Secret Service Dogs

by Maria Goodavage

  He heard them quietly talking behind the curtain and outside his door.

  “This patient is the Secret Service guy who can’t feel pain.”

  “Wow! I hear that blocking pain is part of the training they go through.”

  He really wanted something to dull the agony he was in. It gripped his whole body. But now he had a reputation to live up to. He longed for the superhuman powers they had ascribed to him.

  He had already been through a couple of cleanings without it. Deep, painful cleanings, with long, cold sticks probing inches into his elbow.

  “You might pass out,” the nurse told him the first time.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  She had him lie down, so that if he did pass out, he wouldn’t go anywhere.

  “How bad did that hurt?” asked Brian once the nurse had left.

  “Worse than the bite.”

  Marshall dreaded future cleanings, which were happening every several hours.

  Stew tried to talk him into accepting some pain meds.

  “I can’t even stand to get my teeth cleaned!” Stew told him. He had had several bad injuries himself on the job and would not think twice about accepting a little prescription relief from his doctors.

  Much as he wanted to, Marshall wouldn’t be convinced.

  He hadn’t eaten for thirty hours. He thought maybe some food would help him feel better. He’d had dinner early the previous night, raced out the door for work without having breakfast. When Max ripped into him, it was right before they were supposed to break for lunch. At the hospital he hadn’t been allowed to eat in case he needed surgery. But now it was midnight and he was famished.

  Stew could do one thing to help. He left and came back with two foot-long Subway club sandwiches, loaded with every topping and condiment available. When no nurses or doctors were nearby, Marshall wolfed them both down in the space of ten minutes. Stew threw away the wrappers far from his room so there would be no evidence.

  Marshall tried to sleep despite his arm being raised in a traction device. He’d catch a few minutes here and there, but whenever he’d wake up, he’d see Stew’s face glowing in the light of the computer as he graded papers from the criminal justice course he was teaching at American Military University.

  “I wake up in this strange place and see a glowing serial killer with this weird mustache,” Marshall told him. He wished he could turn to the other side and see his girlfriend, who was also staying over.

  —

  Not Max.

  Of all the dogs on all the days . . .

  Marshall could not believe his luck. It was his first day back in canine after eleven weeks of painful but productive physical therapy, and Max happened to be at RTC for training.

  And of course, the dog needed someone to be the decoy.

  The dog would be in muzzle, the decoy would not be wearing a bite suit.

  This sounded a little too familiar.

  This time, the decoy would be crouched in one of several small wooden hiding boxes in the training yard. Inside, the boxes smell like fresh-cut timbers, which is the only mildly pleasant aspect of being in one.

  Hiding in these cramped, stuffy boxes and knowing a barking, hyped Malinois will eventually be knocking at your door to try to bite you is standard fare around here.

  But it wasn’t something Marshall was expecting to have to do. Not on his first day back. And not with this dog.

  Marshall’s instructor took a couple of steps closer to him.

  “Let’s just get this out of the way now,” he said.

  Marshall knew he had to do it. They needed to make sure he was OK, not scared of dogs, any dog, not even this dog.

  “Nothing like getting back on the horse!” Marshall said, smiling, trying to look like it was no biggie. He donned the sweatpants and hoodie handlers often wear over their uniforms when they’re decoys for muzzled dogs.

  As he waited, crouching in the box, he had a lot of time to think. He hoped that this time, the muzzle would not have another freak accident. And he wondered if the dog would remember him and the taste of his flesh and blood.

  —

  “We already have top-notch guys on the team, one percenters,” says Stew. “Then you give them a one-percenter dog. They’re a force to be reckoned with.”

  The dogs of ERT are not unlike their human teammates. They’re tough, driven, resilient, have boundless energy, like to win, and keep going far after most others would quit.

  Early in their training together, Luke’s dog, Nitro, was doing a search about fifty yards into a tree line. As he bounded around looking for the bad guy, he jumped over a fallen tree and impaled himself on a branch.

  Luke had no idea. He had seen his dog get hung up a little so he knelt down to check what was going on. By then, the dog had extricated himself and charged off to find the bad guy and bite him.

  There were no outward signs that his dog had been impaled. Nitro did two more searches for bad guys and nailed them both.

  A little later in the day, Luke saw Nitro licking at his belly. He went over to check him out. There was a little blood, not much. He carefully examined his dog’s belly and saw what seemed to be a small hole in his abdomen.

  Luke immediately realized what must have transpired earlier. He tried to keep calm as he hoisted Nitro into his van and rushed him to the vet.

  The vet staff did emergency surgery and a bunch of tests. They discovered that a small branch had plunged five inches deep into the dog’s gut. But he was lucky. While it tore through tissue, it had gone into a kind of dead space where there were no organs. The vet cleaned it out and did a few layers of stitching to secure everything that had been impaled.

  The vet explained that Nitro hadn’t bled at the time because when he hit the branch, his body had been extended for the jump over the fallen tree. When he went back into normal position, he effectively sealed it.

  Nitro appeared to be sore for a few days, and Luke had to limit his dog’s movements—no easy feat with a high-drive Malinois. The dog was out of commission for close to a month. Luke figured Nitro probably would have gone back to work immediately if given the choice.

  What’s a little gut pain to get in the way of a beloved job?

  In late 2015, an ERT handler showed up at training with some severe abdominal pain of his own. It would turn out to be appendicitis. He didn’t say anything, but enough guys commented about how sick he looked that he fessed up and went home.

  Later, when they learned that the doctor thought his appendix had already ruptured and he needed emergency surgery, they scrambled to find someone on the team to care for his dog until he was better. And of course, they made sure he had the pleasure of their company around the clock at the hospital.

  —

  ERT members have to regularly maintain rigorous physical training (PT) standards to stay on the team. There are the tough but less-challenging requirements back-to-back: doing fifty-five perfect push-ups in one minute, forty-eight sit-ups in a minute, eleven pull-ups, and running 1.5 miles in under ten minutes and fourteen seconds.

  Then there’s the operational standard, which is far more demanding. It’s hush-hush and can be mentioned publicly only in the most general terms. To qualify to get on the team and stay on it, handlers and the other ERT members have to do a variety of exercises wearing full kit, since that’s what they wear every day. They combine pull-ups, running, and a qualifying course of fire, both with primary (rifle) and secondary (pistol) weapons. They must score 90 percent. If they’re off, they need to remediate, train extra, and repeat.

  Canines are held to a standard as well. They have to run with their handlers and meet qualifying times and perform operational scenarios during the process.

  Instructors are always watching for signs of dogs slowing down or having other obvious physical issues. The job
takes a toll on man and beast. The average age of retirement for an ERT dog is around nine to ten years old, but it varies widely. Some go strong right to the end, others start winding down early.

  ERT handler Shawn’s dog, Jason, seems to be drinking his water from the fountain of youth. He’s more than eight and almost as fast and strong as he was when he was young.

  He was only eleven months old when the Secret Service, with some trepidation about his young age, selected him from VLK. He’s the youngest dog ever selected for the Tactical Canine Unit. He’s been a stellar dog. Jason first went to the K-9 Olympics in 2010 when he was almost three years old. He and Shawn took third place in individual patrol competition, and the Secret Service placed first as a team.

  The ERT Tactical Canine Unit can’t afford the time it takes to prepare for competition, and the time away from the job—at least not on a regular basis. So the next time the Service went to the Olympics was in 2015. Shawn was thirty-seven, Jason was eight. They were among the older competitors but placed remarkably well: fourth in individual patrol, and first in the obstacle course. They were an important part of the Secret Service team that won first overall.

  The Olympics brings out the fiercely competitive spirit of the handlers, but in 2015 the competition to be chosen as one of three who would represent the Secret Service at the Olympics was just as intense—if not more so.

  In the internal “qualifying rounds,” winning was often a matter of split seconds, fractions of an inch. A few dogs stopped within zero feet of biting the bad guy when their handlers told them to stop. This takes incredible control developed over years of working together. Since more than one dog stopped at zero feet, the winners were determined by who got to the bad guy fastest.

  “These guys would cut each other’s throat for one point,” says Brian.

  All in good fun, of course.

  —

  When the sun is just right, and Hurricane is lying on the grass and getting belly rubs, and his mouth falls open in the relaxed ecstasy of the moment, you may catch a sparkle, a glint, a flash. On further inspection, you’ll see that his four canine teeth are not bright white like his other teeth. They’re a gleaming light silvery color. Titanium, to be exact.

  The first day Marshall had Hurricane in the van, he discovered the dog was not fond of plastic travel kennels. (Van kennels are metal now.) Marshall had left the van in the training area to grab a quick lunch, and when he came back a half hour later, he was more than a little surprised to see that Hurricane had chewed his way halfway through the top of the kennel.

  There was blood everywhere. It looked like a case for CSI.

  When Hurricane had a dental visit months later, the veterinarian immediately saw that the dog’s upper right canine tooth had a lot of exposed root pulp in an area of the tooth that was hard to see.

  “The nerve is basically hanging out of it,” Marshall explained to his supervisor. “That would make people scream.”

  Many dogs with an exposed nerve don’t noticeably flinch when using their teeth. They just make accommodations, like chewing food and toys on the unaffected side of the mouth, until the nerve dies. But with the kind of biting work Hurricane was doing on a regular basis, there was no way he could have favored one side.

  “It’s like he just didn’t feel or acknowledge the pain,” Marshall told a supervisor with a mix of pride and empathy.

  Hurricane needed a root canal and a crown, so Marshall brought him to a veterinarian who specializes in these procedures. Hurricane emerged with one titanium canine tooth.

  The other three canine teeth followed soon after. They’d been chipped badly when, during a bout of separation anxiety, Hurricane took to biting the metal cage that replaced his plastic kennel. Rather than have Hurricane put under three more times as the chipping got worse, they opted to do it all at once. These teeth didn’t need root canals, just reinforcements in the form of crowns.

  The bedazzling titanium teeth don’t bite any harder than regular teeth; they’re just more durable than the teeth that had chipped away. Marshall found they collect plaque more than natural teeth do and require more toothbrushing attention than he ever thought metal teeth would.

  But he loves how they look. Very badass against his dog’s shiny black fur. And rather daunting, if you’re the bad guy.

  —

  Sometimes it’s the little bites that make the biggest impression on handlers.

  Stew recalls a hot summer night wearing a bite suit in one of the small, sweltering wooden boxes in the canine yard. While waiting for a dog to find him, he saw with his flashlight that he was sharing the box with what seemed like a metropolis of spiders.

  The dog could not come soon enough. He arrived, barking, and Stew popped open the door. Not thinking, he exposed his hand momentarily as he flew out to engage the dog, who took the opportunity to bite the handler’s finger.

  It hurt like hell, but he couldn’t say anything, much less yell. It was his fault and he’d just have to suck it up. When someone noticed the injury later, Stew played it off as a simple puncture wound.

  Four days later, he was on a car plane to a mission. One of the team’s medics walked by and saw his hand, which was noticeably swollen.

  “Hey man, you have cellulitis and a staph infection. You’re going to die!” the medic said, laughing, and continued walking to his seat.

  Since everyone on the team messes with each other, Stew didn’t take it seriously. But then he took a good look at his hand and got concerned. It was swollen to his wrist, and blood was still oozing from the small wound. He realized he’d better see a doctor as soon as possible, but he didn’t want to call out for sick leave, because that would have meant extra work for a teammate.

  When they landed, he drove himself to an emergency room, where the medical staff lacerated his hand and drained it. They gave him some antibiotics and he was on his way, still operational, not missing a beat.

  It doesn’t always take a bite to rip open flesh. A dog’s leather muzzle can pack a powerful punch during fight scenarios. While Stew was decoying for a muzzled dog one freezing winter afternoon, the dog whipped his head and the muzzle smashed Stew in the mouth.

  “Uh, Stew, you might want to get that checked out,” a friend on the team told him.

  “Nah, send another dog!”

  But the handler and other team members persisted. Stew couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Sure there was some blood on his fleece jacket, but it didn’t feel like anything bad. But then again, he wasn’t feeling much at all on his face, because it was so cold.

  He walked over to a vehicle and looked in the rearview mirror. His top lip was ripped completely in two right down the middle.

  At the hospital, he didn’t hesitate to say yes to whatever numbing and pain meds were offered. As the plastic surgeon in the emergency room stitched his lip, he could still feel the needle. He couldn’t help but jerk every time it pushed through his lip.

  “You guys are trained to be tough. This doesn’t hurt, does it?” she asked.

  “Mm-mm,” he murmured in agreement. He took his mind off the pain by reliving the scene from the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, where Steve Martin’s character has to pretend to feel nothing as he gets whipped in the legs. It almost made Stew smile but that would have made matters worse.

  Stew tries to keep perspective on the physical pitfalls of being an ERT dog handler.

  “What we go through may look pretty badass from the civilian perspective, but it’s not as badass as a Special Forces operator saying, ‘Well, I jumped into a hot zone, rescued a hostage, killed a bunch of terrorists, and got shot in the leg.’ Some of these military guys have a Superman cape underneath and don’t tell anyone.”

  And then there are those you’d never guess had been to hell and back . . .

  CHAPTER 13

  THE KILLING FIELDS . . . WITH DOGr />
  One day in late 2004, three years into his career in the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division, Leth O. was called in to his lieutenant’s office. He thought he must have been in serious trouble for something. When a lieutenant or captain asked to see you, it wasn’t usually to pin a medal on your chest.

  He sat down across the table from the lieutenant and steeled himself for whatever was about to happen.

  “You’re always happy coming to work. You work hard and seem to really enjoy what you do,” the lieutenant said.

  This was going much better than Leth had expected. He nodded appreciatively and smiled.

  “I have a question I’d like to ask you,” he said to Leth. “Do you like dogs?”

  “I love dogs,” Leth said, his face brightening. “I have one now. Before I came to this country, back in Cambodia I grew up with a dog. We went through a lot together. He was the best little dog . . .”

  —

  Every day, when Leth came home from school in the city of Battambang, Cambodia, his French bulldog, Dino, greeted him at the door of their little house. Dino knew the exact time to stand post waiting for his young charge, and he wagged his tail hard as Leth approached from the distance. When his boy arrived home, Dino burst with a puppylike happy dance, ecstatic to be reunited.

  Other than school, the two were inseparable. Leth thought of his dog as a brother. When Leth went to the movie theater, Dino accompanied him, sitting in his own seat beside him. Dino shadowed him everywhere. Leth didn’t use a leash. Dino just listened.

  The family fed him condensed milk mixed with hot water, rice, a little fish, pork. He was part of the family, and he ate what they ate.

  In April 1975, when Leth was nine years old, he awoke at sunrise to the sound of guns, RPGs, and chaos. Several days earlier, his father, an army lieutenant who was about to make the rank of captain, had been taken away to a high school with hundreds of other officers, with the promise that they were going to see Prince Sihanouk. He hadn’t come back.