War Dogs by Rebecca Frankel Read Free Book Online Page B

from the weight of the stitches but more likely, said the vet, a lasting result of the repeated injury. That ear would probably never stand up straight again.
    When the pair walks in, Benga lights up, immediately excited to see Jakubin, who is standing about three feet away, just out of his reach. The dog wants to get to him—his ears are snapped as high and tall as they will go, his eyes are wide and seeking, a high-pitched whine catches in his throat as he tap-dances his paws up and down, desperate to be closer.
    In 1914, at the beginning of WWI, there was one man, Lieutenant Colonel E. H. Richardson, who stood as the lone advocate for integrating canines into Her Majesty’s battalions, arguing that their potential to assist on the battlefield would be unparalleled. Other countries, he argued, were already using dogs to great advantage: the Germans employed dogs, asdid the Russians. The Bulgarians and Albanians positioned them as sentry guards. France was trying to integrate dogs into its army. Italy and Sweden were also experimenting with canines as a military force. But Richardson’s petition fell on deaf ears.
    Firm in his belief that dogs could be trained to great advantage for England’s cause, Richardson carried on his campaign until finally, in 1916, an officer from the Royal Artillery sent a request for trained dogs to “keep up communications between his outpost and the battery during heavy bombardment.” 1

    Lieutenant Colonel E. H. Richardson, “the father of war dogs” (at least as we know them today), pulls bandages from the kit of a British Red Cross dog, circa 1914.
    Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
    In the years that followed, Richardson’s success with dogs was unsurpassed. He would write of his progress with his dogs in two highly regarded tomes: British War Dogs: Their Training and Psychology and Watch Dogs: Their Training and Management. When the US Marine Corps began its official program, the Dogs for Defense, in 1942, his techniques served as a guidebook of sorts, the holy bible of war dogs.
    Through his writings the colonel revealed himself to be a man of incredible open-mindedness and gentility, especially when it came to the treatment of his dogs. He was kind to the animals, intolerant of cruelty, and expected dog handlers, or “keepers” as they were called, to act as he did. Of the “first importance,” he writes, is the character of the keeper:
    This must be accompanied by a fondness for, and a gentleness with, dogs. Complete confidence and affection must exist between dogs and keeper, and a man whose only idea of control is by coercion and fear is quite useless. I have found that many men who are supposedly dog experts, are not sufficiently sympathetic, and are apt to regard the dog too much as a machine. . . .
    The highest qualities—love and duty—have to be appealed to and cultivated. Coercion is of no avail, for of what use would this be when the dog is two or three miles away from its keeper? In fact, it may be said that the whole training is based on appeal. To this end the dog is gently taught to associate everything pleasant with its working hours. 2
    For a man whose experience with training dogs occurred in the first years of the twentieth century, Richardson was progressive. Compulsion and harsh corrections were once the presiding model of dog training in the military. (It seemed this was one of Richardson’s teachings that was not so faithfully adhered to in the US military’s early consultation of his manuals. This attitude would only start to change in the 1980s with a turn toward reward- and praise-based training, one where handlers would cull success from their dogs by relying on a positive reward system in conditioning.) Richardson was about one hundred years ahead of the curve in laying the framework for the modern-day handler. He preached patience, a respect for the animal,