War Dogs (8 page)

In 2006, Dr. Juliane Kaminski, a cognitive psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, conducted a study that sought to compare “the use of causal and communicative cues in an object choice task” between dogs, chimpanzees, and bonobos.
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Footage taken of the same kinds of trials conducted during this study shows Dr. Kaminski at the Leipzig Zoo in Germany, her long brown ponytail hanging down her back, as she sits facing a chimpanzee. There is a plastic divide between them as well as a table. On the table are two banana-yellow cups turned over, bottoms up. The objective here is for the chimp to reach
through two circular holes in the divide and find the food hidden beneath one of these cups.

Dr. Kaminski is there to help; she points to the cup containing the food. Her signals offer reliable and consistent information: all the chimp has to do is watch Dr. Kaminski and follow her movements, and she will find the food. Only she doesn't. The sweet face, with its deep wrinkles framed in wispy black hairs, hardly turns in the direction of Kaminski, even as the doctor speaks directly to her, conveying not just words but emotions, with her face as well as her hands. Each time the experiment is repeated, the chimp continues to make her own choices without acknowledging Kaminski's exaggerated gestures, often making her choice before the doctor even attempts to point out the food.

During another test, Kaminski is in a different room, and this time there isn't a plastic wall or a table, just two over-turned blue bowls on the floor. The experiment is the same, only now she is standing in front of a dog. From the moment the exercise begins the dog's eyes are trained on her face. And this time, when Kaminski points to the food, the dog's response is immediate: he moves directly to the blue bowl that she indicated, and the food is found.

The dog was able to use Kaminski's direction—what she calls “informed” gestures—while the chimpanzee did not. This experiment shows, she says, that the communication between human and canine is “in its essence a very cooperative interaction.” For dogs, this kind of “following, pointing seems to be very natural, and it makes dogs extremely interesting.” It is proof, she believes, of their extraordinary social intelligence, a grasping of something akin to a second language. They've learned “to interpret human communication which is different from dog communication.”
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There is further evidence now that shows that dogs not only have the ability to read and register our gestures, but also to interpret the emotional expressions on our faces. At the University of Lincoln in England, Daniel Mills, professor of veterinary behavioral medicine, conducted a study using eye-tracking technology to better understand how dogs and humans interact with each other.

Humans reveal emotions more prominently on the right side of our faces. Which means that when we talk to each other, whether we realize it or not, we gaze left at the faces of our lovers, our friends, and our judgmental superiors in order to best assess their mood.

With this in mind, Mills set up his experiment by placing dogs in front of a screen onto which he projected images of human faces—some were smiling or frowning, while others showed no expression. Mills then used eye-tracking technology to determine what the dog's eyes would look at, if they looked at human expression at all. It turns out, as Mills discovered, that dogs also gaze left.
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They were seeking out the right side of the human face—the “emotional” side. His findings provide strong evidence to support the idea that dogs read human expression—that they knowingly look and then decipher information from our faces.

But though these experiments show that dogs are uniquely in tune with humans and human emotions, they do not “prove” the existence of love. And for the most part, the study of the beneficial effects of the emotional exchange between man and dog have largely been one-sided. There have been quite a few scientific studies on what dogs do for humans—we know their company lowers our blood pressure
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and greatly reduces the stress we feel
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—but the study of the positive effect of humans on dogs is scarce.

One study that did examine the effect of the canine-human bond on
both
dogs and humans centered on oxytocin. A neuropeptide produced in the hypothalamus
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linked to feelings of trust and bonding, especially between a breast-feeding mother and her newborn child, oxytocin is best known as the mammalian hormone of love. In 2010, researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden presented a study that looked at levels of oxytocin when dogs and humans were together.
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What the study found is that after a “petting session” with their dog, owners experienced a boost in their levels of oxytocin. Perhaps even more interesting than the appearance of oxytocin in blood samples of the human subjects was that a similar spike in the hormone was also seen in the blood samples taken from the dogs—a finding that points to the fact that the bonding emotions really do go both ways.

Still, even Bekoff readily concedes that there is a lack of focus on
proving
the bond, and so the evidence is still largely anecdotal. But then, he wonders, why do we really need these studies? It's almost comical, Bekoff muses, to have to conduct scientific experiments for the things we assume would already have a strong empirical basis, like a dog's ability to love. The reason the studies don't exist, he believes, is because we don't really need them. The idea is backed by something far simpler—common sense.
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To believe that animals are without the capacity for the more complex secondary emotions—such as longing, jealousy, or shame—is an idea to which Bekoff takes tremendous offense. In his mind it's an arrogant and dismissive assumption by humans. Actually, the qualifying word he uses is “insane,” and while we're on the phone together, his voice rises to very high decibels at the preposterousness of such limited thinking.

He poses it this way: “If you define love as an enduring and a strong bond—I love you, I miss you, I seek you out, I prefer you”—why, he asks, can't this be transferred to the dog? In other words,
of course
dogs love us.

Cold is slowly seeping
from the Colorado ground through my many wintry layers into the backs of my legs. The frost of early morning is all but melted now, and when the wind relents, the sun is strong and warm against my back, a wall of heat that I lean into. My instinct is to keep my body loose and my movement soft and even, to project the very essence of calm. I'm attempting to engage in a courtship and the object of my attention hasn't quite made up her mind about me. But I am hopeful because the eyes that watch me carefully now are friendlier than they'd been the previous afternoon.

I had followed Jakubin into the back of the Air Force Academy kennels where each dog has his own separate quarters, a space of six feet by six feet, walled on all four sides by chain-link fence. As soon as Jakubin opened the door, a commotion erupted, and all the dogs were up on their feet. Some wagged their tails, clearly happy to see him. They took little note of my presence, all except for Boda, who, as soon as I set foot near her house, made it clear that I was an intruder, unwelcome and unwanted. She barked
sharply and loudly in my direction, her growls becoming more beastly the closer I got.

Boda is one of Jakubin's misfit cases. She arrived at the Air Force Academy kennels with a superior detection record, but once they took her outside of a controlled training yard environment, her nerves began to show. Unexpected noises and unknown objects frightened her, and she shied from crowds, cowering in chaotic parking lots. Jakubin knew there was no way he could send this dog out on a deployment without a tremendous amount of work. So they were gradually trying to build up her confidence, trying to alleviate her fears.

Now I'm outside at Fort Carson, watching as Boda's handler, Staff Sergeant Robbie Whaley, runs a metal brush through her thick coat, sending tufts of fur into the air, like dandelion seed. Boda's velvety ears sink with pleasure. Whaley, in the midst of this focused caregiving, had overheard the chatter about handlers loving or not loving their dogs, but had chosen not to participate. Whatever had been said did not deter him from planting a kiss on Boda's muzzle; a kiss that she accepts without flinching.

When the grooming finally ceases, she turns her head in my direction. I want her to trust me, so I offer the very same gesture my father taught me at a young age, cautioning me, “Never force your hand on a dog.” I rest my elbows on my knees and extend my open hands, palms to the sky.

Finally, she approaches me, ever careful as she takes a sniff and then a lick of my left hand, then my right. I don't touch her or speak. She hovers and then pushes her large face close to mine; I feel her nose cold on my cheek. I get a lick before she bounces back over to Whaley. Then a few moments later, she returns, her large nose sniffs my hair so close I can smell the cold air fresh on her coat. This time I don't hesitate to catch the scruff of her neck and reach up behind her ears to give them a good scratch. She leans into my hand and settles against me on the ground. I can feel her heaviness, her warmth. It is a peaceful exchange, quiet and complete. I have been accepted. I am friend.

A little while later Boda, emboldened by her shining coat, sashays around the group of us, weaving in and out of our circle, a pull toy in her
mouth. The other handlers call to her, reaching out their hands to engage her in a game of tug-of-war. She hears them but ultimately denies them all, coming close but not close enough, at last bringing the toy to her handler—and only her handler—placing it at Whaley's feet.

Whaley looks down at her and smiles, convinced that this dog loves him. She in turn regards him, waiting and watching. There is expression in her face. It is a look of expectation and adoration. This is a face inviting play and she's chosen her playmate.

Driving out to Fort Carson
for a second day of training, Jakubin takes the dogs and I hitch a ride with Jon Baer. It's just the two of us in his truck, no dogs and no other handlers. It's early, but he's coffee'd up and ready for another day with the dogs. A longtime friend of Jakubin's and a former Air Force handler, Baer was in the group yesterday and stood by during Howard's no-love-for-the-working-dog speech. And even though he hadn't said anything at the time, he believes that there's a lot more to handler-dog dynamics than simply dominating a dog.

When a handler is assigned to a new home station, the first thing he works on with his dog is rapport building. More important than establishing what some handlers like Howard call the “alpha,” this is a time to connect with the dog, Baer says, and to let the dog know how close they will be as partners. He takes one hand off the wheel to cross his fingers, signaling the closest of close together. Those beginning stages of training with a new dog are not the time to give a lot of corrections, but the time to teach the dog to trust his handler. These exercises were the very first thing Baer did as a military canine handler when he was partnered to work with his very first dog, Benny. Baer and Benny were a team, training and working together for nearly three years. Benny was his favorite dog. “I loved that guy,” he says. And then again, with more emphasis, “I
loved
that guy.”

For each handler I talk to there's always one dog who stands out, one dog who ranks above the others as uniquely special. And talking about this dog is a lot like asking someone about his or her first love. For many handlers, there's also something memorable about the first dog: different
than a favorite dog—and there's always a favorite dog. Sometimes they're one and the same but regardless, when the handler mentions this dog's name, there's a change in pitch and the inevitable smile that comes with remembering.

And this is where all the talk about establishing the alpha or composing a mindset where the dog is first and foremost viewed as a tool or a piece of equipment usually starts to veer off track. From everything I'd seen, the closer a handler is with his dog, the better they performed.

Which brings me back to Jakubin and Taint and all the things he's told me about how he feels when the dogs go. It poses a disconnect that I simply cannot wrap my mind around. Why couldn't something so plain just be called love? Almost a year after our afternoon conversation at Fort Carson, I would ask him the same question again. At first he gives me the same answer, but this time I argue with him. I point out that the ends don't meet, their purpose and their training are distinctly at odds, this idea that the dog is a tool
and
a partner. That you're supposed to bond with the dog to elicit better results but still somehow remain unattached.

He talks around an answer for a few minutes and I can tell he's getting frustrated. Whether he's annoyed with me or with the question I don't know, but he puts an end to our discussion by telling me to email him later and promises to send out my query to other handlers he knows to see how they feel. So I do, but he never does post the question. Jakubin did email me later after giving the idea more thought. His feelings, he wrote, were mixed:

A part of me says this is exactly how I feel and the other says this is totally opinionated based on each individual handler . . . it is definitely a controversial topic. Now you state, “you are not supposed to love your dog.” Building that bond comes naturally. Me, I don't want to become attached but it just happens. I've cried every time I had to put a dog down. I couldn't really tell you if it was “love” or [because] the dog lived its entire life to give his life for me. . . . All in all there was some sort of attachment; handlers in general have trouble letting go . . . including me. With this being said I wouldn't have any trouble releasing my dog to protect me so I can go home
to my family . . . that's the life of a police/war dog nothing more nothing less. . . .