Soldier Dogs (29 page)

It wasn’t heroic, but it got the job done.

But gentle as he was, he would have killed for Ingraham. She
was climbing out of a ravine when she lost her footing and fell to the ground. An Iraqi interpreter reached down to help her and was leaning down close to her. Rex took this the wrong way and charged the man, growling and barking ferociously. Ingraham was able to call off Rex before he did any harm. Rex would even stand guard at the shower trailer, barking protectively while she was in there.

She credits their successes on missions and on base to knowing each other so well. “We wouldn’t have been able to do half of what we did without the bond. I knew almost every move he made. I could read almost every emotion in his face. You learn to read everything, and they learn to read everything about you. It got to the point where if I sat, he sat. If I lay down, he lay down.”

Rex was still a stubborn dog with others. He wouldn’t take commands from anyone else, no matter how nicely they asked or how much they coerced. He was a one-handler dog. “Sometimes if someone told him to do something and he was with me, he’d just open his mouth and wag his tail and look back at me like he was laughing at them.”

While deployed, Rex and Ingraham were together day in, day out. He spent nights on her bed, or on an extra bunk next to her, or curled up on some bedding below her bed. During the day, if she happened to be working at a desk while at FOB Warhorse (one of the better living conditions during their deployment), Rex would sleep on a giraffe bed Ingraham had bought online. Rex is probably the only deployed dog who ever slept on a dog bed with a giraffe print and a squeaky giraffe-shaped head sticking out of the top. He liked to play with its head for awhile, chomping it to make it squeak, until he got tired and plopped down for a good nap.

Every night before bedtime, Ingraham would lean down close
to her dog and tell him, “I love you, Rex. Everything from your big feet to your stinky breath.” And he’d drift off to sleep.

Early in their deployment, Ingraham decided that she would reenlist. If all went well, she would be able to retire at about the same time Rex would be retiring, after a couple more rotations together in Afghanistan. “I would adopt him and he was going to live on my couch in Waverly, West Virginia.” It was a perfect plan.

Their Iraq deployment done, they went back to the States, where they were stationed once again at Fort Myer, a small army base next to the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. It was very hard for Ingraham to leave Rex back in the kennels every night. She provided him with a dog bed (something most dogs don’t get, partly because so many would chew it up) and visited him frequently, even on days off.

While there, they went on some presidential missions together, making sure the coast was clear for the chief executive and his entourage. At one event at Fort Myer, scores of wounded warrior soldiers and veterans showed up. It was one of those times Ingraham realized what a special dog she had.

Although the dogs don’t search people at these events, any wheelchairs have to be searched, because they can’t go through scanners. “It’s sensitive, because you know what they’ve been through.” Of the three dogs present, Rex was chosen for the duty because of his gentle nature.

“The first wheelchair came in, and instead of searching, Rex just walked up to the man sitting in it and laid his head on the
man’s lap and looked up to him.” Ingraham realized this was Rex’s way of signaling to her that there was nothing to worry about with this one. After Ingraham assured the soldier the dog was friendly, he gave Rex a pat on the head and moved on. This happened with every person who came in a wheelchair. Rex even gave soldiers on crutches special attention, but essentially ignored the uninjured. “He knew the wounded warriors. As always with him, he seemed to sense who needed the most care. I was so proud watching him.”

In early 2011 Ingraham got word that they would be heading to Germany for a few months, with the idea that a deployment to Afghanistan would follow. She was excited that soon she’d be able to spend 24/7 with Rex again, even if meant their lives would be at stake with every step they took outside the wire.

But on March 16 she went to check on him in his kennel and right away she noticed something was amiss. There was foam in his water bowl and the dog didn’t look right. She took him outside, where he passed up a chance to eat food, which was not like him. He made efforts to go to the bathroom, but he couldn’t. She let him off leash, and instead of running exuberantly, he lay down by the fence. She took his tennis ball and threw it down the field, but he didn’t move. She began to realize that something was terribly wrong.

She took the dog straight to the vet, where he was given several tests and screenings, including X-rays and ultrasound. Blood work was done. Everything came back OK.

They returned to the kennel, where she watched him all night.
“I tried not to panic, because he picks up on everything I do.” Around 9
A.M.
his heart rate jumped, and he started throwing up. The vets, who had left base, came back for him. They did all the tests again and still couldn’t see anything. The vet called several different vets in the area, and they decided to send Rex to Fort Belvoir, about forty minutes away. There was a surgeon there. More tests there, same results. The surgeon said, “Let’s go in and see what’s going on inside.”

Ingraham opted to stay in the room with her dog. “You’d rather see everything that happens to your dog.” She could read the vet’s face before the vet said anything. Something had twisted deep inside of Rex, and his colon was gray, essentially dead. The vet worked tirelessly to save Ingraham’s dog, but in the end, there was nothing more he could do. (A military veterinarian I described Rex’s condition to said it was not bloat, but likely a very rare, fatal condition called mesenteric root torsion.)

The veterinarian decided at that point that Rex would not come out of his anesthesia. Ingraham burst into tears. The vet administered the dose of euthanasia solution. Everyone left the room so Ingraham could be alone with him. She tried to keep it together, for his sake. She kissed him, stroked his head, and talked to him like old times.

Then she leaned down, snuggled into his fur, and told him, “I love you, Rex. Everything from your big feet to your stinky breath.”

And he drifted off.

Less than a month later, and still raw from the loss of Rex, Ingraham learned that the army had assigned her to work with a new dog, Cinte M401. She was aghast. “Of all the dogs, why him?” she once again wondered.

She had seen the Belgian Malinois in the kennels and had been grateful he was not her dog. The four-year-old dog was clearly slow on the uptake. Much to Ingraham’s dismay, he bonded with her almost immediately, following her around and always wanting to nuzzle up to her. But she didn’t want him touching her. She was still aching from losing Rex. And besides, this dog was just annoying.

Her mother said to give it time, said she thought this sounded like a nice dog, but Ingraham knew she’d never like this dog.

In autumn of 2011, when we last communicated, Ingraham and Cinte had been in Germany for a couple of months. And as her mother predicted, Cinte was starting to grow on Ingraham. “His quirkiness has found a place in my heart.”

Here’s what she wrote me about this dog:

“He’s a bit skittish so everyday noise is a challenge full of new things for him. For example, he was searching a box and he touched it and it moved, so he jumped like a cat onto a cart next to him as if he’d never seen a box move before.

“As he searches, every time he finds what he’s looking for he gets this shocked look on his face that seems to say, ‘OMG did you know that was there?’ Also he tends to overthink things as simple as a command of sit.

“Then, there are children. He is terrified to the core. Even if the children are at a distance he will hide behind me or try to run as far away from them as he can, often without looking where he is going and running into anything in his path. He is a challenge but every day holds new surprises and it’s never dull.

“Cinte is very clumsy and careless when he runs or fetches his toy and has repeatedly smashed his snout, so we are looking to
make sure some of his issues aren’t medical. He’s a great dog and knows his job and loves doing it, but he seems to have a harder time doing it when compared to the other working dogs. His nose is weaker than any of his breed we have seen, but he seems to know and works harder. In a deployment situation I would trust him; he has no problems finding the mass odors of IEDs and other caches, but he may miss a single magazine of ammo.

“It may be a while before we are proficient enough to go to Afghanistan, but when we go, it will be a good deployment.”

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T
he kind of tender relationship Ingraham and Rex developed, and the kind that seems to be blossoming with her and Cinte, is not unique to this war.

Robert Kollar was a handler with the Fifty-eighth Infantry Platoon Scout Dog Unit in Vietnam, during 1968–69. He was based at Camp Evans and given a German shepherd named Rebel. According to the Vietnam Dog Handler Association, there were fifty-two dogs named Rebel who served in Vietnam. Few fates are known, but at least five were killed in action, four were put down because of their injuries, one retired, and one died of heat stress. That was Kollar’s dog, who died three weeks after Kollar, who was a sergeant, returned home.

He remembers so vividly when he and Rebel would be dropped off to walk around the jungle for five days at a time, walking point, and how it seemed like you were always assigned to a unit where you didn’t know anybody. You’re on the point in front of strangers, and so in all senses it’s just you and the dog. In the monsoon season and the dead heat of summer. On good days and bad—like the night
Kollar was part of a night ambush, but he could not keep Rebel up. The dog just would not stay awake, and Kollar had to keep pulling him up to keep watch. It’s all about teamwork, of course, but in this kind of work the team is less you and the patrol, more you and the one other soul in the world who, after weeks or months together, understands who you are and what this is all about, and that when you put on the scouting harness the real game is about to begin.