War Dogs by Rebecca Frankel Read Free Book Online

on their way to meet the handlers stationed at Buckley, another Colorado Air Force base located nearby, for a day of intrabase kennel training.
    Mack doesn’t sit quietly, nor does he use the hour of downtime in the moving car to rest; he is constantly twisting and shifting or frenetically scratching at the metal interior of the made-for-canine backseat. He barks randomly at the cars he sees flying by his window on the highway, the sound throaty, hoarse, and loud. A smoker’s bark, Jakubin calls it. He grins.He has a special shine for Mack, the dog he fondly calls the reincarnation of Taint.
    In the backseat, Mack seems more stir-crazy than like the vicious impressions conjured by stories of Taint. But Mack hasn’t been an easy dog to work with, so in a way, Mack is continuing Taint’s legacy because in Taint’s legacy there is inherently a challenge. And Jakubin loves a good challenge—especially when it comes to training dogs. He calls it “polishing the turds.”

    Chris Jakubin, kennel master of the US Air Force Academy, works with MWD Oli at a training facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado in December 2011.
    There’s been a long line of turds, or problem dogs, who have graced the kennels under Jakubin’s command. In fact, he’s actively sought out difficult dogs from other kennels; it’s become something of a tradition. The very first dog to officially join the US Air Force Academy kennels after they opened in 2002 was Agbhar, a German shepherd. Agbhar was an asshole. Jakubin says this sheepishly but without hesitation because it’s the truth. Agbhar did not like people. Agbhar was not friendly. Agbhar was a problem dog.“Agbhar was in a way a misfit dog. Taint was a misfit dog,” Jakubin says. “Like the home for misfit toys, we’re the home for misfit dogs.”
    A kennel master is pretty much exactly what it sounds like—the officer responsible for maintaining the kennels and overseeing the handlers and dogs who work there. It’s a high-ranking position in the dog-handling field. It’s also a role that comes with a lot of managerial responsibilities—from ordering the dogs’ food to assigning handlers to base patrol duty. Much of the work can have little to do with hands-on training. So how much a kennel master works with the dogs is entirely up to the kennel master. Will he be a desk man or a dog man?
    Jakubin is decidedly a dog man. He operates under the philosophy that there is no single, cookie-cutter way to train a dog. Each dog is unique, and it’s the handler’s job to study that dog and learn that dog’s behavior. As Jakubin sees it, dogs tell their handlers how they need to be trained, not the other way around. All the handlers have to do is listen. His technique—which he honed while working with dogs like Taint, Agbhar, and Mack—begins with simple observation: first, uncover each dog’s weak points until they’re fully explored and understood; next, work through those weak points; and finally, build the dog’s confidence until that dog is performing at his highest potential. It is a long investigative process but one that comes with great reward—a dog who can contribute, a dog who can save lives.
    Jakubin has been training dogs for nearly 30 years, almost his whole adult life. Getting on with dogs comes naturally to him. It all goes back to his first dog bite. One day in winter when he was just a kid, the family dog, a springer spaniel called Silly, went missing. They found the dog a couple of days later at a neighbor’s house. When young Jakubin went to retrieve Silly, the neighbor’s boxer bit him hard, the dog’s incisors puncturing his leg. Rather than scaring him off dogs for good, the experience fortified his desire to work with them—he calls it his Peter Parker moment. That was a long time ago and now, in his mid-forties, Jakubin’s arms and legs are