd or a Belgian Malinois—careens toward you at top speed, intent on biting into the part of your body that’s easiest to access and that’s moving the most. This can be rather dangerous, so you wear a bite sleeve. If you catch a dog right, you won’t be hurt. Mess up, and you might know what a few hundred psi of dog bite feels like.
