dog could face. If they can’t take care of it here—for instance, if a dog needs an MRI, something the MWD hospital lacks—a dog can be taken to the human medical center at Lackland. MRIs are scheduled during non-human-patient hours.
When the veterinary hospital bought the CT scanner being occupied by Ttitan, it was better than the one at the human medical center. Ttitan is being examined for a previous injury. He’s looking good so far. My guide, Kelly Mann, a veterinary radiologist and director of the hospital, ushers us on.
Down the hall and through a few large, superclean exam and treatment rooms we come to a boxful of light blue shoe covers. Mann asks me to put on a pair, and he does the same. We then enter a small, darkened room and come to a large window that looks into a large, state-of-the-art surgical suite. It’s one of two at the hospital. A team of two veterinarians (one visiting from Korea) and two vet techs surrounds the patient. You cannot see there’s a dog under all that surgical draping, and you’d swear it must be a person until you see a tiny hint of a paw. This dog has a bad carpus (basically, a dog’s wrist) injury, and today is getting a procedure called arthrodesis to fix the carpus in place. It should greatly reduce the pain he’s been having.
After his surgery, he’ll be taken to the recovery area, which has heated floors. During his weeks of recovery, he’ll eventually end up in what they call the “gee whiz room.” This is the part of the physical therapy department that has underwater treadmills designed just for dogs. The body weight of a dog on one of these treadmills is greatly reduced, making weight-bearing exercise more bearable. It’s one of the first steps in exercise rehab.
It’s clear that soldier dogs who come to this hospital are in very good hands. Since it’s a referral hospital, the facility gets military dogs from everywhere. Veterinary care at most bases with kennels is usually very good, but the vets know when something is beyond them or their facility, and they don’t hesitate to send dogs here. (The hospital also treats TSA and Border Patrol dogs.)
You might think, “Well sure, they’re giving this equipment good treatment because they have to keep the dog ready to protect lives, just like you’d service a military plane or even a rifle.” And there may be some truth to that. The idea is to keep these dogs healthy and able to work. But many of the patients here will never be going back to work. Their careers are ending because of medical issues. It’s heartening to see that the Department of Defense doesn’t turn its back on them just because they’re no longer of use.
“We fix them at the end of their career, even if we adopt them out. It’s the right thing to do,” says Mann.
The hospital’s necropsy room is not far off the lobby of the hospital. It is very spacious, with two tables and all the accoutrements needed for the deep level of necropsy done here. This is not where Engstrom found what was left of Max; that was in the old hospital. But it’s a stark reminder that even with all the best treatment, soldier dogs die. And if you’re a soldier dog, it is pretty much guaranteed you’ll get a necropsy.
This isn’t just to see what went wrong inside a dog; the knowledge gained from these procedures can help other dogs. A dog’s tissues are sent to the Joint Pathology Center, where the samples are prepared for histopathology and read out by board-certified veterinary pathologists. Eventually, all of those results and the complete medical records are mailed to the MWD medical records repository. The end-of-life data are reviewed retrospectively by the staff epidemiologist, to keep veterinarians informed of the most common diseases being seen in the soldier dog population. This helps them refine the topics that are taught to Veterinary Corps officers and animal care specialists who are taking basic and advanced courses there, and the information helps the operational units learn of common issues to watch for in the working dog population.
So there’s a lot of potential good that comes from necropsies, but the notion of what a dog looks like—what poor Engstrom saw—after one of these makes me shudder. I would not want Jake to go through this. Most handlers want to be with their dog for euthanasia but won’t stick around for the necropsy because it’s just too much.
When a soldier dog dies, if the dog is lucky enough to have a handler (as opposed to dogs who are training aids), the dog will not be forgotten. Handlers can get the cremated remains of what’s not sent off to pathologists. Depending on the base where the necropsy occurred, the handler may get the ashes back in a beautifully engraved wood box. Some bases have memorial walls where the boxes are placed next to photos of the dog. Others have small cemeteries devoted to their military working dogs.
Amanda Ingraham buried Rex’s ashes at Fort Myer before she left for Germany with Cinte. She and her father worked together to make a cross with Rex’s name deeply engraved in it. She didn’t have time for a traditional dog memorial, but she will when she returns. And she’s not looking forward to trying to read the poem that handlers traditionally read during these ceremonies. She’ll probably have someone else do it, because she can’t get through the last few lines.
The poem, “Guardians of the Night,” speaks of the bond military dogs (or police dogs, depending on the version you read) have with their handlers, from a dog’s point of view. In the end, the poem talks about when their time has come to move on, and how for a time they were an unbeatable team, and then goes on to a couple of lines about what they’ll do if they should ever meet again “on another field.” This is where a lot of handlers break down. It’s not great poetry. But if you picture your own dog, you’re done for. (This poem is also read at handler course graduation ceremonies at Lackland, but it doesn’t pack the emotional wallop it does at memorial services.)
There’s another tradition at MWD memorial services. The dog’s bowls are placed upside down, to symbolize that the dog won’t need them anymore. The collar and leash are hung in remembrance of the dog. And if the memorial is at a kennel, the dog’s kennel door is left open, indicating that the dog will not be returning home.
53
THIRTEEN MEDALS AND RIBBONS
Sergeant Mark Vierig, the marine we met earlier with his combat tracking dog, Lex, had worked with another dog a few years before. The dog was a dual-purpose Malinois, a big ninety-pounder named Duc B016. “He was an amazing dog,” Vierig will tell you. Their bond ran deep. Duc (pronounced Duck) was always cool under fire, with a nose that sniffed out many a bomb in his day. He’d been to Afghanistan with Vierig, and to Iraq (twice), and even Thailand.
Vierig was able to adopt Duc in 2006, when Duc was ten or eleven years old. Vierig had left the marines after his four years of active duty (he was later called back in from inactive duty, which is where he met Lex) and was living with his wife, baby daughter, and four dogs in the mountains of Utah, next to the Weber River—a fly fisherman’s paradise, and heaven on earth for the retired dog. Just the kind of place Duc deserved, Vierig told his friends.
On a summer day about a year after his grand new life started, Duc went outside and Vierig’s wife saw him collapse. She yelled to Vierig, who ran out and found Duc unresponsive. He scooped the dog up and brought him inside the “Duc Room,” a special room they had converted for Duc’s comfort. Vierig sat down cross-legged on the floor, supporting Duc’s head and upper body in his arms. He stroked his old face and neck, trying to figure out what was wrong. Suddenly Duc howled like a wolf, a plaintive cry Vierig had never heard before. Duc took one last breath and died in Vierig’s arms.
Overcome by the sudden loss, and that primal howl, Vierig held his dog, telling him how much he loved him, how much Duc meant to him. Eventually he covered Duc with a brand-new 4-by-6-foot Marine Corps flag. He lay it over Duc’s body. “He had done so much for me, I wanted to do right by him.”
Within moments, four dogs Vierig was training for police and private companies entered the room. They were all energetic working dogs—a golden retriever, two Malinois, and a German shepherd. They’d revered Duc in life. They would run around and nip and chase and tackle one another, but they would leave him in peace. Now the dogs—every one of them—lay down quietly in a semicircle next to Duc’s flag-draped body. They were not sleeping, but lying attentively, calmly. They stayed like this for twenty minutes. These independent-natured dogs never would lie next to each other—much less Duc—like this.
“They were paying respects to a dog who was deeply respected. That’s not anthropomorphism,” Vierig says. “If you’d seen it, you’d know.”
Vierig wanted Duc’s grave to be near the river, where fishermen walk by, so others would remember his friend, even if they had never met him. He wanted them to know that here lay a great dog. He dug a deep grave in
