Soldier Dogs

by Maria Goodavage

  My friend Sylvana Stratton’s father was one of the few to be able to adopt one of these dogs. He had befriended a scout dog’s handler while in Vietnam. Her father, Harold Thomason, was then a sergeant. He had a way with animals and was one of only a couple of people the German shepherd, King, would accept.

  One day, King’s handler went out on a covert mission without King. He stepped on a land mine and was paralyzed from the waist down. He immediately flew Stateside for treatment, recuperation, and medical retirement.

  Thomason was the only person who could handle King, so he would visit the kennel daily and walk him and feed him. Eventually he was authorized to take the dog as his own.

  Thomason applied for an exception to bring King home when his assignment was up. He had to go through miles of red tape to get the approval. He knew that if King didn’t come home with him, the dog was never coming home. Thomason finally got approval and arranged for a commercial transport for the dog to come back to the States. It cost about $700—a big chunk of change in the early 1970s.

  King lived with Thomason and his family for a couple of years and had no problems with family members. But Stratton says it was a struggle to have to keep the dog separated from guests—especially when she and her brother always had friends coming and going. “I forgot one day,” Stratton says, “and the dog lunged at my date, who luckily put his arm up and was bitten in the arm and not the throat, which is where he was heading.” The dog had to go.

  Her father decided to track down the paralyzed handler, who lived alone, with no family nearby. The man was ecstatic to have King back again. King remained his great companion until the dog died several years later. There were no more incidents of violence.

  In a way, it was understandable that the Defense Department balked at allowing dogs to have a better fate. After all, even King, a rare dog allowed to return from Vietnam, was not entirely trustworthy. But dogs are no longer trained as sentries, or even as some scout dogs had been. Patrol dogs are far more controllable, and many can take care of business one minute and come back and be everyone’s best pal the next. In 2000, it was time for this antiquated policy to be brought into the new millennium.

  Putney had watched the devastation so many Vietnam-era handlers went through when forced to leave their canine comrades behind. To this day, many handlers cannot talk about their dogs; it’s just too painful. He would do whatever it took to prevent this from happening again. In 2000 he got his chance.

  Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD) had taken note of an article in Stars and Stripes that pointed out what happens to dogs at the end of their careers. The article had mentioned a dog named Robby W005, a dual-purpose Belgian Malinois who was suffering from bad arthritis, elbow dysplasia, and a painful growth on his spine. He was no longer able to work—no longer even able to be considered as a training aide (a desk job, as it were) at Lackland. His handler wanted to adopt him, but the rules prevented that.

  Bartlett vowed to do something. In a move widely supported by animal agencies and the public, he introduced HR 5314 (which would become the Robby law), which allowed adoption of any military dog deemed adoptable by the Department of Defense. New owners were to bear the liability. Putney was one of many who came out in favor of the bill. He wrote:

  Our service dogs must be honored and treated as heroes because that is what they are. And they must be allowed to retire to loving homes, as any soldier is. They have served us with honor and distinction, and have saved countless American sons and daughters from injury and death. They have risked their own death and injury for no more than the love and affection of their handlers.

  They would never, ever have left us behind, and they would never give up on us because we were too old or infirm to do our jobs anymore. If they can offer us this sort of service and devotion, how can we do less for them? We owe them.

  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 w
hat 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 are other military working dogs, Engstrom says.

  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 the past. Handlers and law enforcement get top priority, depending on the dog and the situation. If a dog’s handler wants to adopt his old dog, she’ll usually take precedence. There’s a waiting list of about sixty law-enforcement agencies hoping to get their hands on a good dog with a strong drive for a reward. They’re not looking for war heroes. And about forty to fifty new applications from the public come in each month. Only five to ten dogs get eliminated from the training program during the same time frame. That makes for a backlog of willing homes.

  Whether or not the would-be adopters qualify is another matter altogether.

  Engstrom has heard it all from potential adopters. I promised him I would not give away key words or phrases that make him automatically suspect a home is not suitable for adoption. The dogs are to be pets, nothing more, certainly nothing less. I won’t go beyond that, because he needs to do the screening his own way, and I don’t want anyone getting clues and circumventing his process.

  He doesn’t hesitate to talk in general terms, however, about the breadth of people who want to invite a military working dog into their lives. On one end are the people who want a fearsome dog and are probably up to no good. On the other are the people who write pages and pages of flowery prose about how they are psychically in tune with a dog who is sending them messages that they were always meant to be together, that no other match must be made, and who cares if they’re eighteen months down the waiting list—their intuition is never wrong and they must have that dog (whoever he or she is) now.

  The barking frenzy in the adoption kennels is at a fever pitch, but I can still hear Engstrom. His voice sometimes hits the excited praise notes of trainers and handlers, and at other times it’s quiet and more reverential and serious. It depends on the dog we’re passing.

  “What’s up there, handsome stranger?! Nigel! Niiigelllllll! Isn’t he a dark handsome wonder?!”

  “There’s Bono. You are an excellent dog. He’s got degenerative arthritis in his hips. Poor guy.”

  “Asta! Your new parents are coming to get you today! Isn’t she a beautiful color?”

  “This is Jerry. Jerry is really cool. He’s always down for fun.”

  “Pepper! You’re going to be in the San Antonio police department! Way to go!!”

  We stop at Buck’s kennel. He’s the one with canine post-traumatic stress disorder. “Hang in there, buddy. Tomorrow you’re going home with a couple who loves you a lot.”

  Buck’s neighbor is Rony. He is a beautiful German shepherd—everything a shepherd should be, from his regal stature to his alert demeanor. I instantly like this dog. He’s not barking, but he’s not curled up. He’s just kingly. I get his tattoo number, R262. He’s young, then, since this is an R year for tattoos. He may be two or three. He probably failed dog school. I learn that Rony has a paralyzing fear of thunderstorms. He literally bites the cage sides of his kennel and pulls his way up the kennel wall, nearly hanging from the ceiling, during storms. In San Francisco we get thunder maybe once a year. Rony wouldn’t be so tormented. I could see this dog in my house, passing the storm-free days away snoozing next to Jake. But I was nowhere in the running. I hadn’t even filled out an application yet.

  I was worried about this fellow, but everyone told me there are few storms in San Antonio that time of year—especially with the wicked drought that was going on. I felt better knowing that Rony wouldn’t have to deal with storms while living in his kennel. At least next time one hit, he’d likely be in the comfort of someone’s home.

  That night, as I drove to the airport, I was caught in a storm so torrential I had to pull off the side of the road with all the other traffic. The thunder was so strong I could feel it in my chest. I worried about Rony. I wished I’d filled out an adoption form eighteen months ago.

  But would Rony have been a good match for our household? Would Rony have eaten Jake, lunged at family and friends? I didn’t bother finding out, because what if he was a teddy bear? I’d want to take him home even more than I already did, and that just wasn’t happening.

  By the time the dogs are put up for adoption, they’ve been through behavioral testing. And any dog who was ever trained in patrol w
ork will have gone through something called a bite muzzle test. This involves testing how much attack a dog has left in him. It’s a somewhat complex process that shows what a dog will or won’t do under various conditions. Dogs who are not at Lackland are videotaped doing the test. The video is sent to Lackland, where, together with reading about a dog’s history, behavior experts can use it to evaluate how safe the dog might be for adoption.

  Even if a dog isn’t perfect, he can still be adopted. Engstrom just has to be more selective about homes. Many bite-trained military working dogs are dog-aggressive even when they retire. It’s partly their socialization (or lack thereof; the dogs don’t get to interact much with one another) and partly the stock they come from and perhaps the fact that these dogs are not neutered. Whatever the case, Engstrom obviously won’t adopt a dog-aggressive dog to a home with another dog. If dogs are a little edgy, they won’t get to be in homes with children. There are plenty of couples and single people living in remote areas who would be more than happy to take these dogs. But if the dog-aggression is bad enough, the dog is euthanized.

  This dog-aggression is something that many in the military working dog world would like to see change. Some are trying to get dogs more acclimated to each other by letting them have play time together, off leash, in a fenced area. They have to be monitored carefully, but it often works well. “They have to get used to each other. It’s not safe to have so much aggression toward other dogs. The dogs are not supposed to be fighting other dogs,” Arod told me.

  Many health issues won’t preclude adoption unless it would be cruel for the dog to be kept alive only to suffer. A dog with a terminal illness but who is pain free and seems to have a lot of time left could be considered for adoption. There’s no shortage of people who would adopt a dog to give him comfort and love in his last months.