At 7 a.m. one August morning, near the town of Safar, Afghanistan, Fenji was out in front of 10 marines, leashed to a D-ring attached to the body armor of her handler, Cpl. Max Donahue.
Fenji, a German shepherd, was on the hunt for improvised explosive devices, the top killer in Afghanistan. IEDs can elude the most sophisticated technology, but they are harder to hide from the expert nose of a soldier dog. Within an hour, Fenji found four roadside bombs. Cpl. Donahue lavished her with quiet praise every time and gave her a quick chew on a rubber toy. "That's my girl!"
Trained military dogs have played a vital role in Afghanistan. They can sniff out dozens of explosives, and even as troops draw down there, many in the military-dog world expect the canine teams to deploy steadily to the end of U.S. involvement.
Dogs have long been used in battle for attack, protection and sentry duty. They also have served as trackers, messengers, sled pullers and deliverers of first aid.
During World War I, one American soldier smuggled his pit bull into France. Sgt. Stubby, as the dog became known, comforted the wounded and was devoted to his comrades, warning them at one point of a gas attack and giving them time to don their gas masks. He also bit a German infiltrator, who was then captured. Sgt. Stubby's popularity was immense, and he was grandly—if unofficially—decorated with medals and pins.
America's first formal dog-procurement program began following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The American Kennel Club and a group called Dogs for Defense appealed to owners across the country to donate their pets to the war effort. The public response was overwhelming: Of about 19,000 dogs acquired by the army, more than half were trained. Most became sentries.
During the Vietnam War, the military sent teams of recruiters to bases to buy dogs from neighboring communities. In all, about 3,800 dogs served.
Today, the Department of Defense has some 2,700 military dogs in service world-wide and about 600 in war zones. Another 200 are contract dogs, trained and handled by private firms.
Military dog teams in Afghanistan were credited with finding more than 12,500 pounds of explosives in 2010. It is hard to quantify how many soldiers have been saved by canine detection skills, but estimates range from 150 to 1,800 lives per dog. They serve at considerable risk. Seventeen handlers have been killed in action since 2001, and 44 of the dogs have died in war zones since 2005, the first year for which figures are available.
The dogs and their handlers undergo rigorous training before deployment. One morning at the Inter-Service Advanced Skills K-9 Course in Yuma, Ariz., Air Force Tech. Sgt. Adam Miller walked with his German shepherd, Tina, down a dirt road toward a small simulated village, rifle poised.
Suddenly, they heard gunfire. "The dog's down!" shouted someone. Without hesitating, Tech. Sgt. Miller hoisted Tina over his left shoulder and, with his rifle at the ready, moved toward shelter. He later said that his adrenaline was pumping almost as it would have with Tina in danger in a real war.
Today, most of our warrior dogs come from Europe, where there is a long tradition of institutions like the Royal Dutch Police Dog Association, and devoted amateurs breed, rear and train dogs in police-like work. The U.S. military pays an estimated $3,000 to $4,500 for each dog.
More than 10% of the dogs purchased by the military fail to meet the program's physical or behavioral standards, usually because of problems (like fear of gunfire) that weren't evident during the lengthy testing by the dog-buying team.
A few make it to the elite ranks of Special Operations. Cairo, a Belgian Malinois, was part of the SEAL Team Six raid that led to the demise of Osama bin Laden. Much about Cairo, and the Special Ops dogs, remains a mystery, as one former veterinary technician at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, discovered a few years ago. When an Army Special Forces dog came in for treatment, the staff skipped the usual paperwork. When the tech asked about some routine forms, the dog's handler said, "This dog was never here."
—From "Soldier Dogs" by Maria Goodavage, to be published March 15 by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA). Copyright © 2012 by Maria Goodavage.