Secret Service Dogs

by Maria Goodavage

  “Hey, Kid, I’m Erica. You lost your handler, and I lost my dog, so we both have something in common. We’re both kind of lost. Maybe we can help each other out. What do you think?”

  He gave a wag and stood up.

  She vowed not to compare Kid to Noisy too much, but it was only natural. She liked how Kid would chill out in her van. Noisy rarely did. But like Noisy, Kid was friendly and sweet.

  They’d have to pass the tests all other new dogs and handlers would, so after a few days of hanging out together, grooming him, and taking him on walks, it was time to get to work. They would spend the next few weeks getting back up to speed together with the help of one of the instructors.

  Around the holidays she sent an e-mail update to friends. Among the news was the latest on Kid:

  “We are doing well. It always helps to get out of training and really start working and bonding together. We’ve taken a couple of trips together and he is adjusting well to me and my style of things. He is a really good boy and VERY smart.

  “Time keeps moving on and I have to as well. Lucky for me I have another great partner to do that with. I can’t wait to see the finished product.”

  She attached a photograph she had taken just before they finished certifying together. It shows this black furry face looking straight up at her from a heel position close at her side. His mouth is open, his tongue is hanging out, and his warm brown eyes are looking directly into the camera.

  He looks attentive, friendly, and hardworking. He also seems to be a good poser.

  This was not the first photo she had taken of him. And it certainly would not be the last.

  —

  “As a handler you’re immortal, if that makes sense,” says Tim. “And the dog is mortal. And you outlive your dog. It’s the hardest part of having a dog, and the hardest part of this job.”

  Dogs never live long enough. It’s a fact everyone who has ever loved and lost a dog knows.

  “Why parrots live for eighty years and dogs only live for eight or ten or twelve makes no sense,” says Brian.

  By the time a Secret Service dog passes, a handler will probably have been with him or her for several years, and nearly 24/7—far more than most pets and their people. “It’s like losing part of your soul,” says one handler. “The best part.”

  Ideally, before the end, Secret Service dogs will have at least a couple of years of retirement, where they can find their inner couch potatoes. With only one exception, Brian says Secret Service handlers have always chosen to adopt their dogs when the dog retires. There’s just no question.

  As much as most dogs love working, they seem to fall into retirement quite happily.

  Jim S.’s dog, Spike, retired in 2012 after nearly eight years on the job with Jim. Spike, a former K-9 Olympics winner, was slowing down due to old age and hip issues. The day Spike retired, Jim went to Five Guys and brought him back a cheeseburger and fries.

  “You deserve this, Spike,” Jim told him before handing him the canine equivalent of a gold watch. “You protected two different presidents and you did your time. Happy retirement.”

  All the ERT dogs are on a strict eating plan. Table scraps don’t figure into their diets, much less fast food, Marshall’s late-night celebration with Hurricane notwithstanding.

  Spike ate it in ten seconds. Five minutes later, he went outside and threw it all up. Undaunted, he came back in and sniffed around for more of where that came from.

  Spike had been a one-man dog his whole career. But three months into retirement, his loyalty had shifted to Jim’s wife, who worked from home.

  “I come home and I tell him ‘no’ about something, and he’d be like, ‘Whatever!’ He’d walk over to Mom, and he’s like, ‘You’re not the boss anymore!’ to me.

  “It was great because my wife and kids, they just loved him so much. Then they finally had that time with him to be a pet and they didn’t have to treat him like a work dog so much anymore.

  “They’d sneak him treats and he got fat. They’d feed him from the table. Sometimes it made me so mad because the trainer in me said you can’t do that. Then it’s like, oh you know he’s a home dog now,” he says, and pauses. “And, yeah, maybe I dropped him a piece of steak or two myself sometimes.”

  Spike even got human bed privileges, but not until Jim left for work.

  “Every single morning, he jumped in my spot. I got him a nice memory foam dog bed, but he’d ditch it every day to be where I’d been. Retirement was very good to Spike.”

  While many dogs seem to fall right into retirement, it can be rough on a handler to suddenly be working without a dog.

  “Those who are out of the program always miss it,” says Brian. “You always see them standing at the gate, watching and reminiscing.”

  Jim took a couple of weeks off before going back to work without Spike. He needed to decompress and get used to the idea that he was no longer a handler. He’d still be on the Emergency Response Team, just without a dog. He’d work alongside handlers with dogs, but in some ways, that made it more difficult.

  “The transition was really rough. I felt naked,” he says. “It was hard to come to work and see the other handlers working with their dogs and feeling like you’re not part of that anymore.

  “You do it so long and you spend so much time with this dog. I was spending more time with my dog than with my own family, traveling with him, going all over the place. He becomes a part of you. You’re not just the person, you’re a handler now. It’s not easy to lose that. It’s not just a job. It’s who you are.”

  —

  On the way to work one evening, Stew’s ERT dog, Mike, began coughing. It sounded almost like he was trying to hack up a hair ball. Stew stopped along the road and brought Mike over to a secluded area to check him out.

  Mike was hunched over and moving lethargically. Stew called him over, but Mike went the wrong way—something he never did. Mike hadn’t had anything to eat for hours and hadn’t been exercising, so Stew ruled out bloat. Besides, Mike’s belly wasn’t distended.

  He called work and told a supervisor what was going on and that he needed to take Mike to the vet at Fort Belvoir. He called Belvoir and told them he was on the way. A few minutes into the drive, he looked to the back of the van and saw that Mike’s stomach had swollen up. He knew Mike couldn’t make it all the way to Fort Belvoir.

  Stew radioed the Joint Operations Center and told them he was running code (lights and siren) because his canine partner was in medical distress. They relayed this to local law-enforcement departments.

  Maryland State Police met up with him on the highway. They used their own sirens and lights when needed to help clear the way for him to rush his partner to help.

  It’s what they would do for any officer-down situation.

  When they crossed into Washington, D.C., they were joined by the Metropolitan Police Department, U.S. Park Police, and vehicles from the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service. To those they passed, it may have seemed like they were escorting the president, or at least a significant head of state.

  When they arrived at Friendship Hospital for Animals, other law enforcement had already set up a perimeter. Staffers were ready outside with a gurney. They raced Mike in. After a quick exam, the vets were afraid Mike had bloat, perhaps with gastric dilatation volvulus (GDV).

  Bloat itself is a dangerous condition that affects primarily deep-chested dogs. In bloat, the stomach becomes badly distended with gas. A rapidly enlarged stomach can cut off circulation, or press against the lungs, affecting respiration.

  With GDV bloat, the stomach twists at both ends, and the gas can’t escape either way. The effects can be rapidly lethal.

  A simple preventative operation called a gastropexy is performed on all military working dogs who weigh more than thirty-five pounds. The surgery entails making a small incision and st
itching the stomach to the abdominal wall. The procedure won’t prevent bloat, but it will prevent the deadlier complication of GDV.

  Gastropexies aren’t done on male Secret Service canines unless a dog is having surgery already and needs to be anesthetized. The Service tries to avoid anesthesia because of possible risks, so male dogs—generally unneutered—usually aren’t pexied. Female dogs going under for spaying usually get the procedure since they’re already anesthetized.

  The exact cause of bloat isn’t known, although sometimes it comes about after eating or drinking too much, or exercising too soon after eating. Mike had done neither.

  The vets tried to stick a tube down Mike’s esophagus to release pressure, but it wouldn’t go in—a clear indicator of GDV. They jammed a needle between his ribs and Stew heard the air rush out. Mike was not sedated for this emergency procedure and moaned in agony.

  They rushed Mike to the surgery. The staff had to remove a third of his stomach, his spleen, and part of his small intestine, which had all been damaged beyond repair by the lack of circulation.

  Stew knew his dog might never work again. He just wanted him to live.

  The setup at the hospital isn’t like Fort Belvoir’s, where handlers can often stay next to their dogs when they’re in their recovery kennels. The staff let Stew rest downstairs on a couch, but he couldn’t spend the night next to Mike.

  About five times during the course of the night, someone ran down to get Stew because Mike’s blood pressure was dropping dangerously low. They thought Mike might not crash if his best friend came up and talked to him.

  Sure enough, when Mike saw Stew, he raised his head and looked at him, and his blood pressure immediately climbed back into a normal range.

  After a few minutes, Stew would have to go back to the room downstairs. Sleep failed to come on the couch, and he thought about the bond between handlers and their dogs. Seeing Mike’s pressure go back to normal without tail wagging or jumping or any physical movement to induce the reaction proved to him that these dogs feel, think, and love above and beyond any level people can comprehend.

  He thought about police K-9 handlers and military dog handlers who lose it when their partner is killed or even badly injured. These handlers know this connection. It can’t be defined, and there aren’t really people who understand, other than handlers who have been through something similar.

  About twenty-four hours after the emergency began, Mike seemed to be out of the woods. Stew decided to drive to the ERT’s D.C. office to take a quick shower while Mike slept at the vet’s.

  His cell phone rang. It was one of the vets. She had devastating news.

  “You need to get here as soon as possible. Mike has taken a sudden turn. We don’t think he’s going to make it.”

  She told Stew that Mike’s stomach was basically melting where they had stitched him. She said they could do another surgery, but his chances of pulling through were not good.

  Stew tried to reach his supervisors to no avail to get the OK. It didn’t matter. Mike had to live. He told the vet staff he’d put it on his credit card. They told him they would take as much off the bill as possible.

  As Stew was racing back to the hospital, the Service got his message and agreed to pay.

  Stew arrived at the vet’s after the surgery had started. He didn’t get a chance to see his dog first and tell him he’d be OK, tell him he loved him and what a good dog he was. He’d save it for when Mike woke up after surgery.

  He never got the chance.

  An hour into surgery, a vet came out and gave him the news that Mike didn’t make it. They carried Mike’s body to Stew in the room where he had been waiting. This big, strong, almost invincible man leaned over Mike’s body, holding him and crying uncontrollably. In his grief, he had no idea what to do. He felt more alone than he’d ever felt in his life.

  Then the door opened, and in strode four ERT guys in full kit and machine guns, fresh off their shift. They surrounded him as he mourned his dog. He didn’t hold back because they were there. He felt far less alone with his brothers so close at hand.

  —

  The Tactical Canine Unit needed handlers, and a few months later, Stew was offered another dog. He fought it for a long time, not wanting to have the pain of this kind of loss again. But eventually he relented.

  It took him about a year to warm up to his new dog, Nero. He had been comparing everything the dog did to Mike. He knew it wasn’t fair, and this dog would have been considered a great dog by anyone else. The problem was that he just wasn’t Mike.

  But one day Nero did something that made him laugh, and the ice broke. They went on to form a special bond during their eight years working together and Nero’s three years of retirement. Stew couldn’t imagine that he had once felt ambivalent about Nero—the best dog in the world.

  When Nero was thirteen years old, he fell suddenly ill. He wouldn’t go up the stairs, and the normally food-loving Mal wasn’t eating.

  Stew took him to his personal vet. After Secret Service dogs retire and are adopted by their handlers, they’re considered pets, and the Secret Service no longer pays medical expenses or sends them to Fort Belvoir.

  The veterinarian discovered that Nero had a massive tumor that was pushing up against his stomach and spleen. He told Stew his dog had no chance of survival no matter what, and that he was probably in a great deal of pain.

  Stew called a fellow ERT handler. “I didn’t bring him here to put him down,” he told him in shock, trying to contain his grief. “I just wanted to see why he wouldn’t come up the stairs.”

  He didn’t want Nero to suffer any more than he already must have. Since Nero was sedated for the diagnostic X-rays, he made the agonizing decision to let him go.

  Before euthanizing Nero, the staff set him on a blanket and laid him on the floor of an examination room so Stew could spend some time with him. He lay next to him for an hour, telling him all the things he wanted him to know. He wished his idol, James Taylor, could be there and sing Nero into his final sleep with “Sweet Baby James.”

  When he felt as ready as he could be—not ready at all, really—he gave a nod, and the vet and a couple of techs came in and administered the lethal dose.

  Stew lay on the floor next to his dog and sobbed. He didn’t try to contain his grief. It was like Mike all over again, but even worse.

  They had spent years working together, had many memorable adventures, and now his retired, old dog was a beloved fixture in his home. And suddenly he was gone. Stew didn’t want to leave, didn’t want Nero to be taken by the staff to a back room. But he couldn’t stay there with him forever.

  He said a final good-bye and left the room. As he opened the door, he saw, lined up against the wall of the hall, four of his guys from ERT. This time they were in civilian clothes. They had come in on their day off to be with him. One had driven two hours.

  He had a fleeting moment where he wished he hadn’t let his grief overcome him after Nero died, because they surely heard him. But he knew that as hard as the ERT guys are, they know this bond, and understood.

  They told him they would carry Nero to the back room themselves and stay with him until he was processed and everything was OK.

  “It’s all right, Stew, you go. We won’t leave him,” they told him.

  That these men had his back during his darkest hour helped make the loss a little less devastating.

  —

  Barry galloped joyfully around the grassy front yard after his bath on a warm summer afternoon. He loved baths, but he especially loved what happened after baths if the weather was right.

  He ran a couple of laps and then burrowed into the waiting arms of his handler, Bill Shegogue. Beaming at his dog’s bliss, Shegogue toweled him off briskly, and the German shepherd bucked with happiness, bulleting off again for another round of “wheelies,” as Shegogue called h
is old dog’s puppylike antics.

  Half a minute later, Barry sped back to Shegogue for more toweling. He wagged his tail so hard that the whole back half of his body wagged with it. His damp, dark fur glistened in the sun as he ran off again in wide circles.

  Shegogue and Barry had worked together in the Secret Service for almost seven years, and Barry had retired only a month earlier because his arthritis was slowing him down. Shegogue looked forward to making his dog as happy as possible during his retirement years. This was just the beginning.

  Barry cantered back to Shegogue for more towel time. Shegogue, who was crouched down, embraced him in the towel and dried him some more as Barry wagged and panted. The corners of Barry’s mouth were drawn up in what Shegogue knew was his version of a smile. When Barry was extra happy, he smiled like this.

  And then as he held him in his arms on the perfect summer day, Shegogue felt Barry’s body go limp. For a moment he let himself think his dog was just suddenly tired. But when he felt the weight of his dog in his arms, he knew. He had lost Barry. Just like that, in the middle of his reverie. No pulse, no breathing. But still with a little smile.

  He rushed him to the local vet. They told him he had been felled by a massive heart attack.

  If ever there was a good way to die, this was it. But the blow of its suddenness was incapacitating for Shegogue. Eighteen years later, his eyes still well up when he talks about it.

  You lived and died a life only meant for the fearless and strongest and finest of American heroes, and you were one of them; and you wore the Badge of the Very Elite . . . Rest and Play in Peace, K9 Maxo. Angels will sing for you now.

  —Posted on the “Officer Down Memorial Page” for Secret Service EDT dog Maxo on March 7, 2013

  On January 26, 2013, a dog named Maxo became the first Secret Service canine to die in the line of duty.

  Maxo was a young, energetic Malinois. He and his handler had trained together for four months and had been operational for ten months. Maxo was an affectionate dog, a leaner. Everyone who met him instantly liked him.