but he didn’t move. She began to realize that something was terribly wrong.
She took the dog straight to the vet, where he was given several tests and screenings, including X-rays and ultrasound. Blood work was done. Everything came back OK.
They returned to the kennel, where she watched him all night. “I tried not to panic, because he picks up on everything I do.” Around 9 A.M. his heart rate jumped, and he started throwing up. The vets, who had left base, came back for him. They did all the tests again and still couldn’t see anything. The vet called several different vets in the area, and they decided to send Rex to Fort Belvoir, about forty minutes away. There was a surgeon there. More tests there, same results. The surgeon said, “Let’s go in and see what’s going on inside.”
Ingraham opted to stay in the room with her dog. “You’d rather see everything that happens to your dog.” She could read the vet’s face before the vet said anything. Something had twisted deep inside of Rex, and his colon was gray, essentially dead. The vet worked tirelessly to save Ingraham’s dog, but in the end, there was nothing more he could do. (A military veterinarian I described Rex’s condition to said it was not bloat, but likely a very rare, fatal condition called mesenteric root torsion.)
The veterinarian decided at that point that Rex would not come out of his anesthesia. Ingraham burst into tears. The vet administered the dose of euthanasia solution. Everyone left the room so Ingraham could be alone with him. She tried to keep it together, for his sake. She kissed him, stroked his head, and talked to him like old times.
Then she leaned down, snuggled into his fur, and told him, “I love you, Rex. Everything from your big feet to your stinky breath.”
And he drifted off.
Less than a month later, and still raw from the loss of Rex, Ingraham learned that the army had assigned her to work with a new dog, Cinte M401. She was aghast. “Of all the dogs, why him?” she once again wondered.
She had seen the Belgian Malinois in the kennels and had been grateful he was not her dog. The four-year- old dog was clearly slow on the uptake. Much to Ingraham’s dismay, he bonded with her almost immediately, following her around and always wanting to nuzzle up to her. But she didn’t want him touching her. She was still aching from losing Rex. And besides, this dog was just annoying.
Her mother said to give it time, said she thought this sounded like a nice dog, but Ingraham knew she’d never like this dog.
In autumn of 2011, when we last communicated, Ingraham and Cinte had been in Germany for a couple of months. And as her mother predicted, Cinte was starting to grow on Ingraham. “His quirkiness has found a place in my heart.”
Here’s what she wrote me about this dog:
“He’s a bit skittish so everyday noise is a challenge full of new things for him. For example, he was searching a box and he touched it and it moved, so he jumped like a cat onto a cart next to him as if he’d never seen a box move before.
“As he searches, every time he finds what he’s looking for he gets this shocked look on his face that seems to say, ‘OMG did you know that was there?’ Also he tends to overthink things as simple as a command of sit.
“Then, there are children. He is terrified to the core. Even if the children are at a distance he will hide behind me or try to run as far away from them as he can, often without looking where he is going and running into anything in his path. He is a challenge but every day holds new surprises and it’s never dull.
“Cinte is very clumsy and careless when he runs or fetches his toy and has repeatedly smashed his snout, so we are looking to make sure some of his issues aren’t medical. He’s a great dog and knows his job and loves doing it, but he seems to have a harder time doing it when compared to the other working dogs. His nose is weaker than any of his breed we have seen, but he seems to know and works harder. In a deployment situation I would trust him; he has no problems finding the mass odors of IEDs and other caches, but he may miss a single magazine of ammo.
“It may be a while before we are proficient enough to go to Afghanistan, but when we go, it will be a good deployment.”
43
ALWAYS AROUND
The kind of tender relationship Ingraham and Rex developed, and the kind that seems to be blossoming with her and Cinte, is not unique to this war.
Robert Kollar was a handler with the Fifty-eighth Infantry Platoon Scout Dog Unit in Vietnam, during 1968– 69. He was based at Camp Evans and given a German shepherd named Rebel. According to the Vietnam Dog Handler Association, there were fifty-two dogs named Rebel who served in Vietnam. Few fates are known, but at least five were killed in action, four were put down because of their injuries, one retired, and one died of heat stress. That was Kollar’s dog, who died three weeks after Kollar, who was a sergeant, returned home.
He remembers so vividly when he and Rebel would be dropped off to walk around the jungle for five days at a time, walking point, and how it seemed like you were always assigned to a unit where you didn’t know anybody. You’re on the point in front of strangers, and so in all senses it’s just you and the dog. In the monsoon season and the dead heat of summer. On good days and bad—like the night Kollar was part of a night ambush, but he could not keep Rebel up. The dog just would not stay awake, and Kollar had to keep pulling him up to keep watch. It’s all about teamwork, of course, but in this kind of work the team is less you and the patrol, more you and the one other soul in the world who, after weeks or months together, understands who you are and what this is all about, and that when you put on the scouting harness the real game is about to begin.
“With Rebel I was always going to his hooch,” Kollar remembers. “What a sweet dog. A real pussycat. Not aggressive at all, but then he didn’t need to be. I was always going to see how he was doing; I’d sit with him, talk to him, we’d listen to the audiocassettes from home. He was my main man. I don’t know how else to tell you. A dog like that is a real friend; it’s also the one link you have with home.”
In between patrols, which might last for days, Kollar would work with the dog constantly, to keep him tuned, to keep the game going. They would practice basic obedience and hand signals, and they might go down the “training lane” to see what had been planted, to keep the dog razor-sharp. Kollar found the ritual of taking care of the dog each day helpful and morale-boosting.
It’s been forty-three years since Kollar worked with Rebel, but he’s never forgotten it, and of the fifty or so photos and mementos hanging on the walls of his bedroom, eight or nine show Rebel. And Kollar’s got his collar and choke chain mounted.
For Kollar, “Rebel is always around.”
He likes to point out the photos of him and Rebel that appear on Michael Lemish’s Web site, k9writer.com. One page features photos of handlers and their dogs from different wars.
Kollar’s favorite photo from that collection is not from Vietnam but rather a photo taken during World War II, at battle of Peleliu, which is sometimes called “the bitterest battle of the war for the marines.” Fought in the fall of 1944, the battle’s casualties were among the highest of any Pacific War battle. Eight marines from the battle were given the Medal of Honor—five posthumously. Some of the fighting was hand-to-hand, throwing whatever you had at the enemy. And all to take an island with dubious military value.
The photo is of a young marine from the Fifth Marine War Dog Platoon, Corporal William Scott, and his Doberman pinscher, Prince, in what looks like a foxhole on the beach. The soldier is on his knees, rifle in his right hand, left hand on the dog’s shoulder. The soldier is looking up and not at the camera. It is not an unusual photo. Others on Lemish’s site are more interesting or just better quality photos, but for some reason, for Kollar this photo catches everything one might say about being a handler. But he cannot explain it, even to his wife.
If there is a key to the appeal, perhaps it’s the soldier’s expression, blank at first glance, but look at it for a moment and you see fatigue and also confidence. A brashness even. And then it all becomes a little clearer. Look at the photo for what it implies: a soldier and his dog and nothing else, beyond all other identities, alone, the two of them against the world.
The history of dogs in relation to war is almost entirely about how dogs have been used for thousands of
