Navy SEAL Dogs by Mike Ritland Read Free Book Online

intent on going around a thorny manzanita bush to get to an odor so that he can get a reward. Add in that your outing isn’t along a level sidewalk in a subdivision or city but is in the rocky, uneven mountains. Plus, remember that it’s nighttime and there are no streetlights. It is pitch-black—and a classic recipe for disaster.
    I’ve been out with a group of six to eight dogs and their handlers on training exercises that are supposed to be done in stealth, but every few seconds you’d hear another handler swear when one dog after another got tangled up in a man-eating bush. Barco had a real talent for forging ahead, wrapping back around a manzanita bush, doubling back, coming back around, straining against his lead, and wrapping it tighter and tighter around the bush.
    On the night I’m referring to, I was out with Barco and his handler and a few others. We came to a downhill section, and Barco suddenly took off like a shot. It was like watching a scene in an old Hollywood Western where a cowboy is being dragged across the ground by his horse. Barco’s handler, who shall remain nameless, went down the hill like a rag doll, bumping along and kicking up a cloud of dust, gravity and Barco determining his speed and direction. I went down the hill after them as quickly as I could, but not soon enough to prevent the handler from getting tangled upside down in a prickly manzanita bush. Barco’s forward progress was only arrested because his handler’s limbs were entwined in that manzanita. Each of Barco’s continued thrusts forward impaled his handler more deeply onto the sharp points and further knotted the lead. It required many minutes of patient undoing to free both man and beast.
    Sometimes it isn’t a dog’s over-the-top eagerness that gets handlers in trouble. Sometimes the handlers “mishandle” a situation. Ball rewards are what keep these dogs motivated. Once, one of the handlers, a guy named Matt, and his dog Arras were on a night patrol, and Arras correctly indicated when he came into odor by sitting still and staring at it. To reward him for properly detecting and indicating, Matt thought it was a good idea to toss Arras a ball. Matt had actually forgotten that it was nighttime because he had on his night-vision goggles. Although dogs can see well at night, Arras didn’t catch sight of the ball immediately, so he didn’t make the catch. Instead, he heard the ball hit off some rock and bounce down the slope. Keep in mind, we were at the top of a 4,800-foot mountain. Arras took off, with Matt at the other end of the leash. Matt was swept off his feet and made it down the rocky slope considerably faster than he’d trudged up it moments before.
    I think that in education and in parenting both, incidents like these are teachable moments. So, when you get your lightly-bloodied-and-battered handler back near you, you remind him that in certain situations, it’s best to get the dog right by your side and just hand him his reward. With dogs and humans, it’s all a learning process. Few of our handlers have any previous experience with a dog with the physical gifts and enormous drive that our future multipurpose K-9s have. All too frequently, they have to learn about this drive the hard way. It’s as if they’ve been playing a pretty competitive game of playground basketball all their lives and suddenly find themselves playing against an NBA squad—that’s just how impressive these dogs are physically.

 
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    WELL TRAINED
    In the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom in early 2003, I participated in a bit of navy history. As a part of our general maritime training exercises—you can even go onto the SEALs Web site to see photos of these drills—we climbed up an oil/gas platform’s superstructure from a Naval Special Warfare (NSW) Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat (RHIB) piloted by Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen. We did