Steve likes this. He puts another tennis ball under his shoe to see what Zigis will do.
Some dogs will immediately drop the ball they’re holding and paw under his shoe to try to get the ball. But not Zigis. He keeps the ball in his mouth, dives down to his side, and digs to get to the other ball. When this doesn’t work, he lets go of the ball in his mouth and attacks the ground under Steve’s shoe with his jaws, pushing his front paws against the earth for better leverage.
“Most dogs aren’t this tenacious,” Steve says. “They’ll paw and scratch at it but he wants to put his mouth on it bad. Look at that!”
Steve lifts up his foot. “I’ll give that to him. Look at that. That’s just a nice dog.”
Next up is Tek, a stunning black German shepherd with tawny paws. The Hungarian dog doesn’t want to jump out of his trailer kennel, which is only a couple of feet off the ground, so Steve helps guide him out. He and Steve trot together toward the field for several steps but the dog trips on the lead and is momentarily splayed out on the cut grass. He gets up, shakes it off, and moves on.
Steve grabs a rope tug toy that’s lying in the grass near the field and Tek grabs the other end. They play for a minute and Tek relinquishes the tug. He runs out a few steps and Steve throws the tug back to him. Instead of jumping to catch it, Tek flinches when it gets near, not wanting the ball to hit him in the head. Steve smiles and shakes his head.
He calls him and rubs his back quickly a few times, encouraging him with a few “good boy” comments. Pep talk over, he throws a tennis ball into the field. Tek runs into the field and trips again.
“He’s a klutz,” laughs Shawn, who’s taking notes nearby.
Undaunted, Tek wanders around, looking for the ball. This is no hot pursuit. It looks more like he’s taking advantage of being able to stretch his legs and enjoy the wind through his thick fur. A minute later he finds the ball, scoops it up in his mouth, and stands in the field until Steve calls him. He gives it back to Steve, who throws it back to the field. Tek watches the ball and then seems to forget about it as Steve takes him back to the trailer. The dog jumps in, Steve pets him a few times and shuts the kennel door.
“He’s a beautiful dog. A nice dog, too,” he says to Shawn, like a teacher scraping for something positive to tell parents of a C-minus student. This is not the same kind of “nice” as Zigis.
Shawn and Steve go over some of their notes on the dogs and in a few minutes, it’s time for Tek to come out of the trailer again. The shepherd jumps down without assistance this time and runs with Steve toward the field.
Steve strokes Tek’s dark head, which is already warmed by the autumn sun. Then he points to the field. “Go ahead!” Steve tells him in a high, happy voice, motioning for him to head out and look for the tennis ball.
Tek wags for a couple beats, then jogs into the alfalfa. Several yards in, he slows to a trot and then to a walk, sniffing here and there, then not really sniffing so much as hanging out and enjoying the outdoor experience.
“Get the ball, boy!” Steve coaches from the sidelines.
This seems to get Tek back on track, and nose down, he makes his way toward where Steve had thrown the ball.
“He might be on it!” Shawn says.
He’s within a couple of yards when a little yellow and black butterfly flutters up from the alfalfa and zigzags low in the air. Tek sees the butterfly and trots toward it, entranced.
His head traces its movements, and when the colorful insect flies away in another direction, Tek follows after it—not like he wants to eat it, but more like he has found a beguiling new friend. Steve lets him enjoy his time with the butterfly.
Shawn, scorecard in hand, writes “chased butterfly.” Not that they would forget.
—
Early Friday morning, Steve and Shawn load up the trailer with the ten dogs who have impressed them the most with their prey drive, hunt drive, courage, environmental stability, intelligence, and other qualities essential to a solid EDT dog. The original pool of twenty-four dogs didn’t have candidates that would meet the Secret Service’s stringent standards, so Vohne Liche had provided Steve and Shawn several more to test during the week.
Whoever chooses the dogs also trains the dogs as much as they can before a new class begins, and they teach the class, too. Steve and Shawn have a lot of skin in this game and work hard to select just the right canines.
“I continually think about who we are training these dogs to protect, and the extremely important mission of these dogs,” says Steve. “The amount of responsibility that these dogs are entrusted with is pretty amazing when you think about it.”
He feels good about the new recruits: Rex 62, Laila, Boyan, Fusti, Ringo, Pepe, Bolt, Athos, Ricky, and Zigis.
The dogs bark in the trailer, and the white truck kicks up a cloud of dust in the dirt driveway. Steve tunes the radio to a country music station and settles in for the long drive ahead.
CHAPTER 12
A FEW LITTLE BITES
Jim’s engaging blue eyes, rugged build, and dazzling, easygoing smile make him a prime mark for the ribbing that goes on 24/7 among ERT canine guys. The fact that he also has a voice that Hollywood should put to good use doesn’t help his case.
“I seriously hate you. Please get fat and darken your teeth,” Stew likes to chide his fellow former Marine, who holds a master’s degree, as Stew also does.
They give Jim a hard time, but they know that his looks belie a body that’s battered from years on the job. He’s not the only one. ERT dog handlers don’t talk much about the physical toll the job takes. But when you put some of the most driven dogs together with some of the most competitive alpha males—men who will do whatever it takes to keep each other and their protectees safe—bodies are going to get beat up.
“We all go through the same stuff. We all have ailments. We all have nasty injuries and hide many of them. Yet we push on. Not to sound cliché, but we do it for the team, and not for ourselves,” Jim says.
He has been bitten multiple times. Three bites resulted in hospital visits. His old dog, Spike, had this little “quirk” in the beginning: He liked to turn and chomp Jim every time he took him off of a bite. It became so severe that Jim quit and walked out of the training yard during class one day.
“I was more pissed than anything. That stuff starts to hurt after a while,” he says.
Both of his forearms were bruised and cut up. He had teeth marks and punctures up and down his arms from the dog who was supposed to become his lifelong partner and eventual best friend.
But it wasn’t just Spike who got him. He was bitten by another dog in training, lacerated right down to the bone. It wasn’t pretty. Fatty tissue protruded from the wound in a sickening way. He also took a nasty bite from Luke’s dog, Nitro. The dog got him on the arm and wouldn’t let go. Nitro didn’t win first place in the 2015 K-9 Olympics for easily giving up.
Even though Jim is now an instructor and not a handler, he’s still getting the occasional reminder of what these dogs are capable of doing. A dog he was recently training got him in the bicep and put two more holes in him.
“That one hurt bad,” he admits.
Besides the puncture-wound scars, he has mild numbness in both of his forearms from all the trauma. All told, he has been bitten in both arms (upper and lower), both legs, the stomach, and the back. He has also had knee surgery as a result of the wear and tear that these guys put themselves through.
That’s nothing, though, he says.
The biggest problems for the thirty-five-year-old are the two bulging disks in his lower neck, and the two bulging disks in his lower back. Both his neck and his back require surgery. He has known about these issues for the past six years but has refused surgery because he doesn’t want to give up working with the team. Three-round cortisone injection cycles keep him going.
“My body is co
mpletely wrecked, but I usually just get the shots and suck it up,” he says.
—
ERT canine guys are pretty much guaranteed bites and injuries, long hours, frequent overnight shifts, and more bites and injuries. But whoever makes it to this level has proven he can handle the rigors.
The challenge starts with completing general ERT school. “It’s brutal,” says Luke.
“Insanely tough, mentally and physically,” describes another ERT member.
In Luke’s class, twenty-four were selected to start the twelve-week program, and six finished. That’s more than usual. Normally only about 10 to 20 percent graduate.
Team members interested in working with dogs usually have to put in three years on the Emergency Response Team before they’ll be considered for the ERT’s tactical canine program.
Canine school is also immensely challenging to the mind and body. Some quit once they realize what they’re getting into with the powerful dogs and the rigors of the program. But those who get through training become part of a special brotherhood.
“The caliber of men on this team are not a-holes or cocky. They’re highly trained and skilled and dedicated,” says Stew. “Like any SWAT team or special military unit, it’s a different quality of men that are awesome to be around.
“We’re like brothers. We might fight, we’ll definitely bust each other’s balls, but we’re there for each other no matter what.”
When someone does get bitten or hurt, though, there’s an interesting dynamic that usually comes into play. The unwritten rules of being an injured but badass ERT canine handler go something like this:
No matter how much it hurts, you act like it’s no big deal.
If you have to go to the hospital, you will refuse an ambulance if at all possible. Handlers can usually convince the EMT or paramedic at RTC that they don’t need an ambulance. Someone else drives them to the hospital in a regular car.
If you have to stay in the hospital, guys from the team, including supervisors, will be there around the clock in their off time. You’ll maintain a stiff upper lip.
Some do this better than others.
One October morning in 2013, Marshall put on the show of fortitude a little too well for his own good . . .
—
Marshall heard the dog before he saw him. The rustling through the woods, the cracking of twigs, the panting as Max sniffed him out in full hunt drive.
As the bad guy in this training, Marshall could have gone up in a tree, and the dog’s job would have been to find him and alert his handler and the rest of the ERT members to his presence. But the idea this day was to engage the dog in a “fight,” which is way more fun for the dogs than just barking, and a better use of the skills they’d use to keep on point.
Marshall hadn’t donned a bite suit for this. He wore only a football jersey and sweatpants. He usually wore a sweatshirt but somehow hadn’t that day. Since the dog was wearing his leather muzzle, there was no need to guard against bites, but it was always more comfortable to have some kind of extra layer.
These dogs don’t seem to care if they’re muzzled. When they’re in fight drive and wearing a muzzle, their drive can actually be kicked up an extra notch. It’s like being in a fight with one hand tied behind your back, ERT canine students are told early in their schooling. Most people would fight even harder knowing they didn’t have all their tools available.
The muzzled dogs go all out, jumping on the bad guys and doing what they can to take them down and win the fight.
Sure enough, when Max found Marshall, he went full throttle on him. Marshall played along, acting like someone the dog shouldn’t like—not hurting him, just agitating him, pulling on his harness, wrestling him a little, taunting him on, making Max want a piece of him.
Then in the midst of their pseudofight, something bad happened. Really bad.
Max’s muzzle broke.
The dog paused. Marshall realized the horror of the situation at the same moment Max realized his own grand luck.
The men on the team were nowhere in sight. For a dog to be effective in this kind of scenario, it’s important for him to be well ahead of his people. Marshall’s training kicked in, and he realized the sacrifice he would need to make.
He had to pick a body part to offer Max, who was now lunging straight at him, his huge mouth open, teeth poised to puncture.
Arm? Leg? Marshall picked his forearm.
But Max chose his elbow.
“LIVE BITE!” he yelled as loudly as he could as the dog bit into his elbow and tried to pull him down to the ground. The pain ripped through his arm. The puncture wounds were bad enough, but the pressure on the bone and joint was even worse. His elbow felt like a walnut about to be cracked by the dog’s mouth.
Even though Marshall knew all the commands, there was nothing he could have said to the dog to get him to release, and he knew it. The dogs are trained to stay on a bite, even if a bad guy happens to know the magic word or words.
Marshall couldn’t pull the dog off physically either. Max had done the textbook perfect bite and “punched in.” Punching in means the dog is holding the bite but then loosens slightly and goes in deeper to ensure a super firm hold.
The dog had bitten the perfect spot, just what he wanted, but the first bite usually lands only the canine teeth. Max then punched in to get the arm to the back of his mouth so he could really lock and hold. Max punched in twice, and the pain knifed through Marshall’s body.
Marshall had the presence of mind to move with the dog and fight the instinct to rip his arm away from Max. It wouldn’t have done any good and would have resulted in his flesh and other layers of his arm tearing.
In a real-life scenario, the handler would be positioned so that if a bad guy gives up, the handler would be able to quickly take his dog off the bite. Not always so in training. It was all Marshall could do to stay standing as the dog treated his elbow like a giant tug toy. He’d been bitten before, but this was a whole different class of pain.
And then, in the midst of his own private hell, he looked up and saw a sight he would later describe as being “like birds flying up, like doves of happiness.” Larry C., former college football defensive back, and one of the most athletic guys on the team, was hurtling toward him.
Larry didn’t have his dog Maximus with him that day and was in a better position to get to Marshall than the dog’s handler was. Marshall had seen Larry run like the wind before, but he didn’t know he could fly quite like this.
Larry grabbed Max by the collar and did a tactical takeoff, forcing the dog to give up.
The rest of the team reached the scene.
“How you doing, man?”
“I’m fine,” Marshall said, trying to grin as rivulets of blood poured out of his left elbow. He glanced at his arm and saw his white shirt rapidly turning red. The puncture holes were too many to count. It was a hot, bloody mess. The guys looked at each other and back at him.
“Really? You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s no big deal.”
Inside, his body screamed with pain.
The medics at Rowley Training Center treated him and wanted to take him by ambulance to a hospital. Part of Marshall wanted to, but there was no way he’d give in to that temptation unless he were dying. It’s just not how the team rolls.
Instead, the canine program manager at the time drove him in his own car to Howard County General Hospital. He talked to Marshall about anything but his injury to try to take his mind off it.
Doctors treated him in the ER, but after an MRI and examination, they realized how deep the bites were and how bad the injury was. Max had gotten him right in the elbow joint, with all its glorious complexity of bone, muscle, tendons, ligaments, and bursa sacs.
The injury was severe, but Larry’s rapid response had probably saved Marshall’s Secret S
ervice career. The longer the dog was on, the worse it would have been.
Doctors suggested he go to MedStar Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore, where world-renowned elbow and joint specialists could help him better than they could. Supervisors and instructors stayed with Marshall for hours at a time at MedStar. No matter what time it was, someone from the Secret Service was by his side.
When Stew got to MedStar later that night, he could see Marshall was in severe pain, try as he might to hide it. The nurse unwound the wrapping from his left elbow, and Stew felt a wave of nausea. Marshall had maybe twelve deep puncture wounds and a couple of dozen or so significant bite marks. It was red and oozing weird stuff, and it was on its way to swelling to the size of a large cantaloupe.
To make matters worse, Marshall had offered Max the wrong arm. He’s a lefty. This was his shooting arm. Also his baseball pitching arm, but that ship had sailed a few years ago. There just hadn’t been time to offer the dog his other arm.
“C’mere!” Marshall beckoned to Stew when no else was in the room. Stew leaned in close. If you happened to be passing by the room and looked in, you might have thought he was about to reveal a deathbed secret.
“I haven’t taken any pain medication,” he said in a low, hushed tone and quickly looked to see if anyone from the staff had heard him.
“What? Are you crazy?”
“I can’t! They think we’re trained!”
His whole life, Marshall had never taken anything stronger than an ibuprofen for his pains, which were significantly increased after joining ERT. At first he thought he could deal with the pain from the injury without painkillers and said no to the medication he was being offered.
This blew away the nurses and doctors. Word quickly got around about this big superhuman Secret Service guy who wasn’t feeling any pain despite a serious injury.
“Are you the guy who’s not taking any pain medications?” asked awed doctors, nurses, and aides who came to see him. He didn’t want to disappoint them, much as he was starting to really want whatever they had been offering.
Secret Service Dogs Page 17
