In response, Caesar licked him on the face.
On Monday, Caesar and Ben were back on the EDD training course at the Holsworthy army base. Since Caesar had proven in the first two weeks of the course that he could obey Ben’s orders like a good soldier, and that he could stand the noise of battle and machines, he and Ben now began the longer explosive detection part of the course.
Eight dogs took part: Caesar and the three others that had passed basic training the previous week, plus four experienced dogs who were being used to help train new human handlers. All eight dogs were taken out to the training area in the same truck each day, but after they reached the training area they were kept apart, with each team of dog and handler being trained at their own pace. Even though Caesar had performed well in basic training, if he proved to have poor detection skills, became bored with the job, or didn’t continue to promptly follow Ben’s directions, he would be ejected from the course.
The new dogs were going to be taught to use their incredible sense of smell, many times stronger than that of humans, to detect enemy explosives which might kill or injure soldiers in the field. While those explosives came in a variety of forms, they all had the same basic chemical ingredients. And it was those basic ingredients that military sniffer dogs were taught to detect.
Caesar’s detection training began with a tennis ball. Ben stood with Caesar sitting by his side, and off his leash, while an instructor showed Caesar a tennis ball. The instructor then walked to a metal cage forty metres away and put the ball in it. Caesar had not taken his eye off the ball for a moment, but had continued all the while to sit obediently by Ben’s side.
Then, pointing to the cage, Ben commanded, ‘Caesar, seek on!’
In a flash, Caesar was up and bounding to the cage. Grabbing the tennis ball from inside, he came loping back and dropped the ball at Ben’s feet, then sat in front of him, looking up, eagerly waiting for the ‘game’ to continue.
Squatting down beside Caesar, Ben patted him, ruffled his neck and praised him. ‘Good boy, Caesar! Good boy!’
Before the training session had begun, the cage from where Caesar had retrieved the ball had been sprayed with traces of chemicals used in the manufacture of explosives. Humans can’t smell those chemicals, but dogs can. As the ball game continued, with the instructor taking the tennis ball to the cage and Caesar bringing it back time and again to receive Ben’s praise, Caesar began to associate the smell of those chemicals with the tennis ball and the order to seek on.
As the days progressed, the tennis ball disappeared, but when Ben ordered Caesar to seek on he would still dash to the cage in search of it. There, he would sit, looking at the cage, a little mystified, as if thinking, So, where’s the ball? I know it’s here somewhere, I can smell it. Caesar now associated the odour of explosives with the order to seek, and now knew that every time he located that odour he would receive Ben’s praise. During the course, Caesar was exposed to different types of explosives, and even detonators. As the days stretched into weeks, the training moved on as Ben began to send Caesar into empty buildings to find the scent – into pipes and culverts, into an underground bunker, into trucks, cars, and an armoured personnel carrier. And, every time, Caesar would detect the odour in a container or package containing explosives that had been deliberately hidden for him to find.
Next, Caesar was taught to track the scent of explosives that were on the move. An instructor carrying explosives would lay a trail while Ben and Caesar waited. After thirty minutes, Ben would release Caesar and instruct him to seek on. As always, Caesar would bound away and follow the scent trail with his nose down to the ground. Every time, Caesar found the hiding instructor. Even when the waiting time was increased, Caesar could successfully follow an explosives trail that was hours old.
Another task involved training Caesar to inspect roads for hidden landmines or IEDs – improvised explosive devices, which are lethal homemade bombs. To perform this task, Ben trained Caesar to seek on up one side of a road until he was about forty metres ahead of Ben, then track back down the other side, always looking for the scent of explosives. During the training, genuine landmines and IEDs were planted in or beside roads. Caesar found every one. Each time, he would come to a sudden stop, turn in the direction of the explosives, then slowly ease his backside down into the sitting position and stare at the hiding place.
When dogs sense odours they have been trained to seek, all indicate their find in slightly different ways. Sniffer dog handlers call this the dog’s ‘signature’. Some dogs stare when they’ve located something. Some sit in front of it. Some stand frozen and seem to point with their nose. Others lift a front paw off the ground. Sometimes, when the scent is faint, making the dog uncertain, a handler has to be able to read a dog’s changed behaviour – behaviour anyone else might not notice, or might dismiss as unimportant.
So, all through these weeks of detection training, Ben was undergoing a form of training of his own. He had noticed that Caesar would always stop and sit very slowly when he had found the source of the scent he was tracking, then stare at it with his tail rigid. If the scent was in a vehicle, Caesar would sit and stare at the vehicle. If it was carried by a human, he would sit and look up at the human without flinching a muscle. Ben also observed that when Caesar picked up a faint scent, his head would go down and he would keep it low to the ground as he sniffed urgently. When released from his leash, Caesar would quickly and methodically circle around and around, gradually increasing his search area until he picked up the scent.
In one exercise, Caesar was sent by Ben to inspect a group of unarmed Australian Army Engineers while they had lunch in the field. One of those soldiers had handled heavy explosives that morning especially for the training exercise. To a dog with a finely tuned nose, there would still be a faint scent of explosive chemicals on that soldier. Some dogs would miss it. Exceptionally gifted dogs would not.
At first, Caesar circled the group of soldiers, who were chatting and eating their lunch. As Ben observed from a distance, with chief instructor Angelo and a burly sergeant who was in charge of the Engineers, Caesar went around and around the group without seeming to pick up a scent.
‘Which of your men was carrying the explosives, Sergeant?’ Ben asked the engineer sergeant, as they watched Caesar continuing to circle the group.
‘I expect your dog to tell us that, Corporal Fulton,’ said the sergeant, with a chuckle. ‘One of the other dogs picked up the scent when it was tested here yesterday. Looks like your dog’s not up to it, though.’
Ben frowned. ‘How long did it take yesterday’s dog to find the scent?’
The engineer sergeant shrugged. ‘Quite a while.’
‘Was it at lunchtime, like today?’ Ben pressed.
‘No, it was after lunch. Midafternoon,’ said Sergeant Angelo.
Ben nodded. ‘The smell of cooking food might be masking the scent for Caesar,’ he remarked.
‘Sounds like a pretty good excuse for failure to me,’ said the sergeant with a laugh. After a long pause, he looked at his watch. ‘How long before your dog gives up?’
‘Caesar never gives up,’ Ben replied, with a proud smile on his face. ‘He’s proving to be the most persistent dog I’ve ever come across. He’d keep this up for hours, if I let him.’
‘Well, we do have to go back to barracks before sunset, you know,’ said the sergeant disparagingly, before turning to walk away.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Ben. ‘I think Caesar’s on to something now. Look.’
The sergeant stopped in his tracks and looked over at Caesar to see that the dog was still circling the Engineers. Shaking his head, he said, ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘Look more closely,’ Ben urged.
‘What do you mean?’ The sergeant scowled. ‘He’s still running around in circles! He’s clueless, mate, admit it.’
‘No, look more closely.’ When the sergeant still couldn’t spot any change in Caesar’s behaviour, Ben had to spel
l it out for him. ‘Look how Caesar stops in front of a particular man before he turns around and does another circle. It’s always the same man he stops in front of. He’s not certain, but he’s troubled. I think Caesar has picked up a hint of a scent on the corporal with red hair.’
‘Hell’s bells, Fulton!’ the sergeant exclaimed. ‘You’re either a freakishly good guesser, or you can read your dog like a book. The red-headed corporal was the one your dog was supposed to find – he was the one carrying explosives this morning.’
It was a double victory. Caesar had picked up a scent, faint though it was, and Ben had been able to read his dog well enough to realise when Caesar was on to something.
By the fifteenth week of training, while there was detection practice every day, new war dog skills were also being added. One day, Caesar was taught to relax when Ben picked him up and slung him around his shoulders like a very large furry scarf, then took a firm hold of his legs as they trailed down his chest, grasping two legs in each hand. This fireman’s lift method would be used by Ben to evacuate Caesar if his dog was ever wounded in action or was otherwise unable to walk.
While Ben was holding Caesar like this, an instructor took a photograph of the pair. Caesar looked into the camera with a sad look, as if to say, Why am I up here on Ben’s shoulders? I just feel so silly.
This fireman’s lift practice also prepared Caesar for something that some humans, let alone dogs, find scary. At times, war dogs have to be winched in and out of hovering helicopters, or ‘heelos’, as soldiers call them. This was sometimes done with their handler, but other times circumstances required dogs to be lowered or raised on their own. For this, a long, thick winching wire hanging from the helicopter was attached to a heelo harness specially created for dogs. In these last few weeks of training, Ben put the harness on Caesar every day to get him used to wearing it. Caesar didn’t even seem to notice he had it on.
Ben also had his own way of preparing Caesar for dangling beneath a helicopter. The weekend before he was due to take him to an army exercise area for Caesar’s helicopter lift training, Ben took Caesar home as usual and tried out a device he’d rigged up in the backyard.
Josh was due to play school soccer on Saturday morning. As Ben drove him to the game, he said, ‘Want to see how Caesar reacts to the heelo lift this afternoon, Josh? I’m going to try him in it from a tree in the yard. Remember how Dodger reacted when we tried him out with his heelo harness?’
‘Nah,’ Josh replied, looking out the window. ‘I’ve got stuff to do this afternoon.’
Ben sighed with disappointment. But, remembering Nan Fulton’s words after Ben first brought Caesar home, he didn’t try pushing Caesar onto Josh. Though he did wonder how long it would take for Josh to finally like Caesar.
After Josh’s team won their game and they returned home, the family had lunch, then Josh disappeared into his room.
‘Josh’s playing computer games again,’ said Ben unhappily, leading Caesar out into the yard.
‘Don’t worry about him, Ben,’ said Nan, as she and Maddie followed them out the back door to watch. ‘He’s okay.’
‘I’m a soldier,’ said Ben, taking Caesar to a large gum tree, tall, with a thick white trunk, by the back fence. ‘I take orders. And I’m tempted to order Josh to get involved with Caesar. It’s been months since I brought him home.’
‘You can’t order your son to love someone, Ben,’ said Nan, shaking her head. ‘Josh will warm to Caesar eventually. Just let him be.’
Maddie, as if she were in class at school, raised her hand. ‘Daddy, I love Caesar,’ she said.
‘I know you do, sweetheart,’ said Ben with a smile, as he knelt beside Caesar and attached a rope to the dog’s heelo harness. ‘And he loves you.’
Ben got up and heaved on the rope, which hung from a branch of the big gum tree, hauling Caesar several metres into the air until the brown labrador hung helplessly above their heads. As he slowly turned at the end of the rope, Caesar looked down at them from his harness with his tongue hanging out.
‘He likes it!’ Maddie cried with glee.
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Nan, with a worried frown. ‘Look at poor old Caesar’s tail.’
Sure enough, Caesar’s tail was drooping. If he was enjoying this, his tail would be wagging. ‘No dog enjoys this sort of thing,’ said Ben, ‘but Caesar’s coping well. He’s calm and accepting of his situation – that’s good. He’ll do fine when it’s the real thing.’
Caesar did do fine in his heelo harness when it came to the real thing the following week. Caesar and the other dogs on the course and their handlers were driven to a live firing range outside Holsworthy. An army Black Hawk helicopter flew in, and hovered noisily above them as the men and dogs lined up. All the handlers were wearing ear-protectors, called Peltors, to reduce the noise, and goggles to protect their eyes from the clouds of dust raised by the helicopter’s spinning rotors. Now, Ben and the other handlers fitted special dog goggles, called ‘doggles’, over their animals’ eyes, along with canine ear-protectors, known as ‘puppy Peltors’. Once Ben had fitted Caesar with his doggles and puppy Peltors, Caesar looked up at him as if to say, What’s this all about, boss? Ben grinned and gave Caesar a pat. ‘Caesar, mate, the doggles and Peltors suit you,’ he yelled, above the noise of the hovering heelo.
Eight metal lines were then dropped down from the Black Hawk, which Ben and three other handlers hitched up to the heelo harnesses, first to their own then to those of their dogs. Dogs and handlers were lifted into the air as the heelo rose up and did several circuits of the area with the handlers and their dogs dangling beneath it, before returning and gently setting them back on the ground.
The morning was spent going through a variety of heelo lifts and drops, with all the dogs and handlers rappelling down together and then being winched back. One time, Caesar alone was winched all the way up into the Black Hawk’s cabin, taken for a ride, then lowered back down, while Ben waited on the ground. All through this, Caesar was perfectly calm and accepting, indicating he had the right temperament for heelo work, as Ben had predicted.
Helicopter training ceased at lunchtime, with the handlers and instructors sitting down to an army ration lunch among the parked trucks and Land Rovers that had brought them out to the firing range. The dogs, on the other hand, were only given water, for they would have their only meal of the day at night. As the troops ate, the dogs were let off their leashes and allowed to roam free. The first thing that Caesar did was introduce himself to the other dogs by sniffing their behinds and letting them sniff his. This was a dog’s way of getting to know other dogs – from their rear-end scent. Ben, sitting and eating from an MRE (Meals, Ready-to-Eat) pack, watched Caesar with the other dogs for a while, before becoming locked in conversation with chief instructor Sergeant Angelo.
After lunch, Ben went looking for Caesar. At first, he couldn’t find him. Then, from beside one of the green Land Rovers, Ben saw earth flying through the air. Walking around the vehicle, Ben came upon Caesar digging a hole with a flurry of front paws. The hole was getting deeper with each second.
‘Caesar, no!’ Ben groaned. ‘We’ve been through this before. No digging!’
Grabbing Caesar’s collar, he tried to pull him away. But Caesar strained with all his might to return to his hole.
‘Bad dog! Bad dog, Caesar!’ Ben growled. ‘Sit!’
Caesar looked around at him and let out a whine of surprise, then dutifully sat down.
Ben’s scolding tone was heard by the chief instructor, who came walking around the Land Rover to see what was going on. ‘Is there a problem, Fulton?’ Sergeant Angelo asked. Then he spotted the hole. ‘Oh. Did your dog do this?’
‘Yes, Sergeant,’ said Ben, guiltily. ‘I thought he’d outgrown his digging habit. He hasn’t done it in months.’ Ben immediately became worried that this might count against Caesar, and might even result in his dog being kicked off the course – the tough chief instructor never gave a dog a se
cond chance if it breached discipline. Both blue heeler and Belgian shepherd had been swiftly ejected for getting out of line during basic training.
Sergeant Angelo scowled as he looked at the hole. ‘Your dog digs, does he? I’m not sure that’s a good –’
Ben’s heart sank, as he dreaded to hear the worst. ‘It’s just an immature habit of Caesar’s,’ he said, hurrying to defend Caesar. ‘Don’t worry, Sergeant, I’ll train it out of him. It’s not a big deal.’
But the chief instructor’s attention had been caught by something in the hole. ‘What’s this?’ he said, squatting to take a closer look.
Ben came and looked over Sergeant Angelo’s shoulder, and saw a piece of curved grey metal in the earth where Caesar had been digging. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ he said.
Sergeant Angelo nodded grimly. ‘It sure is, Fulton. An artillery shell. An unexploded round.’ Coming to his feet, the sergeant yelled at the top of his voice, ‘Clear the area! We have unexploded ordnance here!’
‘Looks like Caesar knew what he was doing after all,’ said Ben proudly, giving Caesar a pat. ‘Good boy, Caesar! Good boy!’
As the men and dogs quickly evacuated the area, Sergeant Angelo was eyeing Caesar. He was not a man who often smiled, but a broad grin now creased his weather-beaten face. ‘Your dog picked up the scent of the high explosive in the ground, Fulton. Well done to you both.’
Sergeant Angelo called in a bomb disposal squad, who were brought in by Black Hawk. While the handlers and their dogs waited a safe distance away, two bomb disposal soldiers in special padded suits and protective helmets carefully removed the large unexploded shell from the ground, then carried it away from the parked vehicles. With a boom, an orange flash and a cloud of black smoke, the shell was safely detonated a thousand metres away, in a controlled explosion.
As Ben led Caesar back to the vehicles once the all clear had been given, Sergeant Angelo came over to them. ‘Fulton, you were saying that you would train the digging habit out of Caesar. I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You never know when his interest in digging will come in handy on operations.’
Caesar the War Dog Page 3
