Top Dog

by Maria Goodavage

  “Hey, come on, up, up!” he told them in Pashto as he entered their living quarters, on the outer edge of the compound. “I told you yesterday, remember? Man, you guys like to get your beauty sleep.” They rallied and were soon outside with the Americans for pregame. Parker hoped they were prepared.

  “You guys got any water?” Parker asked them.

  “No.”

  He went in and pulled out enough water bottles for six guys.

  “You got food, right?”

  “No.”

  He went back to the kitchen and grabbed whatever portable foods he could find. Energy bars and their favorite—strawberry Pop-Tarts.

  As he helped get them ready, Lucca was making her usual rounds. She had become the star of pregame—a mascot of sorts. While Darko generally sat by Cornier, leashed, and not in the mood for socializing, Lucca seemed to make a point of spending a little time with each Green Beret. Sometimes the local police even beckoned her over for some pats.

  Lucca walked over to Cornier and Darko. Darko took a quick glance and continued staring off somewhere in the distance. Or nowhere at all. Just not at Lucca, or Rod, who followed.

  The team received the mission brief. It was to be a patrol like most of their others—getting the lay of the land, scoping out places for future checkpoints, establishing relationships with residents, and, if need be, dealing with trouble along the way. There was some intel about possible IEDs a few klicks away, and they’d regroup before that.

  “You want to do infil or exfil, Rod?” Cornier asked. They usually decided between them who would start walking point on the way out, and who would take over on the way back. Cornier likened it to rock-paper-scissors. Random, luck of the draw. So far Darko had been in the right place at the right time more often than Lucca when it came to IEDs. He had found several more than Lucca had. He was paper; she was rock. He knew if she’d been on the path Darko had been on, she’d have been scissors to his paper.

  Either way, between them, they had it covered.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Rod said. “I guess we’ll take infil.”

  The platoon set out. Several Afghan Local Police led the way, then Lucca, followed by Rod, then the Green Berets, and bringing up the rear, Darko and Cornier. Rod watched Lucca as she walked with the rising sun behind her. She was a dark silhouette against the orange sky. He wished he had his camera handy to capture the image forever.

  SEVERAL HOURS INTO the patrol, they came across two boys, ten and twelve years old, tending a poppy field near a compound. The poppies were about a month or so away from harvest, by the looks of it. The buds were still on the stems but hadn’t yet blossomed into the pink and white petals that float over the land in spring. The petals still needed to grow, then fall away to reveal a green pod that would eventually become the size of a small egg. As it ripened, it would produce opium. Farmers got more money for growing opium than other crops, but their profit was scant. The big money would be made several rungs up the ladder.

  The boys were doing what farm boys do all around the world—whatever the farmer, who may have been their father, told them to do to keep the crops thriving. The Americans who saw them walking down the rows and looking at the plants had no idea what they were doing.

  Parker approached the boys and greeted them in Pashto. After a brief exchange of formalities, one boy asked if Parker had anything they could have. They had clearly heard about the NATO troops carrying little gifts. Parker unzipped a side pouch on his backpack and withdrew two new ballpoint pens. “Qalam!” the boys exclaimed, smiling in delight. Parker knew a lot of soldiers who gave out candy in these situations, but twelve-year-old boys in these parts aren’t the same as twelve-year-old boys back home. Candy might be OK for little kids, but if you’re twelve around here, you’re not a kid. He respected that and gave them something they might be able to use—even though they probably didn’t know how to read or write. Still, maybe the pens would come in handy.

  Parker and one of the Afghan police spoke with the boys for a couple of minutes in Pashto. It was a friendly conversation, Rod could hear, but he understood only one word in their conversation: Taliban.

  The platoon moved on for a few minutes and stopped for an update. The boys had told them that Taliban insurgents might have planted some explosives in fields in the area. They had no idea where. Probably not too close to here, since the Taliban wasn’t out to kill locals, especially children.

  If the Green Berets didn’t have intel already saying there could be IEDs around here, they might not have put much stock in the boys’ warning. They knew all too well that anything anyone told them out there was to be taken with a grain of salt. But when you add a local tip to trusted intel, it can be the start of a dangerous equation. Intel + Tip = Problem. They proceeded cautiously, Afghan Local Police first to scope their native land with their expert eyes, then Lucca, to inspect it with her expert nose.

  THE IED THAT took Lucca out of the fight on the afternoon of March 23 was likely one of two types.

  It may have been an IED with a small main charge. Such IEDs, sometimes known as “toe poppers,” intend to hurt, to take off one or two legs, but not kill—usually. Just destroy the morale of the unit and ensure that a soldier, seaman, airman, or marine will never walk this soil again.

  Or it could have been a larger pressure-plate IED that had “low-ordered,” or deteriorated, due to many reasons, including moisture, a blasting cap with inadequate power, or age-related factors. If it had been in good working order, there would not have been much left of Lucca. A high-order explosive can detonate at speeds of nine thousand to twenty-seven thousand feet per second, and according to the Centers for Disease Control, “produce a defining supersonic over-pressurization shock wave.” If the victim is not instantly killed, injuries can be numerous and life threatening and can include blast lung, concussion, eye rupture, and open brain injuries, in addition to traumatic amputation of entire limbs.

  Within ten minutes of the blast, the medevac helicopter was whisking Lucca and Rod to Camp Leatherneck, twenty minutes away. Rod’s heart was racing, but he tried to maintain calm, for Lucca’s sake. She had enough problems. She didn’t need to sniff fear and anxiety in her handler. One of the medics brought out a bag that read MWD KIT, and Rod instantly knew she was in good hands. Anyone who carried a special emergency kit for dogs was obviously well prepared for anything that came their way on four legs. Or three legs and a mangled fourth.

  The helicopter was so loud that everyone had to shout to be heard.

  “Are there any other wounds you know about?” a medic asked Rod above the helicopter noise after he had examined Lucca. Rod pointed to the burns the medic had already explored.

  “Any shrapnel or gunshots?”

  Rod shook his head.

  “Is she on any medications?”

  “No, just the morphine the Delta gave her,” he said. He thought about the poppies they’d walked through that day, and how the plants would soon be producing opium, and how morphine was the most abundant opiate in the opium. He found himself feeling grateful to the local plants, even though they weren’t the legally grown ones that are used for medicine. Somewhere, a poppy field that looked a lot like the ones they walked through had made the morphine that was now helping Lucca not feel the searing pain.

  The men Rod and Lucca left behind regrouped. Cornier brought Darko up to the front element, and they continued through the field and on to the next. Parker, who was relieved that his good friend Rod was OK, tried not to let himself think about how much he would miss Lucca—how much they’d all miss their mascot.

  THREE MEMBERS OF a veterinary team met the Black Hawk when it landed at the Leatherneck flight line. They helped Rod carry Lucca in her makeshift stretcher—a blanket—to the back of the pickup truck. One veterinarian rode with Lucca, comforting her as he checked her vitals and did a quick initial evaluation of her condition.
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br />   They arrived at the veterinary tent and lifted Lucca onto a stainless steel table. She was panting but not heavily. The morphine the medic had given her seemed to be working. She lay still, her eyes half-open, staring at nothing. Rod stroked her head.

  “You’re going to be OK, Mama Lucca,” he told her, trying to sound convincing—he realized more for his sake than hers. Her eyes turned slowly to look at him and drifted back to their empty stare.

  The veterinarians carefully cut off the bandages and assessed Lucca’s wounds—the muscles, tendons, and sharp bone edges of what was left of her lower left leg, the burns and lacerations on her chest, the blisters forming around her lips. They performed blood work and urinalysis, an abdominal ultrasound to look for internal bleeding, chest radiographs, and an ECG. They started her on IV fluids and IV antibiotics.

  Her leg was anesthetized and the vets pulled back a flap of shredded, fur-covered skin and irrigated her wound to remove as much dirt and shrapnel as possible. They drew the skin back over what was left of her leg and stitched it shut with temporary sutures so the wreckage was no longer exposed.

  “There’s not much we can do for her,” one of the veterinarians said.

  Rod stopped breathing and his chest tightened.

  The vet continued. “We’re going to have to send her on to Kandahar. They’re much better equipped for this kind of trauma. We want to get her on a bird quickly. Why don’t you grab some things? You won’t be coming back.”

  Rod exhaled, felt the life rush back into him. He rested his hand on her soft fur and sensed her warmth and her breathing.

  “I want to tell you,” the vet said, “she would have bled out fast if you hadn’t acted so quickly. You and the medic did an outstanding job.”

  Rod had been keeping stoic. But as he walked away, the reality of the situation came crashing down around him, and his emotions overwhelmed him.

  THE AMBULANCE WAS waiting when the C-130 Hercules landed at Kandahar Airfield. Lucca lay on blankets in the lower half of a kennel crate. The top had been removed for easy access. Rod and some members of the Kandahar veterinary crew carefully hoisted the crate from the floor of the transport aircraft down to the ambulance. Lucca raised her head to look at what was going on.

  “It’s OK, Mama Lucca,” Rod told her. “Rest easy.”

  The vet who had accompanied Lucca from Leatherneck briefed Lieutenant-Colonel James Giles III, senior veterinary surgeon in Afghanistan, and got back on the C-130 for the return trip. Giles, Rod, and a vet tech rode in the back of the ambulance to the other side of the airfield with Lucca. Giles did a cursory examination of Lucca. With the tech, he collected vital signs, inspected the bandages to see if there was any bleeding evident, and made sure her IV fluids and morphine drip were being delivered properly.

  They parked just outside the veterinary tent, where veterinarian Captain Nathan (Shane) Chumbler, officer in charge of the veterinary clinic, awaited her arrival. The vets and techs did more blood work, inserted a urinary catheter, and switched Lucca from morphine to a fentanyl drip for pain control. Her leg was anesthetized again so they could assess the damage.

  The front left leg had been blown off between the elbow and wrist. They couldn’t simply make a neat cut in the antebrachium and let it remain as a partial leg. The muscles would atrophy and the leg would be vulnerable to complications such as decubitus ulcers—essentially, bedsores—which could lead to infections and further problems. With hind legs, there’s usually enough muscle mass to leave part of the leg, but not with forelimbs.

  Giles contacted the director of the Role 4 Veterinary Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base to discuss whether he should do a complete amputation or preserve most of her limb for a prosthesis—a procedure that was emerging in veterinary medicine, but not done routinely. The director wasn’t against the concept of doing prosthetics in the future but in Lucca’s case advised against it since there was no established plan or equipment in place.

  The vets reassured Rod that dogs like Lucca do very well on three legs and that since Lucca is such a strong dog, she should be walking around in no time.

  They wanted to arrange to do the surgery in the “human” hospital at Kandahar. The veterinary tent was a rustic structure that ran on a generator that went out on a daily basis. It wasn’t the kind of place to do major surgery. The staff at the hospital had been very supportive of the vet staff bringing over their most serious canine patients. The procedure just needed a little planning.

  Since Lucca was in stable condition and it was now late at night, they set her up with a vet tech to care for her until morning. Chumbler bandaged her using pinkish red and yellow vet wrap, the closest they had to the marine flag colors of red and gold. He wrote the marine motto, Semper Fidelis, on it with a Sharpie. Chumbler always tried to make the handlers of injured dogs feel at least a little better with touches like these.

  The staff placed Lucca in the largest cage in the clinic. It was about four feet wide and three feet high, and at floor level. Rod could have spent the night in a room they provided for him, but he didn’t want to leave Lucca, and he definitely didn’t want to be alone.

  He crawled in the cage beside Lucca, with his torso in the cage and his legs sticking out. The vet tech, who had seen loyal handlers like this before, grabbed him a blanket and pillow.

  Just before dawn, when he grew too tired to worry about the complications of anesthesia, the possibility of deadly infections, the idea of his Mama Lucca’s leg coming off, of her never working again, and of how Willingham would probably wish he’d chosen someone else for Lucca, he fell asleep.

  WHEN HE AWOKE an hour later, Rod carefully maneuvered out of the cage so he wouldn’t disturb Lucca. He left her sleeping and walked to the nearby military dog kennel office to write to Willingham. He figured Willingham already knew what had happened, since the dog guys at Leatherneck were going to try to keep him posted until Rod could contact him. As the dogs barked in the background, he sat down and wrote the most difficult e-mail he’d ever written.

  Subject: Lucca urgent

  Hey I got a second so i wanted to send you quick e-mail. I don’t know if you were informed already but yesterday afternoon around 1400 Lucca found an IED and while searching for secondaries set off another IED. Initially she lost her left paw and had a couple of burn spots to her neck and chest. She is going through surgery soon. They will have to amputate her whole left leg. I’m very sorry and feel awful about the whole event. i know how much you care about her. I know you probably read this and have a lot of questions. You can write and I’ll answer as soon as possible. I have pictures of her progress. If you like to see them just let me know. I’m very sorry, it was a very scary experience and i feel awful, I don’t think i can express that enough. I know you gave me lucca with your trust and I hoped nothing like this to happen. I’ll keep you updated as much as possible.

  He kept it brief. He felt a need to get back to Lucca. He didn’t want her waking up alone, and he was scared that in his absence, something could happen and he’d come back to bad news. When he returned, her eyes were open. She raised her head when she saw him coming. He fit himself beside her in the kennel again and stroked her head, and she relaxed and went back to sleep.

  About an hour later, Chumbler came by and told Rod the hospital was ready for Lucca. Rod helped gently lift Lucca onto a gurney and carry her to the adjacent “human” hospital, the NATO Role 3 Multinational Medical Unit. Before surgery, she was given a full-body CT scan so the vets would know if there was further damage they needed to address. With her chest lacerations, they didn’t want to take any chances. The scans revealed nothing serious.

  The surgical staff assembled in the state-of-the-art operating room. Besides Giles and Chumbler, there were three “human” medical doctors—an anesthesiologist and two orthopedic surgeons. Many MDs at the hospital jumped at the chance to assist with military working dog operations. Th
e dogs always seemed to bring a little bit of home with them, and it was a chance to help K-9s who had almost given their lives saving others.

  Giles didn’t think of dogs as truly separate from their handlers. He sometimes shared this insight with colleagues. “They’re a dog team. They’re kind of the same entity,” said Giles, who had been a Special Forces soldier early in his career. He welcomed Rod to stay in the operating room during the surgery. It might be too much for some to handle, but Rod had been nothing but levelheaded since arriving, and Giles thought he’d want to be there.

  Rod changed into scrubs and stood out of the way, toward the foot of the operating table. The doctors, circulating nurses, and surgical techs scrubbed up to prepare for Lucca’s forequarter amputation.

  The operating room was warmer than typical hospital surgeries. Combat hospitals keep their operating rooms warm to help fight hypothermia, which can happen easily during anesthesia in patients with extensive blood loss. For added warmth, during surgery Lucca would also have a 3M Bair Hugger, an electric device that blows warm air through a hose and into a perforated blanket that’s used to keep a patient warm. The Bair Hugger comes with various disposable paper and plastic perforated blankets. Sometimes staffers place the warm air hose under a traditional blanket, but they used a disposable blanket to create Lucca’s warm microenvironment.

  As she lay sedated on her right side, her leg, chest, and thorax area were shaved with battery-powered veterinary clippers and the site was swabbed with a chlorhexidine disinfectant solution. Blue surgical draping was placed over most of her body to create a sterile field around the surgery site.

  To monitor her vitals during surgery, veterinary staff stuck adhesive EKG pads to her three paws. A pulse oximeter attached to her tongue, and a blood-pressure cuff wrapped around a hind leg. They set up a thermometer to track her temperature.