War Dogs (25 page)

So convincing was this data that in 2009 Senator Al Franken, Democrat from Minnesota, and Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican from Georgia, drafted and passed the Service Dogs for Veterans Act. The bill mandated that no fewer than 200 service dogs would be paired with US veterans, and that these dogs should be divided evenly between those suffering from physical injuries and those suffering “primarily from mental health difficulties.” In tandem with this pilot program were plans for a scientific study of the initiative within the Department of Veterans Affairs that would last for no less than three years in order to determine the therapeutic benefits to veterans, from quality of life to savings on health-care costs.
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And the
following year, in 2010, the federal government committed to spending several million dollars to gather scientific evidence on the impact that dogs have on PTSD.
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But it wasn't the research that inspired the arrival of the first therapy dog at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in 2007. It was an accidental observation very much like the one made at Pawling during World War II. At the height of the Iraq War, occupational therapist Harvey Naranjo, a former combat medic, was watching his patients while they were at the stables for equine therapy: riding the horses to help work their core muscles. A few dogs were also ambling around the barn. Naranjo saw his most reticent and withdrawn patient playing with one of the dogs, looking so much happier and more relaxed that his entire demeanor altered. Naranjo commented, offhandedly, to a man standing nearby, that having a dog at Walter Reed would make his job a lot easier. The man turned out to be a retired Army veterinary officer who took Naranjo's idea seriously. Within a short time, they had their first trained service dog on staff—a chocolate Lab named Deuce.
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The positive impact that Deuce had on everyone he encountered at Walter Reed was what inspired the Warrior Transition Brigade's Wounded Warrior Service Dog Training Program in 2009. The program was designed to use dogs to prepare recovering patients for the life transition they would make once they left the hospital, whether it was to return to their military service, go back to school, or find employment in the civilian world.

The idea for the program was actually twofold: in addition to spending time with the dogs, the recovering soldiers would be training them to be service dogs for veterans. It worked miraculously well. Patients previously unable to perform everyday tasks were suddenly empowered and able to accomplish them once they were next to a young puppy.

While the program wasn't limited to soldiers struggling with PTSD, they were often the best candidates. The dogs not only provided soldiers who had been withdrawn or depressed with calming and unconditionally loving company, but their presence also gave them the motivation to get out of bed and provided them with a prideful purpose. Despite the fact that
these soldiers knew their dog wasn't going to belong to them forever, the effect was profound.

Even the patients' families reported seeing a change. Training a young puppy takes a steady, careful hand and a willingness to emote happiness and praise. The necessary exercise of offering the dog a reward for good work requires a particular tone that combines inhibition with enthusiasm, high pitched and joyful. By interacting with the dogs in this manner, over time, patients relearn a more gentle way to interact with their spouses and children—even if only subconsciously. Their voices were transformed, from the flat, dejected affect so typical of PTSD, into something more upbeat and engaged.

Sara Hook was the chief of the Warrior Transition Brigade's Occupational Therapy Department when the dog program started at Walter Reed. She remembers one soldier in particular who came into the military hospital with a combination of psychological and physical wounds, confined to a wheelchair. Like many newly admitted patients, he was closed off, always with his head down and his eyes low. But when therapy dogs approached him, Hook observed an instant transformation. By the time this patient completed the program some six months later, he was able to stand at a podium and speak from a microphone in front of a crowded room and lead an official military ceremony. Of course he had other traditional rehabilitative therapy while at Walter Reed, but Hook believes this soldier will say that it was the dogs—their unconditional love, that they were always happy to see him no matter how he looked or felt, regardless of his being in a wheelchair—that made the difference.

Hook and her staff at Walter Reed not only saw changes in their patients after the dog program began, but also had case managers report that there was a decrease in prescriptions for medications for pain, anxiety, and depression. Yet, so far the evidence supporting the success of this kind of stepping-stone therapy program at Walter Reed is largely anecdotal. Scientific studies have not yet been conducted to analyze the efficacy of the dog program.

Captain Najera faced a similar problem. Even though Boe's positive impact was clear to the observant eye, Najera had difficulty building a clear case among the military's top brass for continuing the use of therapy dogs.

During her deployment Najera started collecting data for a research paper, one that would examine what evidence, if any, would show that the therapy dogs were making a difference. She compared the dogs with three other therapeutic techniques: guided imagery (envisioning a safe, happy place), deep breathing exercises, and basic education on coping with stress taught in the clinics. But conducting the surveys proved difficult. It was hard to assess the range of the dogs' impact: while Najera and Boe had regular visits with patients, not everyone who might have found relief in Boe's presence could be accounted for. And then, just as they were collecting this data, things for the US military in Iraq began to change. The drawdown of troops started, and servicemen and women were transferred from their bases in Iraq. Najera and the other occupational therapist–dog handlers lost track of the soldiers in their survey pool. One day they were there with Boe and the other dogs then, suddenly, those same people were gone.

Boe was in Iraq
for a total of 18 months, serving two deployments back to back. Toward the end of their tour, Najera started to see a change in Boe. She had never been the kind of dog who relished being the center of a large crowd, but she'd always accepted the affection offered to her and indulged the excited fuss the soldiers made with a friendly patience.

But after nearly 15 months of being Boe's handler, Najera noticed that when soldiers approached Boe, she turned away from them. The only time she ever seemed happy was when she was free to just be a dog. She didn't want to engage anymore. It was as if, Najera says, she had absorbed too much sadness.

It would be counterintuitive, even foolhardy, to assume that dogs can experience war but are somehow immune to its hardships, that they do not shoulder its burdens. Dogs experience the same heat, the same chaos, the same injuries, the same violence, and the same trauma. War
and combat affect all dogs, just the way they do soldiers. And like people, each dog responds differently. But because working dogs are in such high demand, and their numbers relatively few compared to their handlers, they do not take breaks between deployments as their handlers do. Dogs with good working records who are in good health are, potentially, deployed more times and more often than their handlers, even serving back-to-back tours. This takes a toll. Military working dogs, like soldiers, return from war changed.

In March 2012, at the ISAK course in Yuma, Arizona, a large German shepherd named Jessy stares down the long, sandy stretch of unpaved desert road. She is uneasy. There are bomb-sniffing aids buried about 100 meters from where she is standing, and her Army handler, Sergeant Sabrina Curtis, is trying to coax her forward, commanding the dog to search alone, off leash.

But something holds Jessy back. She moves cautiously, haltingly, casting her head back as if at any moment she expects to turn and find Curtis vanished. Curtis, a diminutive handler with a soft but firm voice, repeats her command to search, this time with more force. Jessy puts her nose to the ground and sets to work, eagerly moving about ten feet ahead. She gives all the cues to indicate she's working on detecting an odor, which is promising. But then she suddenly pulls up away from odor to check again on Curtis, looking torn, almost doleful. After a few more hesitant steps and nervous glances backward, it's clear this dog is more than merely reluctant to search away from her handler.

Jessy's tail is clipped in a short bob, uncommon for her breed. The tail's stubby end looks odd as she walks but it doesn't seem to impede her. When Jessy's previous handler went on leave the dog just broke down, his sudden departure setting off a bout of separation anxiety. During his absence she would spin compulsively in her crate, so frequently that she broke her tail not once, but twice. The veterinarians who treated her removed the length of it rather than have her suffer any further breaks.

They give it a few more tries before Sergeant Charlie Hardesty, who's been observing the pair, walks out to join Jessy, leading the dog to the
source of odor to make the find and reward her with the Kong. She still looks back at Curtis, but sits at the source and, when Hardesty praises her, she responds well. The handlers want to keep things positive for Jessy and get her to associate reward and affection with working, rather than with whatever is keeping her from feeling confident and secure on patrol.

To see Jessy's lack of confidence is to know that war wounds—whether skin deep or the kind that are made on the inside—can have an equally damaging and similar effect on a dog.

Canine post-traumatic stress disorder, or CPTSD, is a relatively new term that's only more recently been accepted as a concept, being applied in a serious and consistent way in the military veterinary field. When the number of dogs on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq reached its height in 2011, it was reported that 5 percent of the 650 dogs deployed were developing CPTSD. The chief of behavioral medicine at Lackland Air Force Base's MWD hospital, Dr. Walter E. Burghardt Jr., estimated that half of those dogs would have to retire from service.
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The war dogs that come through the veterinary clinic at Bagram Airfield are right in the midst of the fighting, constantly around the popping of bullets and large explosions. Sometimes they even have to be medevaced for PTSD and treated with drugs, the equivalent of canine Prozac. But it's a tough thing to treat. “You can't tell a dog it's going to be okay, you can't explain to him what's going on,” says Captain Katie Barry. Researching the topic is especially challenging, because you can't replicate the trauma of combat at home, nor would you want to, and as a result, research on CPTSD is still scarce and evolving.

Part of the problem might just be that some of the dogs shouldn't be brought into a combat situation to begin with. Not every war dog trainer is like Chris Jakubin, who pushes the dogs at the US Air Force Academy kennels by exposing them to different types of environmental situations—dealing with large crowds, loud noises, even flights of stairs—that they'll encounter in the field. He does it to test their resolve; a dog that might be a daring detection dog inside a quiet building may quickly lose his drive in an unfamiliar setting or a place he finds stressful.

During the ISAK's March 2012 course, the instructors were concerned with 3 of the 17 dogs that attended. These were dogs they felt would need more than three weeks of training before they could be deemed deployment ready. It was possible that these were dogs, like Jessy, whose war dog days were already behind them. It was possible that these were dogs who shouldn't be responsible for the safety of others in a combat zone.

But even capable teams and dogs who show promise and courage in training—giving all the signs that they are ready to tackle a combat
deployment—are still just as susceptible to being traumatized once they're downrange.

Which is what happened when US Army handler Staff Sergeant Donald Craig Miller and his Belgian Malinois Ody deployed to Afghanistan in late September 2012, but returned only a few months later in January 2013. What was supposed to be a yearlong deployment ended early. A great detection dog, Ody hit odor and rarely fell victim to distraction during patrols or searches on base back home. When Miller left their home station—Fort Rucker in Alabama—he felt confident in his dog, knowing they would be able to handle the elite missions they were going to be executing.

When they got to Afghanistan, they were attached to a MARSOC unit, bunking in a compound near Camp Leatherneck, the 1,600-acre Marine Corps base that is home to 10,000 troops in Helmand Province. Their initial training together on base went well; Ody was his reliable, happy-dog self, adjusting well to the temperature and their lodgings on base. Miller's pale complexion pinked under the sun and after some time in Afghanistan his strawberry blond hair gave way to a grizzly, paprika-colored beard.

A few weeks into their deployment Miller and Ody went on a mission with the MARSOC team. It was zero dark thirty; they were pressed into the Chinook helicopter with about two dozen other Marines, and he and Ody had the spot closest to the ramp so the dog could stretch out and lie down. The weight of Miller's 90-pound rucksack was weighing down on him, pushing his muscles deeper into discomfort, pinching off his circulation
as he crouched on the floor. When the Chinook lowered and they went to make the short drop to the ground, Miller could barely feel his legs.

Into the dark they jumped, running under the loud whir and rush of the blades, kicking up dust and rocks, like a hurricane hitting them hard in the face. As they started to move forward, an air support assault erupted around them. The sound was deafening. As a C-130 shot down from above and the rushing of bodies swarmed around them in the dark, Ody pulled at his leash, practically dragging his handler along the ground, desperate to get away. Miller's dog was freaking out.