How to train a dog of war

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http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/zero_bark_thirty_5Q5vfvWqrin9A4fqb0LBUO

Perhaps the most astonishing detail to emerge from the raid on Osama bin Laden was the presence a most unusual soldier: a dog named Cairo, a Belgian Malinois who’d gone through the canine equivalent of SEAL training.

On that mission, he was responsible for helping to secure the perimeter of the bin Laden house, sniffing out bombs and, if necessary, attacking enemy combatants. He wore a Kevlar vest with harnesses for rappelling and parachuting, a drainage system for waterborne assaults, and a night-vision camera with a 180-degree field of vision.

What made Cairo most valuable on this raid, however, were his intrinsic gifts, ones that cannot be replicated or simulated by humans or machines, and which give the United States unquantifiable advantages in the theater of war.

In his new book “Trident K9 Warriors” (St. Martin’s Press), former Navy SEAL Mike Ritland, who now trains dogs for US Special Forces, gives us an unprecedented look into our canine combatants, whose contributions have long remained overlooked and undervalued.

THE $50,000 CANINE
There have been military working dogs (MWDs) for about as long as humans have waged war, but the United States didn’t really begin recruiting dogs until World War II, and we had no such thing as elite warrior dogs until after 9/11.

“It became clear to everyone that a relatively simple equation existed,” Ritland writes. “Special Operations Forces needed Special Operations Forces canines,” and SEAL Team 6 — the same unit that executed the bin Laden raid — led the way.

Ritland served in Iraq as a member of SEAL Team 3, and it was his experience with MWDs that led him, in 2009, to a post-military career as a trainer. The exceptional ability of these K9s to sniff out IEDs, he writes, “made me never want to go anywhere without a dog in front of me ever again.”
Though training a dog to detect a bomb is complicated — Ritland says there are over 200 steps to the training and, for obvious reasons, does not go into detail — this is the aspect most suited to the animal: Dogs have an 80% success rate in detecting explosive devices, far greater than that of man or machine.

As with human candidates, not just any dog can qualify. SOF dogs are overwhelmingly culled from one breed: the Belgian Malinois, which look like German Shepherds but are about 10 pounds lighter, far less prone to heatstroke, and have an off-the-charts drive to hunt and capture their prey.
They are swift and stealth, capable of taking ³/‚„ of a mile at 40 mph at 800 feet above sea level, and the force of their bite equals 617 pounds per square inch. They have a 270-degree filed of vision.

“This is one of the reasons why I consider a dog to be such an effective weapon,” Ritland writes. “It is a very highly skilled nonlethal force.” The military spends about $50,000 in the training and deployment of each Special Forces dog.

Of the exceptional Malinois breed, only 1% ever make it into US Special Forces. To find a puppy who will go the distance, Ritland says, is to search for one in a thousand; as a trainer, he has access to 2- and 3-year-old Malinois who have had strenuous training and exhibit serious potential — and not just physically. “The dogs we deploy have to be unflappable in all circumstances,” he writes.

“They have to perform their activities willingly and with a single-minded purposefulness that few, if any, humans possess.”

They also have to buck thousands of years of evolution: “Dogs have been domesticated and bred for so long that the type of dog that is willing to stand up to and fight a human — a human that is not frightened by that dog and physically capable of disabling that dog — is a very, very rare animal.”

THROWN IN THE DEEP END
Ritland also breeds his own K9s and begins training his puppies before they’re even born, moving the pregnant mothers into a quiet, climate-controlled kennel, away from all his other dogs — he wants these pups gestating in luxury, without stress. Once birthed, he waits three days, then begins “bio-sensor stressing” — tickling their pads with Q-tips, breathing into their faces, exposing them to different adults and children, then playing CDs with alarming sounds: gunfire, thunder, sirens, motorcycles. He also separates them from their mothers as early as possible, to establish the human-canine bond as the primary one.

At 4-weeks-old, if the pups have adjusted to these alarming sounds at ever-increasing volume, Ritland moves on to the next phase: teaching them how to swim out past the point where their own fight-or-flight instincts kick in, which for dogs is the moment they lose sight of land.
This aspect of training is among the most challenging; the dogs often go into such panic that they attempt to climb up on top of their trainers, swiping at them desperately and gnashing their teeth. “Many of us ended up getting parts of our bodies raked by the thumbs and dewclaws of a panicked swimming dog,” Ritland writes, “and those raised welts became just another way that we all earned our stripes.”

As difficult as it is getting a K9 into and out of a helicopter — it goes against their instinct to keep all four paws on terra firma — the approach most handlers use is similar to the swimming exercise: They just hang the dog out of the helicopter, no warning.

“He thought I was throwing him out of the bird,” says one handler of his trainee, a dog named Castor.
“He freaked out — paws thrashing, his torso twisting. Once I let go of him, and of course he’s tethered to me, he dropped a couple of inches more and then just hung there. He was immediately totally calm, and I imagined he was thinking, ‘Oh, OK, cool. This is fine. Dad’s got me.’ ”

JUST ONE OF THE GUYS
It’s a marker of the deep bond between these human and canine warriors that everyone refers to the handler as the dog’s “dad,” and the dogs all come to trust their handlers implicitly. And this isn’t merely an outgrowth of their training; Ritland cites numerous examples of the ways dogs have sacrificed in battle. In Vietnam, a dog named Nemo was on patrol with handler Bob Thorneburg when both were shot in an ambush. Nemo took a bullet to the eye, yet chased the enemy. Then he staggered back to Thorneburg and laid on top of him as they continued to take gunfire. Nemo saved both their lives.

There were the Devil Dogs of World War I, who served in the Marines and were the first to be treated like their human counterparts: given ranks along with honorable and dishonorable discharges. The Devil Dogs distinguished themselves during the Battle of the Bulge, where they served as scouts and guards and whose service proved so important that a substantial number of Marines, Ritland writes, “reported that they never wanted to go out without canines again.”

Still, when K9 warriors were introduced to SEAL teams, many soldiers were skeptical.

Ritland writes about Rocket, one of the first special forces dogs to be deployed in Afghanistan; at first, the SEALs regarded Rocket and his handler as interlopers and were told that a separate room would be built for the two. In the meantime, Rocket spent his downtime much as the SEALs did: being himself. He roamed around looking for food, sneaking off with the SEALs’ snacks; he liked their beds better than the floor, and when the men came back from patrol, Rocket would inevitably be stretched out on one of their beds, fast asleep.

Mortified, Rocket’s handler apologized for the dog, but he soon realized that the SEALs didn’t care, because whoever was displaced was always happily sleeping on the floor, next to Rocket snuggled in the purloined bed. The SEALs also lobbied their CO to keep the separate room from ever getting built and more than one asked to adopt Rocket’s future puppies.

“The only complaint the guys had was that sometimes Rocket busted ass in the middle of everybody, a product of them sneaking him foods that he wasn’t accustomed to getting,” Ritland writes. “Not much different from one of the guys, really.”

DOG DAYS OF RETIREMENT
The United States has come a long way in our treatment of K9 warriors since the days of Vietnam.

When that war ended, the bulk of canine soldiers were simply cut loose. Today, these animals are regarded as special forces unto themselves, held in much higher regard. When they are injured in the field, they are treated and Medivaced; seriously wounded K9s get physical therapy.

There are often memorials for those killed in action, and a national monument is slated to be installed this year at Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio.

“A dog shouldn’t be just a line item on a budget sheet along with a weapon, a vehicle or an office supply,” Ritland writes. “What they do is far more important and far more complicated than that.”

As is what they suffer: Their handlers are keenly attuned to the physical and emotional well-being of these animals, who are as vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder as any human. One handler named Dave talks about his worry over his dog Samson, who has one more deployment in Afghanistan and is suffering from intestinal problems. Dave, who is not active military, is hoping that Samson fails: “Not that I want there to be something wrong with him, but I miss being with him,” Dave says. When Samson retires, he will go to live with Dave and his family for good.

As for Cairo, Ritland writes about an SOF dog by that name, whom he describes as a mix of “supreme alpha dog and calm presence” — the 1% of the 1%. He stood apart as a puppy, found by his handler, Lloyd, in a chaotic kennel filled with squealing, spasmodic dogs, Cairo sitting back, “high and tight, squared away like a good sailor.”

Cairo became the first K9 deployed by the SEALs, and was unusual in that he loved helicopters.
Neither Ritland nor his handler say whether this is the same Cairo who was on the bin Laden raid, and they are curiously vague on the contributions of this exceptional animal.

“Cairo was inspirational,” his handler says. “To see how tirelessly he went after it, running and searching night after night and day after day, you felt like you had to keep up with him.”

Now retired, Cairo is living with handler Lloyd and his family somewhere in the US, where he takes it easy, strolling around with his security blanket and letting Lloyd’s tiny beagle take him in wrestling matches.

And, true to his nature as a dog who’s served, Cairo finds ways to contribute around the house: “Cairo helps put the groceries away,” Lloyd says. “And for as powerful as those jaws are, when he carries a carton of milk or whatever, he never busts through the package.”

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Navy SEAL dog in action — the two objects attached to his Kevlar jacket are a camera and an antenna

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Belgian Malinois make the best SEAL dogs — strong and fast.
 
I never knew how much goes into making those MWDs. It makes me want to pick up Ritland's book.
 
I was at a clinic once and got to take a but from a SEAL dog......I had bruising through a training bite sit and ahalf inch neoprene sleeve. Those dogs are amazing.
 
My dog was going to be a SEAL K-9, but the instructors were prejudiced against him and washed him out for no reason.
 
A mutt. The instructors only wanted Malinois, so they washed him out on purpose.
 
My dog was going to be a SEAL K-9, but the instructors were prejudiced against him and washed him out for no reason.

Bruno? As a SEAL K-9.... INCONCEIVABLE!!!! Smart like Bull, Strong like Bull, Smell like Bull... and a momma's boy... great dog though, I like Bruno. Has he brought home any more deer parts, or 1/4 trees to play fetch with?:thumbsup:
 
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