With support like this, Bartlett was able to ramrod the bill through Congress. The vote was unanimous. Bill Clinton signed the bill into law two months after Bartlett had introduced it.
The law would save thousands of soldier dogs in the future, including at least one who shared its name….
49
A NICE RETIREMENT
When former Air Force Staff Sergeant James Bailey takes walks in his quiet Richmond, Virginia, neighborhood with his Belgian Malinois, Robby D131, people take note. “Is that the dog that got Osama bin Laden?” they want to know. Robby is something of a celebrity these days since that other Malinois, Cairo, played his secret role in helping the Navy SEALs take down Bin Laden.
Robby was Bailey’s first military working dog and already a veteran when they met. He’d done two deployments to Iraq and one to Kuwait. The war vet, age eight, and his handler, twenty-one, got on like old friends from the start. Soldier dogs don’t seem to harden, even after several tours and different handlers.
Robby and his green handler deployed for six months in November 2008 in Camp Taji, Iraq. Robby was a patient teacher. “For the first few weeks he took the lead and pretty much showed me how things worked. He made me a better handler by ‘understanding’ that I was new to things, and it almost seemed as if he took his time in the beginning because he knew that. He searched much more slowly in the beginning compared to at the end of his working career, when we were flying through our training problems without missing a beat.”
The old dog provided support beyond the technical. “He’s always had my back. He was always there to make sure I was OK, whether he needed to help protect me, or when I was a little down and he’d come over and put his head in my lap. He could read my body language, he could read my emotions, like no one else could.”
After numerous missions outside the wire, the team returned to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, and settled in for a couple of years.
But when Bailey’s turn for deployment came up again in 2010, he couldn’t take Robby. The dog’s back had gone bad in the interim. He had been diagnosed with lumbosacral disease, a compression of nerve roots in the area where a dog’s spine meets his hips. It’s not uncommon in larger dogs. In bad cases, nerve impairment can lead to weakness in rear limbs and even incontinence. Robby’s case was relatively mild, and the pain could be controlled by medication. But he was not fit for another deployment.
Bailey was relieved in a way—at least the old man would be safe—and went off to an undisclosed location with a four-year-old German shepherd named Ajax L523. They bonded, as soldiers do, “but nothing like Robby and me.”
When Bailey returned six months later, Robby, who had been living in the base’s kennel, had not forgotten his friend.
“I walked around the corner of the kennel and he dropped his ears back and was wagging his tail like crazy. It was kind of cool because he still knew exactly who I was.”
Robby, now eleven and white of muzzle, has a new assignment: He has retired and will spend his remaining time with Bailey, who left the air force at the same time he adopted Robby. “I just wanted to get him out of the kennel and get him home so he could have a good couple of years before the end.”
They live together in a house with a fenced backyard and all the toys a dog could want. “It is absolutely wonderful having him at home. I like to call him my shadow. If I go to a different room, so does Robby. He follows me all over and will just lay and watch me do chores or lay on the patio while I cut the grass.”
Robby sleeps on a large tea-green orthopedic dog bed (a big improvement over the concrete floors of kennels he slept on for years) next to Bailey’s other dog, a sixty-five-pound shelter mutt named Gunner. Gunner is Robby’s first real dog friend, since working dogs are generally not allowed to fraternize with other dogs in the service.
“It’s a pretty awesome feeling to give Robby a safe, comfortable home. He kept me safe while we were in Iraq and protected so many people. It’s great to be able to give back to him and try to repay the lifelong sacrifice he has given to me, his other handlers, and the country.”
But what about the day when Robby is in too much pain to go on, the day Bailey has to make the decision no pet owner wants to face? Bailey pauses and takes a breath. “It won’t be easy, but I’ll know it’s my turn to help him and I’ll be there for him,” he says. On his walls hang framed pictures of the two of them. After Robby goes, Bailey plans to make a tribute wall or a shadow box to memorialize him. “That way I can always show him off and give him the respect he deserves, even after he’s gone.”
And one more thing. He hesitates. It may sound kind of weird, he forewarns. “I’d like to think that one day we will be able to play fetch again on the other side.”
50
THE ADOPTION CRAZE
In early 2011, John Engstrom, the former handler who had the shock of finding his old dog in the necropsy room, got a new job at Lackland. It’s a position he wishes existed when Max was still around. Engstrom, now a civilian, is the adoption coordinator for the military working dog adoption program. He has come full circle, in a way, from that terrible day in 1997.
When he started the job in March 2011, there was already a long list of people who wanted to adopt military working dogs. Engstrom had his work cut out for him. But that was child’s play compared to what would happen less than two months later, when the world learned a military dog took part in taking out the world’s most wanted terrorist. All hell broke loose. “The phone has been ringing off the hook since May 1,” he told me months later. “Everyone and his brother and sister and aunt wants one of these dogs now.”
Many people who call here want to adopt Cairo. It seems a lot of people don’t even realize there
Engstrom breaks the news about Cairo (that he’s not here, and he’s certainly not up for adoption), and then goes on to inform callers that some available for adoption are dog school washouts. These dogs might be gun-shy or slow to learn important skills. They’re good dogs with flaws that make them less-than-ideal military dogs. Many dogs on the adoption roster are training aids who may or may not have served overseas before becoming a little old or stiff for the work. Few dogs up for adoption to the public have recently deployed; one or more of the handlers of those dogs will usually step up to claim the dog before the dog is even retired.
Something Engstrom tries to remember to tell callers is that while the available dogs may be highly trained and very well bred, many are not house-trained. Think about it. The dogs live in kennels, where they do their business whenever and wherever. A few have stayed in hotels, so they probably have been trained. Those who stay in tents on deployment may have gotten the general idea that you saunter outside when nature calls. But most of these dogs have never set foot in a house.
Of all the skills a military dog needs to know, the locale in which to do his business is not among them. Jake may not know how to sniff out IEDs, and he’s no attack dog, but I’ll say this for him: He doesn’t use our floor as a toilet. Fortunately the military dogs are fast studies, and usually it just takes a couple of times until they learn the ropes.
While Engstrom is in charge of adoptions through Lackland, other bases around the United States and abroad adopt out dogs, as well. Unless a dog is already at Lackland as a dog school student or training aid, or is there to be checked out medically at Lackland’s veterinary hospital, the dog will be adopted straight from his home base.
Engstrom does his best to encourage people to fill out the applications or, if they’re far away, to contact local military dog kennels to see about “dispo’d” dogs in need of adoption. Plenty do. “They want to help these great American heroes,” he says.
The average wait for a member of the public (you and me, as opposed to handlers or law-enforcement agencies) to adopt a dog at Lackland is about eighteen months, but that may fade as the Bin Laden story fades into
