Secret Service Dogs

by Maria Goodavage

  Devil was donated by an MPD officer whose career had become too busy to give her dog the attention and training he needed. The dog was highly aggressive, but in the end, he made it through the program.

  On April 30, 1976, the first canine class of the United States Secret Service graduated. The six uniformed handlers posed with their dogs on an outdoor staircase. In the front row, lined up close together alongside their handlers, were canines Bullet, Tony, Danny, and Duke.

  On the step above them stood MPD trainer Dave Haskins. The men held him in high esteem and knew they were going to miss seeing him daily. He and the other trainers had done their best with the dogs they’d been given. Three of the six dogs looked like they were going to do great things in the Service. Not bad, considering.

  Two dog teams in the photo had physically separated themselves from the other dogs and from each other by several stairs: Cusick and Devil way at the top of the staircase, as far as possible from the others. And Shegogue and Keeper, with a wide cushion between Devil in the back and the rest of the dogs in front.

  Anyone watching may have thought the handlers arranged themselves this way to make the photo look more interesting or symmetrical, unaware of the melee that would probably ensue if they’d been closer.

  Like new graduates anywhere, Shegogue wondered about his future. Where would he be in a few months or years? Would this dog get better at detecting explosives? What if Keeper missed something and the worst happened?

  He stashed these thoughts away and tried to enjoy their big day.

  —

  Shegogue and the MPD trainers had to face reality after Keeper had been on the job for three weeks. Keeper was not, after all, a keeper. No one could get him to show interest in explosives detection. Shegogue gave back his dog and reluctantly stepped out of the world of dog handling, since no other dogs were available.

  The dog found another home, and Shegogue found himself back at the Foreign Missions Branch, standing post in front of embassies without a canine, often on the midnight shift. He went from having little supervision as a dog handler to having layers of it.

  Soon after, another dog from the class washed out.

  And then there were four.

  A third dog wasn’t doing so well either, but the handler didn’t call attention to him. He didn’t want to end up pulling night duty standing post by himself.

  Livingood and Senior Special Agent Thomas Quinn were already painfully aware that the canine program was in need of extensive changes if it were to survive. As the dogs were washing out and others were pawing at explosives during training, the agents made phone calls and spoke with law-enforcement leaders and with military canine training facilities around the country to get information about what others were doing.

  Their research led them to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. It seemed to have just the kind of program they were looking for. Livingood and Quinn visited Lackland, headquarters for training most of the nation’s military dogs and handlers.

  They liked how the dogs alerted with a passive response rather than one that could cause an explosion. Instead of digging at explosives, the dogs simply sat and stared. And the quality of the dogs impressed them. These weren’t dogs scraped together from whatever free resources were available. They were high-quality dogs, primarily German shepherds, procured from breeders in Europe and the United States.

  Back in D.C. the men worked out a deal. The Air Force would supply the dogs to the Secret Service and train the handlers and the dogs in an intensive course at Lackland, followed by more training in the Washington, D.C., area.

  Shegogue and the other dogless handler got sprung from post duty. They flew with four new handlers to be part of the first Secret Service canine class at Lackland. He figured he was in for a smooth ride this time, at last.

  And then he met Coley. The dog had already bitten several handlers before Shegogue got him. “He’s a good dog, really,” he was assured.

  The problem seemed to be that Coley didn’t like to be told what to do. As Shegogue worked with the dog on obedience the first few days, Coley conveyed his message as best as he could.

  Every so often, the dog spun around and put his teeth on Shegogue’s groin area. He didn’t clamp down. It was just a warning:

  No one tells me what to do.

  Shegogue knew he needed to nip it in the bud before the dog decided to take it to the next level. He didn’t want to have to call his wife with a description of a new and particularly awful kind of bite pain. He had a feeling it would involve more than pencils and hammers.

  Within a week, with the help of the trainers at Lackland, he and Coley had come to an understanding. From then on, Shegogue had no doubt his canine partner was exactly what the dogs of the other Secret Service handlers were to them: the best.

  Coley was proving excellent at obedience and looked like he was going to be a fine patrol and explosives dog as well. He didn’t like coming off the bite once he got hold of a bite sleeve, but that would give Shegogue something to work on when they headed back home for more training.

  The next class of six handlers that flew down to Lackland included Cusick with Devil, and two other handlers from the original MPD class. Their dogs needed to unlearn the aggressive alert and replace it with the passive alert, among other new skills.

  The canine unit grew by increments of six teams every several months, and soon there were enough dogs to work around the clock, rotating to different areas each shift. Every day brought something new. No one stood post for eight- or twelve-hour shifts. Boredom was rarely an issue as they pulled four-hour blocks at the White House and on the streets or wherever they were needed.

  The Secret Service hired their favorite trainers from Lackland to work at Rowley Training Center. The program grew and became more self-sufficient. It was becoming robust enough that the Secret Service would soon be able to end its training relationship with Lackland. But there was still one more class to go . . .

  —

  Shepherd, shepherd, shepherd, shepherd . . .

  Malinois.

  Five dogs, five handlers. They had spent six weeks together at Lackland getting to know each other, for better and worse. And now back at RTC, the handlers were about to learn which dogs the trainers had picked for them.

  The program had never selected a Malinois before. The breed wasn’t that well known yet in the United States. A Malinois named Marko had caught the eyes of the Air Force trainers, who could see he was strong, tough, energetic, and driven.

  “Who’s going to get Marko?” the Lackland trainers had asked before the dog handlers had gone back to RTC.

  “Not sure yet,” a Secret Service instructor responded.

  “Watch out, or Marko will kill him!”

  Handler Freddie McMillon knew this was no joke. He had developed an ongoing internal dialogue with Marko during their encounters.

  Dog, don’t chew me up. You don’t need to eat me alive. Let’s work together on this.

  McMillon wanted to say the words but only thought them as he willed himself to open the kennel door whenever he was assigned to take out Marko. He didn’t want any whiff of doubt to trail in with him.

  The barking and whirling of the other dogs didn’t bother him so much. But Marko’s icy glare gave him cold feet. McMillon could almost hear what Marko was trying to tell him with his look: I dare you to bring your ass in here!

  The handler was always relieved when it was someone else’s turn to take out Marko. The dog was a biter, out of control, and tireless.

  And now was the moment of truth. The instructor began the matchmaking announcements.

  “Denny, you’ve got Mutz.”

  “Billy, you’ve got Bear.”

  Oh no, just three of us left. Please don’t let me get Marko.

  “George, you’ve got Abus.”

  Uh-oh. Gi
ve Marko to Marty, give Marko to Marty . . .

  “Marty, you’ve got Fritz.”

  Noooooo!

  “And Freddie, you’ve obviously got Marko. Don’t worry, you can handle it. That’s why we chose you for him.”

  He wanted to believe him, so he decided to get this relationship off to a strong start. After the announcement, he walked over to have a chat with Marko at the kennel.

  Marko glared, as always. McMillon knew what he was trying to tell him.

  Look, I don’t know what your intentions are, but I’d advise you not to come any closer.

  “OK, OK, you can look at me like that but your ass has to eat, and guess who has the food?” McMillon said to him, out loud, standing tall and trying to make himself look sturdier and more in control than he felt. He made sure his body language conveyed that he was trying to tell Marko something important, something he needed to know.

  The first day, when everyone fed their dogs, McMillon showed up but brought no chow. The same happened the next morning. Later in the day McMillon approached the kennel. He had kibble in his pockets.

  “OK, Marko, are we going to be friends or what? This is going to be a good partnership. They said to me you’ll be a great detection dog. We already know about your patrol side.”

  The dog stared, but it wasn’t the usual defiant pose. McMillon entered the kennel without incident but stayed near the door just in case.

  He took some kibble from his pocket and cupped his hand toward Marko. The dog ate it hungrily. After several fistfuls, McMillon still had some food in his pockets when something unprecedented happened. Marko wagged his tail. McMillon kept feeding him, and his dog’s tail kept wagging.

  “I got you, boy,” he said to Marko, and smiled.

  He and Marko became closer every day. He saw in the dog the kind of hard-core dedication and energy and determination he valued in himself.

  By the end of the months of training, Marko was calling him Dad.

  —

  Several years into the canine program, the Secret Service hired Ray Reinhart to be an instructor. He had put in nearly twenty years as a K-9 handler with Prince George’s County, Maryland, and was ready to bring his brand of instruction and training, and his passion for K-9s’ capabilities, to the Secret Service.

  He knew firsthand what great dogs could do. His German shepherd, Rommel, had saved his life on three occasions.

  “There was a bank robbery,” he’d tell his classes. “And two of the assailants took off. K-9 was the first one called. We were searching in some high sage grass. Suddenly Rommel stopped and bristled. I couldn’t see anything but I let him go and he bolted and got the guy in the arm—the arm that had been holding the gun he was about to shoot.”

  Rommel got steak that night.

  “Did you know Rommel was a water dog?” he’d ask his students.

  “A water dog? I thought he was a German shepherd,” someone would inevitably say.

  “No, he was a water dog. You could turn him on and you could turn him off just as easily. I’m hoping all your dogs will be water dogs.”

  Reinhart handled every facet of training: criminal apprehension, explosives detection, obedience, agility, and article searches. When problems needed to be solved, students knew the solution would likely bear Reinhart’s unique, creative stamp.

  “You gotta experiment,” was his philosophy. “It’s not all in a book.”

  —

  Members of the media had set up for their nightly newscast on the north grounds of the White House when they noticed a Secret Service dog staring, utterly riveted, at something in the distance. The Malinois, Rudy, lowered his body as if ready to bolt after an intruder.

  “Wow, is he intense!” one of the reporters yelled over to the dog’s handler, Henry Sergent.

  “What’s he fixated on?” another asked. “Is he getting ready to go after someone?”

  “I hope not!” Sergent said, half joking.

  Rudy charged forward, pulling his handler with him. Sergent wasn’t worried about a fence jumper. Dozens of other Secret Service officers would have seen someone jump the moment it happened. But he couldn’t fathom what his dog was doing. It was certainly nothing he’d ever done before.

  They approached a tree and Rudy locked onto something in the branches. Sergent finally saw the intruder. It was a squirrel. Rudy stared, not barking, not even breathing. Sergent gave the leash a tug and Rudy left reluctantly, but kept looking back.

  After that, Rudy was a dog obsessed. Whenever he worked on the White House grounds, hunting down squirrels was his sole mission. He was in luck. Squirrels have been calling the area surrounding the White House home for a long time, enjoying whatever bounties the gardens and trees provided and the safe haven from cars and people. They were everywhere.

  Sergent didn’t know what to do. He turned to Reinhart.

  “I’ve got an idea. It’s crazy, but it just might work,” Reinhart said with a chuckle.

  The next day Reinhart met Sergent on the south grounds. He was carrying a bag with a toy stuffed squirrel he had bought. He’d named it Rocky. That morning he had made a small incision in Rocky, pulled wads of stuffing out of him, and infused the squirrel with hot peppers and Tabasco sauce. He tied a string to Rocky and stood behind a tree.

  Sergent walked toward Rocky with Rudy. Reinhart pulled the string. The squirrel skittered across the grass with Rudy hot on its trail. Sergent let Rudy have a go at him. The dog grabbed the squirrel in his mouth and shook it. Hot sauce oozed out like blood. Moments later, he spit it out and was shaking his own head.

  After a bowl of water and some TLC, Rudy and Sergent went about their rounds as usual. Squirrels would dash across the White House lawn and dart up trees for the rest of Rudy’s career. But they were far too spicy for his tastes.

  —

  Sergent had a hard time finding a dress that fit his sturdy six-foot-five frame. The one he ended up with didn’t match his purse, but he wasn’t going to fret about it.

  The mustachioed dog handler slipped the dress on out of sight of the congressional representatives and other VIPs who’d gathered at the RTC dog training yard for a demonstration of the canine program.

  He tapped on the edge of a large baby carriage, and Rudy jumped in. The dog sat dutifully while Sergent tied a white baby bonnet to his head. They’d practiced enough times that Rudy didn’t bother trying to push it off with his paws. He knew the drill. Rudy lay down and Sergent covered him with a blanket.

  “Break a leg,” said Reinhart, who had coached them through the scenario on numerous occasions.

  On cue, Sergent strolled out in front of the audience, pushing the pram. Everyone broke out in laughter at the sight of this unusual-looking mother out for a peaceful stroll with her baby.

  Suddenly a man sprinted out from the audience toward the mother and child. In an instant, the bad guy had grabbed her purse and was running away.

  But the mugger had picked the wrong mother. She uttered a couple of words the audience couldn’t quite hear, and out of the baby carriage sprang her enormous, furry baby. The baby/dog charged the purse snatcher. Rudy’s bonnet flew off as he leapt at the mugger’s arm (which was covered with a bite sleeve) and apprehended the bad guy.

  The audience exploded in cheers. The purse was returned to the happy mother, who pushed the carriage back to where they’d started. Rudy wagged and trotted beside Sergent.

  After the demo, a few audience members walked over to talk with Sergent and meet Rudy. Someone asked how the dog could go from attack mode to happy pup so quickly.

  “He has an unbelievable on-off switch,” Sergent answered. “He can do attack work like he’s the Tasmanian Devil, then he goes right back and can be next to a group of little kids who hug him, and he doesn’t blink an eye.”

  Reinhart smiled. Water dogs were definitely in abundance th
ese days.

  —

  After eight years on the job, it was time for Shegogue’s dog, Coley, to hang up his badge. He was getting tired too easily—more than a dog his age should. The vet had diagnosed him with cardiomyopathy. It could be treated with pricey medications, which would make him feel much better, but he’d need to take it easy.

  Coley became the first dog to retire from the canine unit. There was no precedent for how to handle it, but Livingood, Quinn, and the others who helped start the program had long ago determined that dogs at the end of their careers would be retired to their handlers, as most other law-enforcement dogs are.

  (Dogs in the military didn’t have the same happy ending. At that time, they were usually euthanized. A fine thank-you for their devotion to the job. And devastating for their handlers.)

  Coley had done great work. In addition to his normal duties, he had even apprehended a suspected rapist near the White House. The Secret Service decided the dog would retire with full medical benefits. It would pay for all his medications and any treatments he might need. (That’s not how it works today. Medical bills are the adoptive handler’s responsibility.)

  The old guard was stepping down. Cusick’s dog Devil had passed away three years earlier, in 1981. Cusick disappeared from canine because of the “one and done” policy. Shegogue knew this would be his fate, and he wasn’t looking forward to it.

  But Shegogue and Cusick were lucky, rare exceptions. Each got to be a handler again, although not until after they put in some years without a dog. Cusick got a sweet dog named Buddy. And Shegogue’s new partner was Barry.

  They were both great dogs. The best dogs yet.

  —

  Forty years after he helped start the Secret Service’s canine program, Bill Livingood is sitting in an Alexandria, Virginia, restaurant with his assistant and a guest and extolling the virtues of Dunkin’ Donuts.

  “It has to be the law enforcement in me,” says Livingood. “I could just about live in Dunkin’ Donuts. Their coffee is the best. I’m a cake donut fan. I usually get the glazed cake donut. It’s dense and sweet—like me!”