Trident K9 Warriors: My Tale From the Training Ground to the Battlefield With Elite Navy SEAL Canines

by Michael Ritland

  The rerouting complete and the tactical infiltration to the set point done, Kwinto led the team to the compound’s specified entry point. His handler released him, and Kwinto once again indicated that explosives were present in the stone wall surrounding the compound. While Kwinto returned, the element moved to a second possible entry point. Kwinto was sent forward, and for the third time in less than an hour, he detected another possible source of explosives. The operators, already hypervigilant, realized that this was a raid that wasn’t going to go completely as planned. Fortunately, with each choice they made, they had Kwinto to make sure they didn’t make any wrong moves. In a way, it was if they were engaged in a high-stakes chess match, and before each prospective move, a grand master was there to help them make the best choice.

  The third entry point was secured, and the team moved through a compound of roughly a dozen and a half buildings. Besides the pale moon, no other light was present. Moving from building to building, room to room, slowly and deliberately, an hour and then another half an hour passed. With just three buildings remaining, one of the team members detected a faint sound coming from an adjoining room. During these sweeps, Kwinto and his handler had not been on point. A signal was passed along the line to bring Kwinto forward. Once the target area’s location had been identified, Kwinto’s handler knelt alongside his canine charge, unclipped his leash, and gave Kwinto his search command. As soon as Kwinto came into that odor, he propelled himself into the room where the noise had been detected. An instant later, the sound of gunfire and a nearly inhuman screaming broke the silence.

  Inside the room, behind a chest-high pile of sandbags, an excellent defensive position, a lone Taliban fighter was pinned into a corner of the room. Kwinto had the man grasped in his teeth, just below his left armpit. His arm was completely immobilized, but he managed to fire off a couple more rounds, more out of reflex than any intent. Kwinto continued to push and grab, and a few moments later, the gun clattered to the ground. The man was subdued and taken into custody.

  Further investigation revealed that the first entry point where Kwinto detected odor coming into the compound was rigged with an HE explosive—in this case a pressure-switch artillery round behind a gate in that perimeter wall. Several other IEDs were found within the compound, once the EOD team came in, as well as a weapons cache and other explosive compounds. All signs pointed to this heavily armed facility being used as a bomb-making location. That it was put out of commission, and that one more prisoner was taken who might provide valuable intelligence are both best-case scenarios. Again, it is impossible to measure accurately what this operation might have prevented from happening in the future.

  What’s remarkably clear is that based on Kwinto’s work, on four separate occasions in a short time span, he detected various explosive devices that would have with great certainty caused serious casualties to an elite team of warriors. I began this chapter with a lot of numbers; I’m glad that I don’t have to add any to those already too-high totals. For the members of Poncho’s and Kwinto’s teams, they also couldn’t add enough thanks for the role those dogs played in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. In my mind, these men and these dogs are all heroes; it’s just that some of them like tennis balls more than others.

  13

  I step outside the house and I can immediately feel it: it’s like I’ve taken my clothes directly from the dryer and put them on. Out here where I’ve set up my business, the heat is like a living, breathing thing that envelops your skin like some kind of constrictor. Somebody once pointed out to me that maybe I chose this spot to set up operations because it reminded me of what it was like when I was downrange. Another suggested that maybe one of the side effects of valley fever was a desire to feel like you have a fever all the time. Could be a little of both, but who knows?

  I open the door to the kennel and feel instant relief. The dogs are all up; some of them just lie there eyeing me, while others do their morning yoga and a few others sound off, though there’s been no reveille. It’s the usual morning routine of kennel care, and I don’t mind a bit. I’ve got a couple of new prospects that’ve only been with me for a few weeks and five dogs in the middle of their training cycle. The new guys won’t be going out this morning, but after they’ve been fed their kibble, I’ll take them out of their crates and do some basic work with them.

  One of them, an eighty-pound Dutch shepherd named Nero, seems to be having some adjustment issues. He’s been difficult to crate up, likely because his original owner and trainer hadn’t taken the time to establish positive associations with being in there. After enduring everything the dog didn’t like as a punishment, a lot of the time after he’d been corrected, he may have been forced into his crate. A young guy like him, just over two years old, wants nothing more than to be out and about. I put him on a lead, show him one of the two tennis balls I’ve got with me, and head out onto my property. I don’t do anything too vigorous with him; he needs to digest, just get used to me being with him, handling him. At various points when I let him chase after a few balls, I give him a nice cold drink, making sure to interrupt his gulping it down by taking the bowl away, putting it out of reach in the back of the dog trailer, and then returning it to him. He seems to be getting the message. All good things come from me, and there is always a constant reminder of who his friend is.

  Just as I’m about done with the two green dogs, one of my best friends and an incredible trainer, Wayne, shows up. We find a bit of shade and go over the plan for the day, shoot the shit, and think of pimp slapping the meteorologist who forecast the cooling trend that was supposed to have begun two days ago. When it’s time to go to work, Wayne and I head over to the kennel. While he loads up the dogs, I wander down to check in on the other two dogs, my pair of retirees. They’ve been fed and walked to let them do their business this morning, but when they see me coming toward them, they’re both immediately at attention, eager and hopeful.

  “Arko. Carlos. Mornin’, fellas, but I’ve got nothing for you yet. Sorry.”

  Given the demands to provide more dogs to the U.S. government or other customers, these two will have to sit it out today. I have no nighttime exercises planned, so they’ll get their time outside later on this evening. I feel a bit bad about that. They see the other dogs getting geared up, and after years of active duty, they still want to be going at it despite what they went through. I’d like to say that they are a part of some master plan that I developed as I was developing my exit strategy from the navy. I knew that I wanted to work with dogs and do the kind of training I’m doing now, but the Arko and Carlos factor is something that just kind of evolved. That’s not to say that’s a bad thing. In a lot of ways, the additional responsibility that I’ve taken on of helping SOF dogs find good home placements when they retire feels a lot less like work and more like some kind of blessing. You know, most of us who “rescue” dogs feel at first like we’re doing something to give a dog a better life; in most cases, and this is certainly true in mine, it’s the other way around. The dogs give us a better life.

  Given all my ties in the SOF canine community, I suppose it makes sense that when one of the SOF communities had two dogs that had ended their stint serving with them, they contacted me. They told me that these were two dogs whose temperaments and characters were such that even being placed with their handlers or any other kind of more traditional “adoption” scenario wasn’t exactly feasible. As you’ve read, quite a few of the dogs can be placed with their handlers or other families, but Arko and Carlos were not those dogs. They were also not going to be suited for placement and continued work in law enforcement or with some other agency. The one option they’d have would be to continue to live at their present location on a military base, with the other dogs that are a part of the unit they came from. Given the nature of how a team’s canines work, that would mean they’d be in their familiar place, but because the priority is on operational dogs, they wouldn’t get much attention, out o
f necessity.

  That’s not to say that their lives would be miserable or that they’d be neglected if they remained at their location. Quite the opposite is true. They’d receive great medical care, adequate food and attention, but they would likely be unable to get the kind of regular exercise and occasional training that they were used to. It’s a testament to the regard these dogs were held in that those in charge wanted something better for them. They believed that I could provide that added bit of care for these two dogs that had both served with distinction. I had to think about it, and originally the question was whether I would personally take charge of the dogs or facilitate them being placed elsewhere with other trainers or something.

  This was a head-versus-heart decision, really. I run a business that supplies dogs to people and agencies who need highly skilled canines. To take on the care of two dogs that would do nothing but be a debit on the cash-flow measurement wouldn’t be the wisest thing to do from an economic standpoint. But to be honest, I didn’t think about it for very long. The SOF community means so much to me, and dogs mean so much to me, that I told them that I would be honored to take Carlos and Arko. I’d also do anything I could to help with any other dogs down the line who needed placement. Even though these dogs were government property, once they were released to me, I received nothing monetary in return. I don’t care about that at all, because as I said earlier, I was one of those people who was determined to give a dog the best life possible. You know the rest of that story.

  Along with the dogs, I received release-of-liability papers, their medical records, and their service records. I fully understood the need for those release papers. Given the temperament of these dogs, there was the potential for them to bite me or someone else. The Department of Defense couldn’t be held responsible for that. These were now my dogs and not the U.S. government’s. What did surprise me was just how honorably these two dogs have served. Having learned their stories, I was proud to have them at my place.

  On a raid, Carlos and his handler were the unfortunate victims of an IED that went undetected. In the middle of an intense firefight, they approached an entryway that cached a bunch of munitions. It was hastily detonated by enemy combatants, and the resulting explosion severely injured the operator/handler and the dog and leveled that entryway. The force of the blast collapsed Carlos’s lungs and sinuses, threw him several feet, breaking both his back legs and his hips. His handler sustained major injuries as well. When the other members of the team rushed up to assist their fallen comrade, despite his own serious injuries, Carlos managed to crawl over to his handler and guard him. It took some time for the rest of the operators to calm Carlos down. All the dog knew was that his buddy was hurt, and he was going to do his damnedest to make sure that nobody else did any damage to him. That’s the kind of courage and loyalty these dogs so frequently exhibit.

  Carlos and his handler were medevaced out of that area of operation, and I’m pleased to say that they both fully recovered. Carlos healed up so well that he eventually returned to operation status and was even deployed again before being retired at age seven.

  Arko also served in multiple deployments, and in one instance, again on a raid, he was injured. He was sent in to apprehend a bad guy and was shot in the chest at point-blank range. Despite being shot, he got a good bite on the man and didn’t come off of it until his handler approached and gave him the command. The enemy was apprehended, and Arko was flown to an FOB, where he underwent surgery and recovered fully. He too returned to action. Like Carlos, he was retired at the age of seven, and to be honest, when I saw him when he was delivered to me, I was a little surprised that decision had been made. He’d done more than his share of work, but when he came out of that crate, he was all business.

  His nostrils flaring, his scorpion tale flagging, his proud, erect gait chewing up yards at a time, he was a template for the ideal Malinois in nearly every way. Carlos was much the same, but in the time I’ve had him, he’s slowed just a bit. It’s clear that those injuries to his legs, hips, and spine make him uncomfortable when he’s been lying down for a while. He’s somewhat slower to get up than he used to be.

  I notice those things when I release both him and Arko, but I imagine that anyone else would think they are perfectly healthy. When I approach them both, they still have that keen-eyed intelligence that I just admire so much. These dogs and their drive to work and be purposeful never goes away. They may not be protecting a fallen comrade or staying in a bite when seriously wounded, but these dogs still want to work, still want to be of service. It’s because of Arko and Carlos, and the other six retirees that I’ve placed with others, that I created a nonprofit organization, called the Warrior Dog Foundation, to meet a need that I saw wasn’t being served anyplace else.

  Because these SOF dogs have such specific characteristics and training, the other MWD organizations and foundations that place those retired dogs wouldn’t meet the needs of dogs like Arko and Carlos. Only someone who has the kind of experience and expertise working as a trainer of these kinds of dogs can successfully bridge the gap between their active duty and retired lives.

  Every time I go out with Arko and Carlos, whether it’s for a bit of ball play on my property or on a training exercise with them somewhere in the surrounding area, I’m reminded of the countless lives that these two dogs, the others whose stories I’ve shared, and the countless others whose heroism we don’t yet know about, have saved. As much as I’m committed to providing the best for them in the years they have left, I’m also deeply hopeful that our military will learn from some of what I see as mistakes from the past. It’s my hope that we never make the decision to leave behind any of our K9 warriors as we did following the Vietnam War. It’s also my hope that we won’t dismantle the kinds of programs that the SOF community has built. Unfortunately, we live at a time when there are so many threats to our security that multi-purpose dogs like those we’ve trained can serve useful functions outside the military. Maybe if we created a network of dogs as reservists, those who serve in one capacity in the civilian world but can be called up again at a moment’s notice to serve in an operational environment wherever in the world they are needed, that would be one way for us to remain vigilant and prepared.

  I know that if asked, Arko and Carlos would serve again to the best of their abilities. There’s the old expression about it not being the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog that really matters. Every day for the past few years, I’ve seen the truth of that on display. These dogs are all heart, different in some ways from the millions of pet dogs in this country, and even more deserving of the care and attention lavished on them. Actually, as far as I’m concerned, they can’t get enough respect, love, and attention. I’ve always admired how little dogs ask in return for all that they do for us. In that way, they are very much like the servicemen and women in all branches of our military. These dogs are not only our best friends, they embody what’s best about us—the courage, loyalty, and heart of true warriors.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER TWO

  1. American Kennel Club, AKC Meet the Breeds, “Get to Know the Belgian Malinois,” www.AKC.org.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1. Alabama A&M and Auburn Universities, Alabama Cooperative Extension Service, “The Dog’s Sense of Smell,” UNP-0066.

  2. J. M. Johnston, Ph.D., “Canine Detection Capabilities: Operational Implications of Recent R & D Findings” (Institute for Biological Detection Systems, Auburn University, June 1999), p. 1.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1. VetInfo, “Canine Vision: How Your Dog Sees the World,” http://www.vetinfo.com/canine-vision.html#b.

  2. Nigel Allsop, Cry Havoc: The History of War Dogs (Sydney, Australia: New Holland Publishers, 2011), p. 19.

  3. Nigel Cawthorne, Canine Commandos (Berkely, CA: Ulysses Press), p. 17.

  4. Michael G. Lemish, War Dogs (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books), p. 6.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Erne
st Harold Baynes, “Satan, the War Dog That Saved a Town,” Junior High School Literature, Book Two, ed. William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck (Scott, Foresman), pp. 37–39.

  7. Air Force Special Operations Command, “Heritage of the Search and Rescue Professionals,” www.afsoc.af.mil/library/afsocheritage/afsoccsarheritage.asp.

  8. Lemish, War Dogs, p. 47.

  9. For an interesting first-person account from a volunteer’s perspective, read “The Hawai’i Nisei Story: Americans of Japanese Ancestry During WWII,” University of Hawaii. http://nisei.hawaii.edu/object/io_1153256967265.html.

  10. Lemish, War Dogs, pp. 62–63.

  11. Sue Rodgers Merit, “Combat Tracker Teams: Dodging an Elusive Enemy,” History.net. Originally published in Vietnam, October 2001.

  12. Allsop, p. 80.

  13. Burkhard Bilger, “Beware of the Dogs,” The New Yorker, February 27, 2012, p. 47.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1. U.S. Congress, House, 111th Cong., 1st sess., House Resolution 812, October 7, 2009 (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office), http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hres812ih/html/BILLS-111hres812ih.htm.

  2. Military.com, Off Duty, “America’s Four-Legged Warriors,” May 7, 2012, Military.com.

  3. Anthony H. Cordesman, Marissa Allison, Vivek Kocharlakota, Jason Lemieux, Charles Loi, “Afghan and Iraqi Metrics and the IED Threat,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 10, 2010.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1. Cordesman et al, Afghan and Iraqi Metrics.

  2. Hannah Fischer, Congressional Research Service, “U.S. Military Casualty Statistics: Operation New Dawn, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom,” September 28, 2010, www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22452.pdf