Training and Remembering Military Working Dogs

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Dogs working in the military have a long rich history protecting our service members and their numbers are growing.  Texas Public Radio’s Terry Gildea takes us to the place where their training begins and introduces us to a man dedicated to remembering their contributions.

July 9, 2010 · On a humid South Texas Day, the kennels on the outskirts of Lackland Air Force Base are buzzing with activity.  Here at the Defense Department’s Military Working Dog training facility, handlers and trainers from all branches of the service work with hundreds of adolescent canines getting them ready for deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.  Dogs like Eric, a male Belgian Malinois, who is finishing up his aggression training.

“Eric is close to 30 days into his training.  All of his patrol work, which is all of his bite and releasing of the decoy or whatever.  I pretty much taught all him that in about 15 days.  So he’s way ahead of the game.  Sometimes we get dogs like that and sometimes we don’t,” said Army Sergeant Patrick Laub.

Laub commands Eric to take down another trainer who is posing as an intruder.  The trainer wears what’s called a bite suit to protect himself from Eric’s aggressive pursuit.  Civilian Trainer Chris Frank supervises the exercise.

“They might be ready to bite or go out for a bite and we need to command them to not.  For example, if a criminal was running and we send a dog and that criminal stops and gives up, we have to call that dog out.  That dog cannot bite that criminal.  All of them come here ready to bite and we just kind of work on teaching them when, who, where and how,” said Frank.

But Sergeant Patrick Laub says biting and aggressive command driven behavior are only part of the training program.

“Our training is broken up into to two sections.  You have the patrol section which is the bite work and searching for actual people.  Then we have the detection portion which is whether they’re designated as an explosives dog where they’ll search out bombs or if they’re a narcotics dog, where they’ll search out for drugs,” said Laub.

On the far side of the training facility sit several passenger airliners and large buildings that the dogs use to train their sense of smell and pick odors of dangerous materials.  Many of them will be deployed to sniff out explosives.  Marine Staff Sergeant Eric Snypes is working with Neko, another male Belgian Malanois, finishing up his smell training inside a huge warehouse.

“What we like to do when introducing new odors is actually let the dog self discover.  So find the odor and say, oh hey, this is little different and then we step in and say, yeah that’s right.  You’ll see when he comes to it he’s going to let the dog do most of the work and self discover this odor,” said Snypes.

Neko and Eric will likely be sent “down range” to Afghanistan where they will work with another set of handlers until their mission is complete.  Often the bond formed between dogs and their handlers is one that endures long after the two are separated.  Air Force veteran Larry Chilcoat lives on the Gulf Coast in Fulton.  He still carries a picture in his wallet of the dog he worked with in Vietnam.

“Geisha was just about as cool and smooth as you could imagine a dog of that nature being.  She was a German Shepherd, about 75 pounds and worked entirely on command,” said Chilcoat.

Chilcoat was an Air Force police officer in the sixties when he was assigned to Cam Ranh Air Base in Vietnam.  It was there he met Geisha and worked with the German Shepherd for a year, patrolling together the perimeter of the base.  And even though more than 40 years have passed since the two were together, Chilcoat is still very touched by her memory.

“I, in a way, sometimes still feel very close.  In fact some of those experiences feel like they could have happened yesterday.  You remember every minute detail and for someone in their sixties remembering minute details is sometimes a real challenge,” said Chilcoat.

The U-S military has trained and deployed dogs since World War One, but there is still no physical memorial dedicated to their service.  Larry Chilcoat has dedicated much of his free time to changing that.  He joined fellow handler veterans Richard Deggens and John Burnham with the National War Dogs Monument project.  The group has gotten approval from the Defense Department and Congress to build a memorial at the Army’s Fort Belvoir in Virginia.

“It means something to me to be a part of honoring those dogs because I know what they do to protect our troops.  Myself included,” said Chilcoat.

With a design and site approved, the group is now trying to raise the money to realize their dream.  They have a little more than 25 thousand dollars collected so far.  While that’s only fraction of the total cost of the project, Chilcoat remains optimistic.  He and his fellow vets hope to have the monument complete by Memorial Day in 2012.

Goro, a Belgian Malinois, looks for explosive devices on a mock airplane at Lackland Air Force Base.  Marine Staff Sergeant Jason Law is a military working dog trainer.  Photo Credit: Marianne Reid Gildea.		Air Force Staff Sergeant Alanzo Buenaventura wears a “bite suit” as Erik, a Belgian Malinois, practices aggression techniques.  The dog learns to attack and release depending upon the command of his trainer.  Photo Credit: Marianne Reid Gildea.		Military dog trainers wear a patch on the back of their overalls that signifies their position on staff.  Here Melissa Bonar, a civilian, wears a Master Trainer patch.  Each master trainer has a unique number "like a basketball jersey," said Bonar.  Photo Credit: Marianne Reid Gildea.