Soldier Dogs

I’d written about other military working dogs before Cairo and Sergeant Stubby. And every time I did, I found myself looking at my own dog.

In the haze of glory surrounding military working dogs, my dog Jake, who is now nine, doesn’t really look like a contender for admission into the military elite. When he was younger, did he have what it took to sniff out bombs, to risk his life, to walk point in order to save others? I’d look at him, typically lying around sleeping somewhere and perhaps snoring, or absconding with an unattended bit of food, or rolling in the grass. Not obviously military hero material.

But Jake does have his breed going for him. He’s a Labrador retriever—a breed the military commonly uses for detection work. Actually, we’re not 100 percent sure he’s all Lab. He was found wandering the streets of a seedy part of San Francisco at six months of age. A rescue group took him in and we agreed to foster him. It was to be just for a week or two. Our old Airedale had died the previous month, and we weren’t ready for a dog to take up a full-time, permanent position in our house. This was to be a temp gig. But the minute he walked in the door, on December 1, 2002, I knew we were in trouble. He was all paws, with a big smile on his wide blond face, and bright brown eyes that scanned the foyer, looked at me, and gave me that “Yup, I’m home! Get used to me!” look.

Jake does show some signs of being a good potential war dog. He bonded with us quickly, he is eager to please, would do anything for us (except stop chewing flip-flops), and is pretty fearless. He’s also a great sniffer. I have yet to find a place to hide his dog treats where he doesn’t sit staring at the invisible wafting scent, obsessed, clearly trying to figure out ways to maneuver them down from their stealth position, and often succeeding.

But military dogs have something Jake doesn’t: a job. It’s something dog experts say is lacking with many pet dogs today, and is at the root of many problems. Boredom can lead to destructive or anxious behavior. At best, it’s just not much fun.

“Dogs used to have jobs; that’s what they were trained to do,” dog trainer Victoria Stillwell, host of the Animal Planet show It’s Me or the Dog, told me when I ran into her at an event honoring hero dogs in Los Angeles. “Now these poor animals spend most of the time sitting on the couch, alone all day. They’re bored. We need to give them jobs. If they’re motivated by them, if they enjoy themselves, life is better all the way around.”

I started to feel bad that Jake didn’t have a job, but then I realized he’s like me. He’s kind of a self-employed freelancer. He finds work that he’s passionate about and puts everything into the job until his mission is accomplished.

His current gig is rather cliche: He lies in wait in our backyard much of the day, so he can chase a relatively new neighborhood cat, Kika, out of the yard when she ventures over the fence. (He never gets closer than several yards from the cat, or I’d put the kibosh on it.) She’s a beautiful, lithe, leopard-spotted feline, and I welcomed her into our yard until I saw her chasing and killing butterflies, and until I found out why my little writing cottage smelled like a litter box every time I opened the front window. (She was using the bit of dirt right outside my window as her toilet.)

When Jake is in the house and he hears her little bell, he races down the stairs and out to the backyard. When he runs after her, he looks more like a rocking horse, cantering merrily, tail woggling quickly from side to side and up and down. He doesn’t seem to take the chase too seriously. A big woof or two and Kika is out of the yard through a hole in the lattice of the back fence. Only then can Jake rest, a job well done.

Jake is an Everydog. His is the most popular breed of dog in the United States. He’s even got one of the most common names for male dogs. And his passion for chewing shoes and chasing cats and finding food are charmingly stereotypical.

He pokes around in this book. You can think of him as a stand-in for your dog or other pet dogs if you find yourself wondering, as I did and still do, how the average dog would fare in the military.

Having an Everydog in the mix puts war dogs into perspective. Military dogs may have unique breeding and intense training, but underneath it all, they’re dogs. Unless they’re of the super-aggressive variety, many go on to become pets at the ends of their careers. (A huge improvement from post-Vietnam days.) Inside, most probably just want to catch a ball and get a pat for a job well done, eat some good grub, and sleep in a comfortable bed near their favorite person.

Most maybe. But “some dogs are just jerks” I was told by an air force technical sergeant who has worked with every type of dog during his decade in the world of handlers. There are the dogs, for instance, who will seem to reach out to you and beckon you to pet them, but once you do, they try to bite your hand off. “They get this look in their eye like ‘Heh heh heh,’” he said. “Just like people, some dogs are bad guys.”

5 THE MEANING OF MILITARY DOG TATTOOS

Military working dogs are considered equipment by the Department of Defense. In some ways, they’re officially looked upon as a rifle or a minesweeper would be. It’s a designation that fell upon military dogs after World War II, when the military stopped borrowing dogs from Mom and Pop Dog Lover and started buying dogs.

And it just so happens that dogs may be the only “equipment” that get tattoos.

Of course, handlers see their dogs as anything but equipment. Handlers put their lives on the line for their dogs, and the reverse is also true. During the Korean War, the handler of a dog named Judy was taken prisoner and forced to march for two days to his place of detention. When he got there, he unleashed Judy and begged her to run, hoping she’d make it back to HQ. But she stayed at his side. The next day Chinese guards took them to a kitchen and made him tie Judy to a post and leave her. They asked him who Judy was, and he told them she was a mascot.

“I heard a gunshot. I am sure it was Judy,” he wrote.

When soldier dogs and handlers deploy, they spend almost every hour together. Like Donahue and Fenji, they rarely leave each other’s side when they’re at war. Handlers can end up developing a closer bond with their dogs than they do with other people, even spouses. When a handler and his dog have to part from each other in order to fulfill a unit requirement, it can be enough to bring the handler to tears, and to cause a dog to ignore his new handler—at least for awhile.

I’ve never seen anyone cry when she talks about turning in her old rifle or giving back her body armor. The fact that dogs are still considered equipment seems rather antiquated. Sure, they’re not human soldiers, but they’re a far cry from a rifle or a helmet or a helicopter. Ask any child who watches Sesame Street which of these things does not belong, and the tot will point right to the dog. Most instructors and trainers will, too.

“I try to articulate that a dog is not a piece of equipment, but a working, breathing animal that needs to be treated respectfully and kindly,” says Arod, who also runs Olive Branch K-9, a police and military dog consultancy. “Your dog is your partner and values meaningful interaction. You just don’t think about equipment in the same way.”

Some handlers I’ve spoken with hope that at some point four-legged warriors will be given a new designation. Even something like “animal personnel” would be more accurate than “equipment” and would take dogs out of the “thing” category. Dogs could be joined in that category by other animals used by the military, like the sea lions, dolphins, and whales used by Navy SEALs to find sea mines and enemy divers.

In this book, you’ll notice that in most cases where I mention a dog’s name for the first time, it’s followed by a letter and three numerals. That’s a dog’s tattoo number, his unique ID, inked inside his left ear. If you view a dog as equipment, it could be like his VIN. If you see a dog as something more, think of it as his last name.

Here’s a way to use a dog’s tattoo number to win a bar bet with a handler. You can tell a handler what year his dog arrived at Lackland Air Force Base—where young future military working dogs go for processing and training—just by knowing the first letter of the tattoo. Even most handlers I spoke with weren’t sure how their dogs came by their tattoo numbers. But it’s fairly simple.

Tattoos start with a new letter every year. The year 2011, when I arrived at Lackland Air Force Base, was an R year.

So let’s say you come upon Handler Joe and his dog Bella M430. Tell him you can guess pretty close to when