War Dogs (5 page)

In 1914, at the beginning of WWI,
there was one man, Lieutenant Colonel E. H. Richardson, who stood as the lone advocate for integrating canines into Her Majesty's battalions, arguing that their potential to assist on the battlefield would be unparalleled. Other countries, he argued, were already using dogs to great advantage: the Germans employed dogs, as
did the Russians. The Bulgarians and Albanians positioned them as sentry guards. France was trying to integrate dogs into its army. Italy and Sweden were also experimenting with canines as a military force. But Richardson's petition fell on deaf ears.

Firm in his belief that dogs could be trained to great advantage for England's cause, Richardson carried on his campaign until finally, in 1916, an officer from the Royal Artillery sent a request for trained dogs to “keep up communications between his outpost and the battery during heavy bombardment.”
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Lieutenant Colonel E. H. Richardson, “the father of war dogs” (at least as we know them today), pulls bandages from the kit of a British Red Cross dog, circa 1914.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

In the years that followed, Richardson's success with dogs was unsurpassed. He would write of his progress with his dogs in two highly regarded tomes:
British War Dogs: Their Training and Psychology
and
Watch Dogs: Their Training and Management.
When the US Marine Corps began its official program, the Dogs for Defense, in 1942, his techniques served as a guidebook of sorts, the holy bible of war dogs.

Through his writings the colonel revealed himself to be a man of incredible open-mindedness and gentility, especially when it came to the treatment of his dogs. He was kind to the animals, intolerant of cruelty, and expected dog handlers, or “keepers” as they were called, to act as he did. Of the “first importance,” he writes, is the character of the keeper:

This must be accompanied by a fondness for, and a gentleness with, dogs. Complete confidence and affection must exist between dogs and keeper, and a man whose only idea of control is by coercion and fear is quite useless. I have found that many men who are supposedly dog experts, are not sufficiently sympathetic, and are apt to regard the dog too much as a machine. . . .

The highest qualities—love and duty—have to be appealed to and cultivated. Coercion is of no avail, for of what use would this be when the dog is two or three miles away from its keeper? In fact, it may be said that the whole training is based on appeal. To this end the dog is gently taught to associate everything pleasant with its working hours.
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For a man whose experience with training dogs occurred in the first years of the twentieth century, Richardson was progressive. Compulsion and harsh corrections were once the presiding model of dog training in the military. (It seemed this was one of Richardson's teachings that was not so faithfully adhered to in the US military's early consultation of his manuals. This attitude would only start to change in the 1980s with a turn toward reward- and praise-based training, one where handlers would cull success from their dogs by relying on a positive reward system in conditioning.) Richardson was about one hundred years ahead of the curve in laying the framework for the modern-day handler. He preached patience, a respect for the animal, and appealed to the sensitivity in man as well as the dog. Dogs should not be “roughly handled or roughly spoken to.” In his opinion even a lack of sympathy was grounds for dismissal. Even a strong dog, he warned, could “be easily thrown back in his training, or even spoiled altogether, by sharp handling.”

Determining which fledgling handlers have the most potential is not always easy, even for the most experienced in the trade. Kevin Behan was never very good at picking out which of the handlers he was training would be the strong ones. Good at reading the dogs, yes, but he was never quite as good at reading the people.

Behan, a career dog trainer and author of
Natural Dog Training
and
Your Dog Is Your Mirror
, began working with his first dog, a poodle named Onyx, when he was only ten years old. But then, dog training was in his blood. His father, John Behan, was one of the most renowned dog trainers of his time. When the US military first started using dogs in the 1940s, they brought Behan's father in as a training expert to help prepare dogs and handlers alike. John Behan wrote about his time training dogs and military handlers during World War II in his 1946 book
Dogs of War.
But Kevin realized at a young age that he had his own way of handling dogs, one that worked and strayed far outside the methods his father employed. And over the course of his long career, Behan has trained thousands of dogs, from household dogs to police dogs and of course their owners and handlers.

But it wasn't until Behan worked with dog handlers in the Connecticut police department that he began to take stock of these handlers on the scale of their egos. Personally, he had always favored the quiet, introspective handlers over the loud bombastic ones, even if he recognized that there wasn't any room for passivity in handling dogs and so often dismissed anyone who appeared to lack voluminous confidence. But he soon realized that his initial impressions of these officers had skewed his expectations. Over time, Behan saw how the soft-spoken handlers proved to be the most intuitive, and when the occasion called for it, they exhibited an unexpected resilience, revealing an inner strength that he found surprising. The most talented handlers have to possess a dynamic aspect to their personalities. So, in the end what he would look for with these handlers was a balance.

It struck him as he watched these officers work—if a handler were to think of the dog only as a tool, this, Behan found, was limiting. But when a handler considered the dog a projection of his ego, that was even worse.

But if there's one thing
not
lacking in the dog-handling field, it's ego. The term “dog whisperer” gets thrown around a lot. Get a group of young handlers together, and there's bound to be some jockeying around who is the handler with the biggest, baddest dog, the one who hits and bites the hardest.

A good rule of thumb in gauging a handler on the job—Is he being too aggressive? Is he being too passive?—I found, is simply to watch the dog.

When Lackland Air Force base in Texas hosts its interservice Iron Dog Competition in May 2012, I join Chris Jakubin, who has brought along Mack and some of his handlers. The competition is designed to test a variety of skills over the course of the two-day trials—the very essence of the collective education a handler and his dog have developed together as a team, whether in training or during deployment. The course stretches across many miles and is meant to challenge the handler and the dog physically as well as mentally; it includes a low river crossing, an obstacle where handlers have to carry their dogs up and down a hill, as well as a basic obstacle course that includes an “injured soldier,” a heavy dummy that handlers must carry or drag to “safety” while still managing their dogs and their weapons.

In addition to the competition there are a series of classroom seminars and a host of hands-on courses. In the San Antonio morning heat, I stand alongside a group of handlers who've circled around to watch an outdoor demonstration. The man leading the exercise is not a military handler but a private vendor. He is attempting to illustrate his theory that the way to maximize a dog's defensive drive is to heighten the threat at the peak of the dog's response. As he explains to the group, this extra push will elicit the “defender” in the dog, the ultimate “fighter.”

The man invites a handler from the group to bring his dog onto the field and instructs him to hold the dog's leash taut. Then, like a bullfighter, the man begins to slowly advance on the dog and his handler, his face drawn into an expression of sheer aggression—mean and contorted. In one hand he holds a baton, in the other the red top to a water cooler that he brandishes like a shield. He is the aggressor picking a fight. If this dog is
prepared to face this “attacker” he will exhibit the telltale signs: the strong, deep bark that says, “I am not afraid of you”; the straight back; the excited tail; and a forward lurching motion—all showing he is ready to engage this threat. But this dog's bark is high and shrill, and his tail is tucked in a downward loop, a half circle pointing to the ground. Instead of straining at his leash to get closer, he dances uncertainly from side to side. This dog is signaling fear, but the man continues to advance. And then the foul smell of excrement fills the air. The dog has literally just had the shit scared out of him.

Handlers might call this “melting the dog,” meaning that a dog has been pushed beyond his limits. While it doesn't indicate necessarily that a dog's will to work has been broken, “melting” a dog is far from ideal and it's something handlers want to avoid. You can take a weak dog and build confidence, but you can just as easily push a fragile dog deeper into his insecurities. With the right amount of patience and attention a handler can work a dog through his fears and overcome his reluctance. But it's a fine line to navigate, pushing the limits of a dog's confidence, and a crucial one to maintain. An experienced handler can determine, just by observing a dog, whether he possesses the will to defend himself in a compromising situation, an assessment that can help protect not just the dog but whoever may be on the other end of the leash.

During his seminar in Texas, Jakubin shows the assembled handlers a video of just such a dog teetering on that line. On the screen, the handlers are conducting a routine traffic stop. Jakubin, in the role of the aggressor, is dressed like a bank robber: he's outfitted all in black and wears a ski mask, carrying a big black rubber baton. After refusing to heed the warnings of the dog handler, Jakubin “the criminal” advances on the dog. At first the dog tries to defend himself, starting forward toward Jakubin, but then he retreats, skirting backward, trying to hide behind his handler. Jakubin backs off, taking a few steps away and lowers his weapon. After another minute or so he advances toward the handler and the dog with his voice raised, giving the dog another chance to engage and defend himself. But again the dog shows a clear lack of confidence—he gives a few short barks but ultimately
retreats. Jakubin pulls off the ski mask. He didn't need to be tough on the dog and there was no need to try again; he knew the dog was done.

When the video cuts out, Jakubin turns back to his audience and explains to his seminar attendees that what they just saw was a dog who didn't have the right kind of fight to be a patrol dog. But, he says, that's okay. Not all dogs are meant to be patrol dogs. It's no reflection on a handler's ability. Just because the dog had failed to pass this test, it didn't mean the handler had.

And this is where Behan's concern that a handler should not see his dog as an extension of his own pride comes in. Egos can be a problem. Egos can get in the way of judging a dog's true ability. Egos, Jakubin believes, should be checked as soon as handlers walk in the training arena; they don't make for good students or good teachers.

During another training seminar at Langley Air Force Base in Newport News, Virginia, I watch Jakubin coach a handler. She is working on a drill with her dog. The cool of the morning hours has simmered away in the humidity and her face is beet red, the edges of her hair are dark with sweat that drips down her temples. Most of the other handlers have given up for the day, already put their dogs up, and are now just milling around the yard, clustering in the shade. But she continues to struggle with the task in front of her, focusing on each note Jakubin gives, her face crinkling in concentration. Later, when the seminar breaks for the day, Jakubin is impressed: what the handler lacked in skill, she more than made up for in persistence. In this career, the handler's drive to learn is just as crucial as the dog's, perhaps even more important.

The next day, I find myself sitting on the picnic bench under the only shade in the training yard. The handler on the bench beside me has a hardness to him that makes me uncomfortable. He is good looking, like a really angry, muscle-inflated version of Matt Damon; he's done the majority of the shit-talking that morning during training in the small yard, and his tone rings more snide to me than supportive. I get the distinct impression that he has little interest in what I was doing here. But still he sits next to me on the bench. We sit in silence for a while, as a team works a drill over
by the chain-link fence in the corner of the yard. And just when the quiet seems the most unbearable he starts to talk. He tells me how much he loved handling dogs, that he'd had the best job in the world. As he talks he stares ahead. Fuck all the lazy assholes in it for the quick promotion and the paycheck, he says. The day he had to trade in his dog for the position of kennel master was the saddest day of his life.