Secret Service Dogs

by Maria Goodavage

  He walked over to see what it was. It wasn’t until he was a few feet away that the familiar stench of death hit him. He didn’t want to look but by then he was so close he couldn’t help it. The logs were the bodies of a man, woman, and child, dead for days but not long enough to make them unrecognizable in gender and age.

  He felt his stomach lurch and quickly looked away. He couldn’t afford to lose the water his body so badly needed. He ran along the pond edge to rejoin his mother and sister. He didn’t tell them about the bodies. What good would it do?

  The next day brought heavy violence between the warring factions. He and his family were caught in one of the worst gun battles yet. People everywhere around them were dying. Explosions hit so close they shook the earth under his feet.

  They hid for three days and when they emerged, to their astonishment, they were picked up on the road by a relief organization. The truck transported them to the first of several refugee camps. It was the beginning of a long journey away from the torment of the past years.

  Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, each camp got better. But there was no way for Leth to get in touch with his grandmother and sister. He hoped that if he found a country to take them in as refugees he could work hard, send them money, and eventually bring them to live with them.

  They had been told their best options for a country that would welcome them as refugees were Canada, Australia, or France. They never dreamed the United States was a possibility, but in 1983 they found themselves on an airplane to Washington, D.C. An uncle had arrived in the area a year before, and a Montgomery County, Maryland, church had agreed to sponsor them.

  It was a big adjustment, but Leth wanted to live the American dream and be successful enough to take care of his whole family. He already knew he had it in him to work hard. Harder than he could ever imagine a person could work.

  He went to high school, learning the English alphabet with three other newcomers during his first days. To help make ends meet and start saving for the future, he took a job washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant in Silver Spring after school and on weekends. He saved up enough to get a bicycle, which he rode to work, even in the winter.

  When Leth graduated from high school, he would have liked to go to a four-year college, but his focus was on keeping two or three jobs at a time. Over the next several years, he attended community colleges whenever he could. He eventually got an associate’s degree in Philadelphia, and in 1998 he graduated from Widener University with a degree in criminal justice and sociology.

  He did some social work with juvenile offenders and then worked several years for the Bureau of Prisons in Philadelphia and New Jersey. He was grateful for the work, but being an officer in the system was not an easy way to make a living. After a few years, he applied for work with the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division.

  Not long after, in 2002, he received the letter offering him a job with the United States Secret Service.

  “I was so joyful I was jumping up and down like a little child. I never thought this would happen. It is the American dream for me.”

  At the graduation ceremony, his mother fought tears when she thought of how far her son had come, and how proud her husband would be of him. Leth was feeling emotional as well.

  “Every day I go to work I am proud of who and what I am working for,” he says. “I came to this country with nothing, just one small backpack, did not know a word of English. America is my country.

  “I feel a deep loyalty to my country and to the Secret Service, and am very proud to protect the most powerful office in the world with my life any time and any day.”

  —

  Leth has been a training assistant for the EDT program since 2013. He spent nearly nine years working as a handler with his EDT dog, a friendly Malinois named Reik. They traveled the world to protect the president of the United States, the vice president, and other key leaders.

  They did their job together in Germany, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Oman, Jordan, and Romania. They went on missions in forty-nine states—all but Maine.

  In 2012, President Obama visited Cambodia. It was the first time a U.S. president had gone to Cambodia. Leth was thrilled he and Reik had been selected to be part of the canine entourage.

  He had often thought about his younger sister, whom he hadn’t seen since 1979. He and his mother and older sister had tried to find her and his grandmother, but there was never any response to letters or inquiries. No news at all.

  He assumed the worst. He had finally resigned himself to the likely truth that his father had been killed shortly after Leth brought him breakfast at the high school. He learned that several fellow officers had been found in a killing field not far from their home.

  It would not surprise him if his sister and grandmother had perished in the harsh post–Khmer Rouge years.

  Leth occasionally tried to tell his American friends a little about what he had been through. He was surprised by how many couldn’t believe such atrocities could happen to anyone anywhere in the world.

  He saw photos in magazines or online that showed the nightmare in a way he could never describe to anyone: black and white memories of hundreds of skulls and bones in the mud, of the lines of frightened people forced to leave their homes, of the brutal conditions they endured for years. When he looked at photos like these, the heartbreak of a childhood of starvation and fatigue and fear would come rushing back to him. So would the sadness over the likely loss of his sister and grandmother.

  In 2005, a freak coincidence led him to discover that his sister was still alive. Their grandmother had passed years earlier.

  His sister was just as shocked that Leth and their mother and sister were still alive.

  They talked on the phone regularly. His mother was so overcome that the first time she tried to talk with her daughter she could only cry.

  He reunited with his sister during his Secret Service detail in Cambodia with Reik. They met in front of his hotel in Phnom Penh and instantly recognized each other. They hugged and cried. Reik had not seen his handler cry before and Leth thought the dog looked concerned. He told him it was OK. That it was better than OK.

  Leth and his sister talked in his hotel room for hours. In his downtime she brought him the food he missed so much from his homeland. They caught up on the decades, and he realized just how devastated his country still was from the genocide. He vowed to do something about it.

  Since then he has been sending money to provide wells for villages that have no clean drinking water. It’s $200 per well, and he has made a dozen wells so far. He also sends money to his sister to donate directly to the poor, especially the elderly.

  He went back to Cambodia in 2015 with the First Lady, who was there as part of the “Let Girls Learn” campaign. If he wins the lottery, he wants to build schools there.

  He and his sister met again during the trip with Michelle Obama, but Reik was now retired and enjoying some well-deserved couch time at home.

  Reik’s retirement was a hard adjustment for both Leth and his dog. For two years, Reik walked to the front door with Leth every day as he left for work and sat looking plaintively through a nearby window for hours.

  Reik, who is almost fourteen, has a retirement most humans would envy. He eats organic food, drinks filtered water, walks miles a day, gets spoiled around the clock by Leth’s ninety-eight-year-old mother, and sleeps on any of a number of special beds set up throughout the large Northern Maryland house he shares with Leth, his wife, mother, and other relatives who need a place to stay.

  His favorite bed is in the master bedroom. There’s a chaise longue by a large window that overlooks the front lawn and street. On the chaise are two cushy dog beds. When Reik reposes on it, he looks like canine royalty.

  Reik still has his paw in the game as well. Leth’s daughter occasionally distributes some black powder around their yard for
him. Leth gets it at a gun store as a special retirement activity for Reik. When Reik heads out with Leth after the gunpowder is hidden, the dog is always delightfully surprised. He wags as he sniffs around for the familiar scent. When he finds it and sits, Leth praises him like mad and throws him a Kong. For a few moments, they are back in it together.

  He loves making his dog feel like he is the greatest dog on earth, because it’s clear to Leth that he is.

  Of course, there was Dino, back in Cambodia. He was the best dog, too. Leth will never forget how his hero helped save him and his family from physical and mental anguish. He doesn’t know if he could have made it if it weren’t for that little dog who seemed eternally happy.

  Leth named his first dog in the United States after his French bulldog. This Dino was a German shepherd. When he died at age fourteen, Leth interred his ashes in a Buddhist temple. On his urn, under his name and dates of birth and death, is this simple inscription: BEST FRIEND I EVER HAD.

  It took him many years before he was up for getting a dog again. But eventually another German shepherd worked his way into his heart. This one he called Buddy. Buddy “owned the house” but didn’t mind when Reik joined the family.

  If Buddy had one pet peeve with Reik, it’s that the law-enforcement canine could be a tattletale. When Buddy did something Reik knew wasn’t quite within house rules, Reik would run and bark at Leth, who would be obliged to see what crime his Secret Service dog was reporting this time.

  When he found Buddy with the shredded item or other evidence of the canine crime he had perpetrated, Buddy would glance at Leth, then look at Reik with an expression that seemed laden with disappointment at his betrayal.

  “Hey, Buddy,” Leth would comfort. “It’s OK. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  CHAPTER 14

  ONE HOT DOG

  Two students from Italy look confused as they stare at the massive, five-story gray building with its French Second Empire architecture on Seventeenth Street NW. They glance from the building to their phone maps and back at the building. They come to the same disappointing conclusion.

  “Questa è la Casa Bianca,” one says to the other. This is the White House.

  They take each other’s photos in front of it, but one of them decides to ask a security guard posted in front of one of its gates, because this just doesn’t seem right.

  “No, this isn’t the White House. It’s just around the corner,” she tells them, motioning with her hand to the right and backward, like a flight attendant pointing out the exit rows.

  “Or you could go this way and you’ll get to the other side,” she says, pointing with her left arm and backward.

  “Thank you! We thought this is not very white for a White House!” one of them says cheerfully. “It looks like a haunted house.” His friend is already erasing the photos of what was actually the Eisenhower Executive Office Building from his phone.

  The guard says it happens. Some phone maps indicate that the whole White House complex is the White House itself.

  The students decide to take the guard’s second suggestion. In a few minutes, they’re among the crowd taking photos on the south side of the White House along E Street NW. It’s a far-off view of the Executive Mansion, but a famous one, with its large fountain, lush lawn, and splendid variety of trees.

  A boy about twelve years old points to a man standing with his legs apart on top of the White House. It’s a Uniformed Division Countersniper Team member.

  “Is that a rifle or a telescope?” he asks his father.

  “He could kill someone in a split second if they look like trouble,” his father tells him. “So look sharp.”

  A woman in her sixties asks a Secret Service officer if she can take his photo as he stands by his vehicle.

  “No, sorry,” he says, and smiles.

  “That’s OK,” she says, and tells her husband, in a knowing and hushed voice, “Agents have to be very careful.”

  “Is this as close as we can get to the White House?” the husband asks the officer. “It looks closer in photos.”

  “No, sir, if you go down to that street, Fifteenth, make a left and another left on Pennsylvania Avenue, you can get closer on the other side.”

  “Thank you! We’re from New Jersey. We don’t know our way around here.” The man packs away his camera, and he and his wife walk off in pursuit of a closer view.

  As they reach the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fifteenth Street NW there’s a sign that covers a steel barricade. It features the face of a smiling chocolate Labrador retriever, with the words CANINES WORKING TO KEEP YOU SAFE: PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TOUCH OR PET THESE ANIMALS WHILE THEY ARE WORKING.

  “Mommy, doggy!” a girl in an orange stroller exclaims on seeing the sign.

  “Maybe we’ll see a doggy like Katy’s!” her mother says.

  As they wheel by the Treasury Building, there’s no sign of a dog.

  “Look, there’s the White House!” the girl’s father says. “That’s a big house, isn’t it? That’s where the president lives.”

  The vantage point on the north side is much closer than the south side. The man from New Jersey must be happy.

  The little girl doesn’t seem to care about the White House.

  “Where’s Katy’s doggy?”

  “There’s a doggy!” her mother says, pointing to an English springer spaniel walking toward them, his leash held by a tall Secret Service dog handler. The dog is named Dyson, and for some reason, his head is damp.

  His handler, Nate C., gently guides the dog around passersby, holding the leather leash so there’s enough slack for Dyson to follow his nose. Nate moves his hand in another direction, and the dog takes his cue, walking into a small crowd.

  The liver-and-white springer looks like he’s simply out taking a stroll, but he’s actually sniffing for scents of explosives on people. He’s one of the Personnel Screening Canine Open Area (PSCO) dogs, better known as Friendly Dogs. He has the same job as Roadee but attracts slightly less attention.

  Nate and Dyson walk up to the family with the toddler. Dyson gives the stroller a quick sniff, walks near the parents’ legs, and moves on.

  “That’s not Katy’s doggy!” the girl pouts.

  The scent of hot dogs wafts in on a light breeze. It seems to be coming from a Sabrett hot dog vendor a few hundred feet down Pennsylvania Avenue. But the all-beef franks don’t distract Dyson from his work. Whenever he comes near people, he is a dog on a mission.

  The crowd is relatively light on this warm October weekday. Thirty seconds or more can pass between little groups of people. Nate stops for a few seconds, and his shadow lands on his dog. He’s like a sundial. Beads of sweat collect on Nate’s upper lip, but his dog is protected from the sun.

  After about fifteen more minutes, another dog walks toward them. It’s Roadee. Dyson and Roadee meet up, wagging, and sniff each other in the intimate fashion of dogs. It’s a change of shifts, a punching of the canine time card. Roadee’s in for a half hour, Dyson is clocked out for the day.

  Dyson’s tail is going full tilt as he speeds over to Nate’s white van, across the street from the White House, on the east side of Lafayette Square. Nate opens the door and Dyson jumps in, still wagging hard.

  The van is good things. The van is a couple of mini Milk-Bones the size of a pinky tip. The van is a chew toy and a deer antler. The van is a place to “chillax,” as Nate says—something that doesn’t come easily to this dog, who is known for his nonstop energy as well as his speed. When Dyson isn’t doing his careful searches at the White House fence line, he wants to run.

  Nate reaches into a compartment and pulls out a thermometer. On seeing it, Dyson lies on his side. He stares into Nate’s eyes as Nate coats the tip of the thermometer with Vaseline and inserts it. Dyson doesn’t even flinch, much less look at the thermometer with c
oncern, as most dogs do in these situations. He has become accustomed to having his temperature taken in the last several weeks. It’s old hat.

  His temp is 101.6—well within the normal range for dogs.

  “You did it, Dyson!” he says, and the dog wags again, happy to have made his handler happy.

  Dyson sits near Nate and gazes with soulful eyes into Nate’s once again. Nate looks at Dyson with a similar expression. There’s a lot of love going on here. Far more than the end of a typical shift at the White House.

  Today was their first day back at the fence line in eleven weeks. For a few agonizing days in July, Nate thought he might not ever be back here—or anywhere—with Dyson.

  —

  Nate spent a week of leave in late July 2015 installing Pergo Highland Hickory flooring in the living room of his split-foyer house. Actually, it’s Dyson’s house, as he sometimes calls it, because in a way, Nate and his wife bought the house for him.

  They’d been wanting to upgrade from their town house for a while, and when Nate learned he was getting this energetic springer spaniel as his partner, he knew the small yard wouldn’t be enough. It was adequate for their Boston terrier and Lab-Dane mix, but not Dyson.

  “He runs seven-minute miles, and the only reason it’s only seven is because I’m holding the leash,” he told his wife.

  They bought a place with a much larger yard with full-grown trees. Plenty of room for his springer to run around and retrieve balls.

  While he was upgrading the flooring, he wasn’t able to spend as much time with Dyson as usual, but Dyson was happy relaxing in the house with the other dogs.

  On the last day of his leave, a Saturday, Nate and the dogs headed to the backyard for a game of catch. It was in the mideighties. The Boston terrier, not being a retrieving sort, sat this one out. But Dyson and Echo were raring to go.

  After just a few throws, Dyson lay down on the other side of the yard while Echo ran around sniffing this and that. Dyson never rested during playtime. Nate knew something had to be terribly wrong.