Soldier Dogs

by Maria Goodavage

  Even as troops start to draw down in Afghanistan, the dog teams don’t show any signs of staying home for long. Because of their vital role there, many in the military dog world think the dog teams could keep deploying steadily to the end of U.S. involvement. This could put them at higher risk. Already, seventeen handlers have been killed in action since 2001, and forty-four military working dogs have died in war zones since 2005, the first year for which figures are available. (The number of dog deaths includes dogs killed in action and dogs who have died from heat injuries and other causes. The Department of Defense does not yet have a full report of causes of death.)

  Military working dogs are incomparable troops, superbly well suited for their tasks. But there’s something else that draws us to these dogs and their stories: For all their remarkable feats, they’re not only our heroes, they’re our pals. We share our homes and lives with their cousins, whose loyalty, intelligence, and unconditional love make them part of the family. When we see or read about how they’re involved in war, the war becomes a little closer. It gives us a little more skin in the game. The irony is that soldier dogs make war a little more human.

  3

  UNCRATING THE HISTORY OF WAR DOGS

  While I’ve yet to meet Cairo (or as some reports say, “Karo”), I have had the pleasure of meeting a nearly one-hundred-year-old military dog named Sergeant Stubby. The highly decorated World War I military hero died in 1926, was stuffed, and put on display at the American Red Cross Museum for nearly thirty years. His skin and hair eventually began to deteriorate, so he was taken off display. Eminent war-dog historian Michael Lemish wrote about him in his book War Dogs: A History of Loyalty and Heroism. He had found the dog stored in a shipping crate in an old artifacts room at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The crate read: STUBBY THE DOG—FRAGILE.

  While in Washington, D.C., I decided to see if I could pay homage to this granddaddy of U.S. war dogs, and I called ahead to speak with someone who knew where the old relics were stored and how I could get access. I learned that Stubby had been refurbished from nose to tail and was now once again on display. He’s down the hall from Dorothy’s ruby slippers, toward the end of the large exhibit called The Price of Freedom: Americans at War.

  Stubby became a war hero at a time when the United States didn’t have any semblance of a war-dog program. The small stray pit bull was taken in by a man who would make him the mascot of the 102nd Infantry in 1917. When the man went to war, he smuggled Stubby over to France by ship. Stubby provided comfort to the wounded and was devoted to his troops, but he became more than a loyal mascot. His “hero” title came to him from such feats as when he warned a sleeping sergeant of a gas attack, so that soldiers had adequate time to don their gas masks. He also bit a German infiltrator, who was hobbled by the bite and captured. The dog later suffered a shrapnel wound.

  His popularity was immense, and he was grandly—if unofficially—decorated. He had to wear a blanket (given to him by several French women) to hold all his medals and pins. The dog went on to tour the United States, and he hobnobbed with three presidents.

  Eighty-five years after he drew his last breath, I gazed through a glass barrier at Sergeant Stubby, who was now surrounded by a mannequin in a gas mask, an old wooden arm prosthesis, a well-preserved carrier pigeon, and other relics from the war. World War I has been relegated to a small, almost parenthetical, portion of this exhibit. Stubby looked a little plasticized, and his lip contours were bizarrely black, almost Herman Munster–ish. But this was Stubby, in the flesh, or at least in the fur.

  Stubby’s procurement was not a formal process, but back then in the United States, there were no rule books for war-dog procurement. In fact there was no war-dog program here at all. During World War I, European armies were using dogs to great advantage, particularly as first responders and messengers. The Red Cross suggested a procurement process be initiated, but no appropriation was made. Someone in the General Headquarters of the American Expeditionary Forces proposed setting up a program to buy a supply of five hundred dogs every three months from the French and then setting up kennels in the United States to create a canine corps. Nothing happened.

  Still, there are plenty of great stories like Stubby’s, of dogs serving in combat in American units during the war, not just as mascots, but also as sentries and messengers. And certainly thousands of soldiers saw the huge benefits of using dogs in wartime. But after the war, as military budgets were drawn down, the idea of starting a war-dog program faded.

  Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American Kennel Club and another group, Dogs for Defense, led by a prominent breeder, appealed to dog owners across the country to donate their pets to the war effort. The public response was overwhelming. And so began America’s first formal military dog procurement program.

  The army’s logistical arm, the Quartermaster Corps, acquired thousands of dogs spanning thirty breeds during the next three years. Based in large measure on the British experience in World War I, a K-9 Corps was built around five breeds: Belgian sheepdogs, giant schnauzers, collies, German shepherds, and Doberman pinschers. In all, of about nineteen thousand dogs acquired, more than half were trained. Of those, the vast majority became sentries. As the war progressed, the need for scout dogs increased, and some 436 dogs served in the island campaigns in the Pacific.

  Because so many dogs loaned during World War II proved unfit for duty—and the expense of having to return them to their owners fell to the military—the army changed its procurement policy after the war to buy its own dogs. Moreover, it set out to select dogs who could perform all the various assignments in all climates and who were bred extensively. The procurement specifications are intriguing.

  He should be a sturdy compact working type, revealing evidence of power, endurance, and energy. The dog must have good bones, well-proportioned body, deep chest with ribs well sprung, strong pasterns and muscular feet with hard wall-cushioned paws. Front feet should not toe inward or outward, hind quarters should have moderate angulation, and, as viewed from the rear, hind legs should be straight. The temperament of the dog should show general alertness, steadiness, vigor and responsiveness. He should not be timid, nervous, gun or noise-shy. In addition, the dog must be from nine months to three years old, must be between 22 inches and 28 inches high at the shoulder and must weigh between 60 and 90 pounds. The dog may be either male or female, but a female must have been spayed 60 days prior to being offered for purchase.

  Hard wall-cushioned paws?

  One by one, breeds were discounted. Climate was one deciding factor. Dobermans worked well only in temperate climates; collies, Siberian huskies, and Alaskan malamutes in colder climates. Labs and other sporting breeds were not considered dependable because of their gaming instinct. In the end, the German shepherd became the dog of choice as the Korean War began in June 1950.

  But with all the talk about how successful dogs had been in World War II and the forging of a real procurement policy, as the curtain went up on the Korean War only one dog unit went into action: the Twenty-sixth Infantry Scout Dog Platoon. It did well, and there was a plan to attach a scout dog platoon to each division, but then the war ended.

  And that marked a hiatus in the military’s dog program. The procurement stopped. The army war-dog program was defunded, and rumors spread that the program would be abandoned entirely. This drew an emotional, angry public response. The program survived; the air force took it over and started a training center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

  But in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as America’s involvement in Vietnam intensified, and as the air force began to see the labor-saving advantages of sentry dogs, demand outstripped supply. Moreover, there was no military pipeline, or even a civilian pipeline like Dogs for Defense, to bring more dogs to the effort.

  The result was that the military was forced into a hurry-up scenario, and quickly sent out small teams of recruiters to bases around the country t
o buy up dogs from neighboring communities. The price paid was usually not more than $150 per dog. The breeds of dogs procured once again expanded, and Labradors and even hounds were among those drafted. Some 3,800 dogs would serve during the course of this war.

  War dog procurement is partly a matter of selecting breeds for combat and then drawing a steady supply, but it’s also a matter of demilitarization and repatriation. That was assumed after World War II but forgotten after Vietnam, when thousands of dogs were left behind, either to replenish supplies for the South Vietnamese Army or to be eaten, as some have asserted, or simply euthanized. Some handlers even chose to reenlist so they could be with their dogs as long as possible, in hopes they might be able to prolong the dogs’ lives and perhaps even adopt them.

  The situation now is utterly transformed. Our understanding of dogs’ qualities and abilities is far better, and the results of our working together in the military are vastly improved. So does this new kind of military use have anything to offer back to our understanding of, or relationship with, our own dogs at home?

  4

  JAKE, THE EVERYDOG WITH THE RIGHT STUFF?

  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 cliché: 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 trea
ted 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.