Soldier Dogs (9 page)

E
ven Lars had to pass a buy team’s muster once upon a time. In order to be considered for any MWD job, dogs undergo careful scrutiny.

The dogs being screened must be between twelve and thirty-six months old (the older ones generally have more training) and need to be in excellent health, with no acute or chronic conditions that would be costly to treat. In addition, buyers evaluate behavior, temperament, and trainability. If anything’s amiss, it’s the equivalent of a human draftee’s flat feet or color blindness.

The testing takes place outdoors and indoors. Indoors is not posh: Depending on the location, it can be a barn, garage, or even a large tent. There needs to be some furniture, like drawers and old couches, but otherwise it’s pretty bare bones.

Since no matter how healthy a dog is or how good he is at basics like being interested in a ball or performing a good bite, if a military working dog is skittish and balky from the get-go, he won’t fare well in the dog program. Bombs and ammo and thin nerves don’t mix, so the first tests given are preliminary environmental stability tests.

Here’s the official Department of Defense standard, from the
Statement of Work: Potential Military Working Dogs, 341st Training Squadron
:

It doesn’t sound like it would be too hard to find dogs who fit the bill. Jake would pass this part of the test without a problem. This ninety-pound mellow yellow Lab has nerves of steel. He sleeps through earthquakes, will walk or run on any surface (especially if
there’s something delectable to eat or to roll on as a goal), and has never flinched during the very loud fireworks people set off on our nearby beach for the Fourth of July and the Lunar New Year.

The only thing he’s ever been scared of is the Golden Gate Bridge. The vibrations made him pull away once when we were in full tourist mode with some visiting friends. But as soon as I brought out some dog treats, he forgot all about the fact that he was vibrating more than two hundred feet above the cold, unforgiving ocean waters and marched on like the brave and always-hungry soldier he is.

Medical evaluations come later on the test day, with vet techs drawing blood from candidates who are temperamentally suited to the job, and vets examining the dogs, and sometimes even anesthetizing an occasional dog in order to take X-rays of the hips, elbows, and lumbar spine. (X-rays happen only after a dog has passed all behavioral testing.) Dysplasia and other structural abnormalities have done in many a military working dog, so even though vendors have often already submitted radiographs, vets may want to do their own. Besides a thorough medical check, dogs who will be doing patrol work need to have good teeth and jaws, with all four canine teeth present and in excellent condition. The better to bite bad guys with …

Jake may or may not have passed the physical evaluation. He has no major health issues at all, but he has always been the owner
of a set of funky hips. Shortly after we adopted him at six months old, we noticed that he ran like a sack of potatoes whenever at the beach or Golden Gate Park. We eventually had him X-rayed and were told he might have hip issues down the road. We’re nine years down that road, and it’s been an adventure filled with running and jumping and living life to the fullest. So far, he’s OK. So for argument’s sake, we’ll say Jake would pass the medical portion of the test.

Next up on test day, all dogs get evaluated for drive in retrieving and detection. For dual-purpose dogs, the team will also look for drive and competence and confidence in biting. It’s now time for dogs to have a ball—and an arm or leg, for dogs who will be patrolling. We’ll move inside the big, drafty barn for this portion.

Most dogs have been taught by breeders to covet a ball or a Kong toy. The majority of dogs have come to love their Kong, even if they weren’t born with a natural drive to obsess over it. Breeders work to boost interest in dogs who would rather just sit outside and stare at butterflies. The reason this is important is because it’s the rubber Kong toy that most trainers and handlers will use as a reward, and in order for a dog to want to do various tasks, he’s going to want to know there’s pay at the end. Pay for a military working dog is a Kong or a ball, or anything the handler lets him bite. And of course, great praise from the handler.

The dogs being tested generally have little to no training in detection work. Detection at this evaluation stage is much simpler than actually seeking out explosives or drugs. It really comes to a dog’s desire to play with a ball and to search for a ball he can’t see. Testers show the dog the ball and then hide it (usually in one of those drawers mentioned earlier) and watch to see how much the dog wants to find it. The evaluators are looking for a dog who wants the ball so much that he’s clearly thinking about it even if he can’t see it, and he’s excited and will search tirelessly and intensively until he locates the ball. You can imagine the energy a dog like this has.

Once the dog has the ball, Doc and the team look at how jealously he guards the ball in order to keep it, and how enduring and vigorous his interest is in playing with the ball. In essence, the dog has to have a passionate desire to have a toy in his mouth and a very strong olfactory search drive in order to pass this part of the test.

“It’s actually an unnatural desire to play with an object. It’s a specially bred mutated form of hunting behavior, selected for by dog breeders over hundreds of years,” according to Doc Hilliard. “Every dog we’re looking for needs to have it.”

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