Becoming a Military Dog Handler – Mid-’80s Edition Part 2

(Disclaimer: The training, etc., I discuss in this post was the norm in the mid-1980s, nearly 40 years ago. I would be surprised if a lot of this didn’t change. So if anyone wants to say, “They don’t do it that way now,” yeah, I know. I’m not talking about now though.)

(Part 1 can be found here:

I just realized I should tell you how the U.S. military used dogs at the time. There were (and still are AFAIK) three ways the dogs were used:

1. Patrol Dogs - Patrol dogs are trained to attack and hold suspects or anyone who attacks the handler. They conduct area and building searches, stand guard on a suspect while the suspect is being searched, etc. They are conditioned to be around people other than the handler, so I could take my dog into the base exchange, headquarters, the LE desk, and so forth. Every dog used in the military was trained to perform patrol duties. Every single one.
2. Drug Detection Dog - Patrol dogs with exceptional noses might also be trained to detect illicit drugs. These included marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other opiates, PCP, etc. This was in addition to the dog's patrol duties. There were a lot of drug dogs in the '80s.
3. Explosive Detection Dog - Alternatively, a dog with an exceptional nose and a calm personality might be trained to find explosives. Again, this was in addition to the dog's patrol duties. There weren't a lot of bomb dogs when I served, but I know that nowadays they are much more prevalent than drug dogs.

We left off Part 1 with the handler class beginning attack training. The very first thing we went over was how to stop the attack, not how to initiate it. It made sense when we thought about it. The dog will instinctively attack, but stopping him when the suspect has surrendered takes training, both for the dog and the handler. I'm not going to give details on this (for obvious reasons), but it took pretty much the entire morning session before the NCOs felt comfortable with us moving on.

Oh, we were also trained in being the "decoy," that is the person being attacked during training. It kind of went hand-in-hand with learning to call off the attack. One might think we all donned suits like this:

One would be wrong. We used a burlap wrap on one arm. The burlap covered a leather sheath, and there was a hard rubber handle in the end. You can see the wrap on the airman here:

We used this to "work" the dog during the bite. Once the dog bit the wrap, the decoy would use that arm to shake the dog back and forth. The dog learned to hold on and bite harder.

We worked on this the rest of the day, with some breaks thrown in. The NCOs would have us do basic obedience in between attacks to help us maintain control of the dogs. It was a surprisingly physically taxing day. Probably had something to to with fighting the flight-or-fight response.

We worked a bit more on this the next morning, and then went into a semi-realistic scenario: A suspect flees, you warn him to stop or you'll release the dog. He doesn't stop so you release the dog. This gave the dog the joy of a prey chase and bite, and we got to experience catching the dog at full speed. You haven't really lived until you catch a 75-pound GSD running at full speed with your arm. The handler had to be on full alert if the decoy went down, so he could immediately call the dog back.

And then we then added calling the attack off to the scenario. We'd send the dog and the decoy would stop, with his hands in the air, before the dog bit. We had to recall the dog. It was a good test of the handler's control, and we used this exercise frequently in training throughout my career. We added the suspect again fleeing when the dog was recalled; the handler would then send the dog on the attack before it returned to "heel." At my last base I was able to send/recall the dog 6 times before he got his bite.

And the dog always got to bite at the end of this (and any attack training). It was his reward for doing the work and obeying his handler/partner.

I use that phrase "handler/partner" because that's where we were headed. We were becoming partners, not merely a dog and handler. That, in my opinion, is the ideal end state of a K9 team. Heck, I'll go a step further: a top notch K9 team acts as one unit. The human instinctively knows what the dog is telling him, without any conscious thought. The dog instinctively knows what the human wants him to do and what the human needs to know in any given situation. To an observer it looks like the human is reading the dog's mind.

(Yes, I know that last bit sounds like woo-woo BS. It's not; I've experienced it.)

I'll end this installment here. Next up: Building and area searches, and the use of the dog when searching a suspect's person. And then off to the duty station.