Soldier Dogs

Necropsies are performed on every military working dog who dies in service. The extent of an ailment isn’t always apparent on the outside. These dogs have so much heart and drive that it masks signs of just how bad things are on the inside. And then you cut them open on the necropsy slab, and you’re stunned that a dog with that kind of cancer or other great physical problem could still carry on.

Before the law changed in 2000, when federal legislation dubbed “the Robby law” passed, bite-trained dogs who were no longer able to work were considered unadoptable. The liability was deemed too much. They were sometimes transferred to other law-enforcement agencies, but more often they were euthanized.

Many people, even those steeped in the military working dog world, are under the impression that before 2000, the Department of Defense euthanized all dogs who were unable to be working dogs, if they were not transferred to law enforcement. It turns out this is not true. I’m told that non-attack-trained dogs were usually adopted out. Lackland provided me with a spreadsheet of dogs adopted by individuals from 1983 through 1999. There are 192 dogs on the list. Their ranks include a number of beagles and Labrador retrievers, and even a cairn terrier. But the majority of the dogs on the list are Belgian Malinois or German shepherds. It can be assumed that most of these dogs were purchased by the Department of Defense and then didn’t make it through training. They may have been lovers, not fighters. More puzzling to me are the few dogs who have “Patrol” or “Patrol/Explosive” listed as their occupation. Maybe these dogs were so old and decrepit that they were harmless. Perhaps they even went to their handlers, who knew how to deal with them. Fewer than two hundred dogs in seventeen years is nothing compared with today’s thriving adoption program, but it is a worthy footnote in the history of military working dog adoption.

The routine euthanization of most dogs outraged people like former Marine Captain William Putney, who had commanded a war-dog platoon in World War II and watched dogs giving their lives for their country for years during the war.

“To use animals for our own use and then destroy them arbitrarily when they can no longer be of use to us is the worst kind of animal abuse,” he would write in a letter that was read to Congress in support of the Robby law.

He never got over the bravery and loyalty he saw in these dogs. And decades later, he was still struck by incredible feats he saw and the bonds he witnessed.

In 1944, Putney was leading a patrol to find some entrenched Japanese during the invasion of Guam. Suddenly there was gunfire, and a bullet slammed into a Doberman named Cappy and tore a hole in his chest. The dog was walking just in front of Putney, and the bullet would have been his if not for Cappy. The dog’s handler was overcome. He “picked the body up and held it in his arms with blood all over his face—he was crying, just rocking back and forth…. He’d lost his buddy,” Putney told The Washington Post in 2000.

Putney, who became chief veterinarian of the Marine Corps after the war, did not buy the idea that these dogs were a liability—something the Department of Defense would put forth for the next fifty years. “It is not true that once a dog has had attack training, it can never be released safely into the civilian population,” he wrote in his letter.

He knew from experience that the majority of these dogs could be safely re-homed: The 550 marine war dogs serving at the end of World War II had all been trained to attack, but he says only four were put down because they could not be “detrained” well enough for civilian life. The rest of the dogs were adopted out. He says that to his knowledge, none of those dogs ever attacked or hurt anyone. This was done throughout the military with similar success.

But that lesson was lost in the Vietnam era. Some thirty-eight hundred dogs deployed there and are credited with saving many thousands of lives while protecting troops, leading jungle patrols, and detecting ambushes and mines. But the military deemed the dogs too dangerous to return home. Indeed, many of the sentry dogs had been trained to be so vicious that even their handlers had a hard time controlling them.

But sentry dogs were just one type of dog in the war. There were others, including scouts and trackers. Still, only about two hundred dogs would ever return home. Besides the behavioral issues, there was worry that even the less violent dogs would carry disease from Southeast Asia—something that could have been circumvented by a quarantine once they were home.

The majority of dogs were left behind or euthanized.

My friend Sylvana Stratton’s father was one of the few to be able to adopt one of these dogs. He had befriended a scout dog’s handler while in Vietnam. Her father, Harold Thomason, was then a sergeant. He had a way with animals and was one of only a couple of people the German shepherd, King, would accept.

One day, King’s handler went out on a covert mission without King. He stepped on a land mine and was paralyzed from the waist down. He immediately flew Stateside for treatment, recuperation, and medical retirement.

Thomason was the only person who could handle King, so he would visit the kennel daily and walk him and feed him. Eventually he was authorized to take the dog as his own.

Thomason applied for an exception to bring King home when his assignment was up. He had to go through miles of red tape to get the approval. He knew that if King didn’t come home with him, the dog was never coming home. Thomason finally got approval and arranged for a commercial transport for the dog to come back to the States. It cost about $700—a big chunk of change in the early 1970s.

King lived with Thomason and his family for a couple of years and had no problems with family members. But Stratton says it was a struggle to have to keep the dog separated from guests—especially when she and her brother always had friends coming and going. “I forgot one day,” Stratton says, “and the dog lunged at my date, who luckily put his arm up and was bitten in the arm and not the throat, which is where he was heading.” The dog had to go.

Her father decided to track down the paralyzed handler, who lived alone, with no family nearby. The man was ecstatic to have King back again. King remained his great companion until the dog died several years later. There were no more incidents of violence.

In a way, it was understandable that the Defense Department balked at allowing dogs to have a better fate. After all, even King, a rare dog allowed to return from Vietnam, was not entirely trustworthy. But dogs are no longer trained as sentries, or even as some scout dogs had been. Patrol dogs are far more controllable, and many can take care of business one minute and come back and be everyone’s best pal the next. In 2000, it was time for this antiquated policy to be brought into the new millennium.

Putney had watched the devastation so many Vietnam-era handlers went through when forced to leave their canine comrades behind. To this day, many handlers cannot talk about their dogs; it’s just too painful. He would do whatever it took to prevent this from happening again. In 2000 he got his chance.

Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD) had taken note of an article in Stars and Stripes that pointed out what happens to dogs at the end of their careers. The article had mentioned a dog named Robby W005, a dual-purpose Belgian Malinois who was suffering from bad arthritis, elbow dysplasia, and a painful growth on his spine. He was no longer able to work—no longer even able to be considered as a training aide (a desk job, as it were) at Lackland. His handler wanted to adopt him, but the rules prevented that.

Bartlett vowed to do something. In a move widely supported by animal agencies and the public, he introduced HR 5314 (which would become the Robby law), which allowed adoption of any military dog deemed adoptable by the Department of Defense. New owners were to bear the liability. Putney was one of many who came out in favor of the bill. He wrote:

Our service dogs must be honored and treated as heroes because that is what they are. And they must be allowed to retire to loving homes, as any soldier is. They have served us with honor and distinction, and have saved countless American sons and daughters from injury and death. They have risked their own death and injury for no more than the love and affection of their handlers.

They would never, ever have left us behind, and they would never give up on us because we were too old or infirm to do our jobs anymore. If they can offer us this sort of service and devotion, how can we do less for them? We owe them.