"But if you have not subjected your dog to this terrain, to this temperature, you really don"t know how he"s going to perform. You don"t know how you"re going to do, either," Gunny says as he watches a navy handler struggle to put on his pack.
One of the most valuable parts of the course is the exposure to homemade explosives (HMEs). It"s estimated that HMEs account for 90 percent of the explosives being used in Afghanistan right now. It"s so important that dogs get imprinted with these scents that Gunny Knight even offers a special mini-course that handlers can come here for.
Before Corporal Max Donahue and his dog, Fenji, deployed to Afghanistan, they took the HME course. They did very well here, and Donahue spread the word to other marine handlers that the HME course was not to be missed. "It"s going to save you, your dog, and all those guys following you," he would tell them.
He got it straight from Gunny Knight. "If your dog has never been subject to HMEs, what"s the point of even going to Afghanistan? It"s like going to combat with a rifle and no ammo." You can"t expect a dog to find something he was never trained to find. Ammonium nitrate? It might as well be a bowl of grapes to your dog, because if he"s never been rewarded for locating it and responding to it, why would he place any value on it?
When Master Chief Scott Thompson headed dog operations in Afghanistan from 2010 to mid-2011, he was in frequent communication with Gunny Knight, letting him know the most recent Taliban trends in explosives and IED placement methods. Now it"s pretty much the handlers doing it. They hear what to watch out for pretty fast from other handlers over there. They tell Gunny and his staff, and they"re on it. Handlers who have been through this course say they were very well prepared for the Taliban"s latest tricks. pretty fast from other handlers over there. They tell Gunny and his staff, and they"re on it. Handlers who have been through this course say they were very well prepared for the Taliban"s latest tricks.
Seven A.M. A.M. and Air Force Technical Sergeant Gwendolyn Dodd is giving the first handler of the day his final instructions. As she talks to him, the mortar and ammo simulators are already going off around the compound. Dodd and the handler and his dog are at the back end and have to enter the compound area by crawling through a long, dusty tunnel. "Ready?" she asks, and then sees the handler"s canine partner. The dog is busy doing a leg lift on a solo sc.r.a.p of plant life. It"s a moment that makes you see the dog for what he is: Not a warrior. Just a dog like yours or mine. "Go ahead, boy!" he tells his dog enthusiastically when his dog has finished. The dog charges through. Dodd and the dog"s handler follow. and Air Force Technical Sergeant Gwendolyn Dodd is giving the first handler of the day his final instructions. As she talks to him, the mortar and ammo simulators are already going off around the compound. Dodd and the handler and his dog are at the back end and have to enter the compound area by crawling through a long, dusty tunnel. "Ready?" she asks, and then sees the handler"s canine partner. The dog is busy doing a leg lift on a solo sc.r.a.p of plant life. It"s a moment that makes you see the dog for what he is: Not a warrior. Just a dog like yours or mine. "Go ahead, boy!" he tells his dog enthusiastically when his dog has finished. The dog charges through. Dodd and the dog"s handler follow.
Gunny and I meet them at the edge of the compound. During the next two hours, we will see two more handlers go through the same raid exercise. Wearing full combat gear, rifles poised, they walk next to an outer compound wall, carefully watching around them for snipers and other dangers, and observing their dogs. They negotiate corners, sometimes well, sometimes badly. One handler walks around a corner in front of his dog, and if this were the real deal, he"d have set off several IEDs. But the course"s chief instructor, Marine Staff Sergeant Kenny Porras, stops him and reminds him that the dog has to go first. So the handler lets the dog go first, and the German shepherd immediately lies down, tail wagging, looking earnestly at what seems to be plain gravel and dirt, just like everything around it. It isn"t until Knight brushes away some dust and gravel that I see the IEDs (which don"t have fuses or detonators, so are safe) that lay underneath. everything around it. It isn"t until Knight brushes away some dust and gravel that I see the IEDs (which don"t have fuses or detonators, so are safe) that lay underneath.
Once inside the compound, there are rooms to clear, stairs to negotiate. The mortar and ammo simulators go off nonstop nearby, and the heat in the plywood bowels of the compound gets more suffocating as the morning wears on. The dogs, though, are enthusiastic and don"t seem to mind any of it. They find explosives in ceilings, behind boxes; they locate caches, and with every find, tails wag and they know they"ve done well and here comes the Kong and the whoop and the praise, and a minute later the party is over and it"s off to search for more.
"There"s a lot of dogs I wouldn"t follow," says Gunny. "But if they make it through this course, I"d be right behind them downrange."
24
GUN-SHY
About 10 percent of teams that start the course don"t graduate.
Skittish, fearful, gun-shy dogs or dogs who are very distractible or unfit do not make good soldier dogs. And sometimes handlers themselves are out of shape, they make too many excuses, or, Gunny points out, they cry too much. Gunny Knight and his team of instructors try to work with dogs and handlers who need extra help. He doesn"t like cutting handlers.
"My biggest fear in life is failure. So I imagine how they feel when they fail. Even if it"s one hundred percent the dog"s fault, it"s not a joyous time. But I can"t let them get out there and have others following them, thinking they"re safe because they"re behind the dog.
"See this guy?" he says, nodding his chin toward a navy handler who is working with his dog to clear a dirt road of IEDs. "I"m brutally honest. If he was terrible I would tell him, "You"re terrible," and we"d do something about it. I don"t really care to hear that this kid got killed three months after he went to our course."
If you ask him (and you don"t have to, because he will be sure to tell you in the course of any conversation, even about the weather), some handlers play war fighter, but don"t fight the war. They do the minimum required explosives exercises and physical training at their home bases and don"t work their dogs more than twenty minutes at one time. When they get to Knight"s course, they have a hard time.
We walk up the road to the compound, where a dog is sniffing for IEDs in front of his handler as the blast simulators make it hard to hear anything unless it"s shouted. It"s an intense scene. You could imagine this is the real deal in Afghanistan, except the dog team would have a lot more troops following. Then the dog sees a rock and walks over to it with great interest. Has he found an explosive? He sniffs. Inspects. Sniffs some more. Then he lifts his leg and splashes the rock, and moves on.
Dogs have to do their business. But some are too distractible. It"s merely annoying when Jake is marking something every two feet on a walk, but in the theater of war, it can be deadly. "If his dog"s like, "Whatever!" and goes and pees and p.o.o.ps everywhere and doesn"t find anything, they"re gonna be like, "Go sit in a corner and color. We"ll take this guy instead." Then the other handler has an extra burden, and the team may be worked too much, which takes a toll on their accuracy as well. So the goal is for all dog teams going over to be strong and reliable."
On another visit to Yuma in August, we"re watching a new group of handlers, again in full combat gear, despite the 110-degree temperatures. It"s a little earlier in the course, and these handlers are getting their first taste of looking for pressure plates and other IEDs in this terrain. The devices have no explosive traces, so the exercise is for the handlers only, not the dogs. They need to be able to see the telltale signs that someone has been there: A little pattern of gravel that doesn"t fit in with the rest of the terrain. A wire barely covered with dirt. A round piece of metal that looks like a large soda cap; is it different from the other bits of litter in the area? exercise is for the handlers only, not the dogs. They need to be able to see the telltale signs that someone has been there: A little pattern of gravel that doesn"t fit in with the rest of the terrain. A wire barely covered with dirt. A round piece of metal that looks like a large soda cap; is it different from the other bits of litter in the area?
Porras has instructed them to just look and not say anything about where faux IEDs might be until the end of the exercise. Oh, and don"t step on anything suspicious. The handlers all mill around a small gravelly lot, looking down, walking slowly, cautiously. A couple of minutes in, Gunny shouts out to a handler.
"How ya feeling?"
"Pretty good."
"Are you feeling kind of light?"
"No."
"Well you should be, because you just stepped on that pressure plate two times! If this were Afghanistan, you"d be missing a few limbs by now." The handler laughs, slightly embarra.s.sed. The gallows humor gets the point across. The handlers walk even more slowly and seriously, inspecting the ground for the most subtle signs.
After Porras briefs them on where the devices were hidden-a few were so stealth no one guessed-he has them walk their dogs in a big oval as ammo and mortar simulators blast noisily, and at unpredictable intervals, just ten feet away. They walk around a couple of times, and Gunny leans in and points to a German shepherd and a Belgian Malinois who are looking up at their handlers more than the others. "They"re going to have problems in a minute." They look OK to me, but in a minute I see he has pegged them.
With every explosion, both dogs flinch low to the ground, as if someone were about to hit them. Or they tuck their tails and try to run. It"s painful to watch. The other dogs, for the most part, don"t even seem to notice the blasts. They trot with tails high or focus with tails relaxed. But these two are distressed. The handler of the Malinois tries to quickly comfort his dog after each blast. someone were about to hit them. Or they tuck their tails and try to run. It"s painful to watch. The other dogs, for the most part, don"t even seem to notice the blasts. They trot with tails high or focus with tails relaxed. But these two are distressed. The handler of the Malinois tries to quickly comfort his dog after each blast.
Blast.
He pats his dog"s flanks.
Blast.
"It"s OK!" he tells his dog.
Gunny beckons the handler over and takes the dog"s leash. He walks the dog a few more feet away from the blast simulators, and the dog sits and looks at him. He strokes the dog"s head gently, bending down and looking calmly into his eyes, rubbing under his chin, then back over his ears. The dog looks up, already seeming a little more relaxed. Gunny walks him away from the blasts and then turns toward the sounds. As he does, he faces the dog, who sits and then jumps up and puts his paws on Gunny"s chest. Gunny strokes him some more and then gently uses his knee to coerce the dog back to sitting.
They do this a few more times, getting closer to the simulators, only he doesn"t let the dog jump up anymore. He just pets the dog when he sits, leaning close and looking into his eyes. There is something about his demeanor that says, "You"re going to be fine. Don"t pay these noises any attention. Trust me on this." He hands the leash back to the handler, who has been crouched, watching. As the handler walks away, his dog tries to pull back to Gunny, and then he turns two more times toward him until he"s once again swallowed back up in the oval.
"You have to show the dog real confidence. When you"re confident, your dog sees and feels that, and he feels safe," Gunny explains. confident, your dog sees and feels that, and he feels safe," Gunny explains.
The dog still flinches, but maybe not quite so much. A work in progress.
Blast.
The handler pats his dog"s head again.
"Don"t reinforce it! Ignore it!" Gunny shouts.
He explains that with his well-meaning comforting, the handler is actually conditioning the dog to think that these noises are frightening. "His feelings are dumping down the leash right onto his dog, and the dog goes, "Yeah, I thought I was right about being scared.""
Of course, the dog"s instincts are right. h.e.l.l yes, those blasts could mean some nasty business. And letting a dog think otherwise is just fooling this creature who will try his hardest to do whatever you ask of him. But the reality is that these dogs are deploying. In war, what good does it do for the dog to know those sounds could mean tremendous pain, or death?
So with ammo exposure, the idea is this: The dog needs to believe the sounds are not a.s.sociated with danger. When the dog hears the blasts and gunfire enough times, and if the sounds have never been a.s.sociated with anything bad, even sensitive dogs will usually come to shrug off the blasts. In Gunnyspeak (he frequently talks from a dog"s POV), the MWD thinks, "I"ve heard these sounds a thousand times and I"ve never been shot, so why should I care about one thousand and one? Hey, when I find things when these sounds are going off, I get my reward. This is kind of fun!"
Next up is the other fearful dog. This time it"s going to be a game. Gunny gets the dog"s Kong rope toy from the handler, takes over the leash, and runs away from the simulators with the dog. As a blast goes off, he gives the dog his reward. They go back and forth several times. He"s trying to distract the dog from the blasts, so he signals to someone on his crew whenever he wants an explosion. He gives the dog his rope toy and the blast goes off. At first the dog lets it go. But after several times, he"s hanging on to it more. He"s still not happy about the noise, but there has been some improvement by the time Gunny gives the dog back. He says it"s not an ideal way to train a dog. Working a dog a little farther from the noise and working him up to it slowly is better, as is not using a reward quite so frequently. But he couldn"t stand there and watch without trying a little first aid. over the leash, and runs away from the simulators with the dog. As a blast goes off, he gives the dog his reward. They go back and forth several times. He"s trying to distract the dog from the blasts, so he signals to someone on his crew whenever he wants an explosion. He gives the dog his rope toy and the blast goes off. At first the dog lets it go. But after several times, he"s hanging on to it more. He"s still not happy about the noise, but there has been some improvement by the time Gunny gives the dog back. He says it"s not an ideal way to train a dog. Working a dog a little farther from the noise and working him up to it slowly is better, as is not using a reward quite so frequently. But he couldn"t stand there and watch without trying a little first aid.
Back in June I met a navy team that did not end up pa.s.sing the course. "I could tell right away the dog did not have the drive," Gunny says. One morning, while the German shepherd (who shall remain nameless, because his handler understandably felt bad about not pa.s.sing) was standing with his handler, Gunny went up to him in a semi-threatening manner, waving his hat at the dog as he quickly weaved toward him. The dog stood up slowly and gave a couple of noncommittal barks. Gunny tried to engage him again and got really close. If the dog wanted to, he could have lunged, and if Gunny had not been speedy, he could have ended up missing part of his face. He riled up the dog a little, and the dog made some effort to pull toward Gunny and barked with more att.i.tude. But it wasn"t the kind of response Gunny was looking for.
During the raid and other war scenarios, the dog had put in the effort, but in the end, he didn"t have the drive to want his reward badly enough to perform as he needed to. effort, but in the end, he didn"t have the drive to want his reward badly enough to perform as he needed to.
"The dog"s like, "None of this c.r.a.p is worth it and all I want to do is sit in front of a sixty-five-year-old lady"s fireplace and relax,"" says Gunny. The team will continue to work on building up drive and confidence back at home base.
25
SHEEPLE
One thing Gunny can"t stand seeing is a team with a handler that"s not a strong leader. There are those who argue that the alpha dog/beta dog model is archaic and based on outdated information. But you won"t find many supporters of this argument in the military working dog world.
"Two betas don"t make a right," says Gunny Knight. "Too often you"ve got a beta leader. Every successful team needs a strong alpha leader, and that has to be the handler, not the dog.
"You see all these people these days following everyone else. They don"t think. They don"t know how to lead. Even in the military. Too many people, they"re like sheep. People are becoming sheeple. It"s no way to be in life, and it"s no way to be a handler.
"I am not a sheeple."
Gunny Knight does not need to tell me this. I realized he was not a sheeple from our first conversation. Arod had told me about the Yuma course, and I knew I had to see it in person. I went through the proper media channels. Two weeks later, I received a phone call from a public affairs officer telling me they were processing my request, that it might take a little time, but that they"d do their best. processing my request, that it might take a little time, but that they"d do their best.
A couple of days later I got a call from a man with a booming voice. He introduced himself as Gunnery Sergeant Kris Knight, course chief of the Yuma predeployment course. I was impressed at the relative speed of the public affairs department. But this call had nothing to do with the PA. Gunny had seen the e-mails going through about my request, and he said he realized it would be "a long time, if ever" before I would get to visit the course. He checked in with Captain Bowe, the officer in charge of the school, to see if the rules could be bent a little to get me in. Bowe"s offices are at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. "It"s hard to be in charge of it from sixteen hundred miles away, that"s why I need Gunny Knight," he would later tell me.
"With Gunny Knight in charge, I have the most winning guy I can have in the marines for this job. To use a sports a.n.a.logy, he"s my Tom Brady, Alex Rodriguez, and Michael Jordan all rolled into one. He"s what makes this course the winning game it is," Bowe said.
He acknowledged that Knight doesn"t always follow every rule. "Sometimes there are black areas in life, sometimes white, sometimes gray. If Gunny ever needs to get into the gray area, he"ll dip in and get out as fast as possible. It"s always for a good reason."
So Gunny dipped into the gray, and Bowe looked at my request and told Gunny to go ahead. I visited two separate times over the summer. During my August visit, a public affairs guy from YPG drove up to us, and Gunny quietly told me to take a little walk, that he would take care of things. The PA was not happy I was there, Gunny reported, but he didn"t have me escorted off the property.
Official approval remains in the works.
26
GUNNY
Kristopher Knight grew up in a small suburban unincorporated community called Camp Dennison, near Cincinnati, Ohio. The camp for which the place is named had been a major army center during the Civil War. Lincoln is purported to have stayed in the house around the corner from Knight"s house.
When he was eleven months old, Gunny"s black mother and white father divorced. She took the kids and moved in with her parents. Gunny describes his dad as a "redneck guy, and an alcoholic. He could only teach me three things: hunting, shooting, and fishing." There was a falling-out seven years ago, and he hasn"t spoken to his father since.
His grandfather, who held down two jobs, became a father figure to him very early on. "I grew up on the black side of the family and have my grandfather"s hardworking values at my core," he says. "He was my role model." When his mother was able to move out on her own, the young Knight-age six-refused to go with her. His grandfather told her, "It"s not negotiable. He stays." That was that.
His mother remarried when Knight was eleven, and she told him that he had to go with the new family to live in New Jersey. He said he wanted to stay with his grandparents. His grandfather once again went to bat for him, and Knight stayed put.
At age fourteen, Knight learned how to drive and would take care of car maintenance and drive the little family Honda Civic around the area with his grandfather"s blessing. His grandparents had two rules: Be careful and behave. These came in handy, because Knight loved guns, and his grandfather liked to see a well-behaved boy rewarded with meaningful presents.
There were the usual BB guns, a Crosman pellet gun, a derringer .25 handgun, a Ted Williams .20-gauge shotgun, a Marlin .22 magnum rifle, a Winchester break-barrel .20-gauge shotgun, and a few others. His favorite, though, was a Remington Model 700 .22-250 rifle. He chose it for his eleventh birthday because it had a very large scope. "I had no idea what it was used for until after my grandfather purchased it for me. When I called my father to tell him about it, he informed me that it was the second fastest varmint rifle in the world. I used it for several years to hunt groundhogs. Initially the gun was way too heavy for me, so I used fence posts and the corners of barns to stabilize my shots."
He used his small a.r.s.enal for hunting or target shooting. Camp Dennison was surrounded by woods and farm fields, so there was plenty of s.p.a.ce for shooting and camping.
If you saw this scene from the outside, you might have been worried, looking into the tent of this well-armed youth. But Knight knew his limits. He kept his firearms in check, didn"t get in trouble, and worked hard at side jobs. In a summer job he held at a factory when he was eighteen, he discovered a way to increase the productivity of making valves. It involved cutting down on lag time and using his strength, and not a crane, to hold seventy-five-pound parts. He thought he"d be lauded for it, but other workers were not happy. "Hey, youngblood, you gotta slow down. You"re making us look bad," they told him. "No, making valves. It involved cutting down on lag time and using his strength, and not a crane, to hold seventy-five-pound parts. He thought he"d be lauded for it, but other workers were not happy. "Hey, youngblood, you gotta slow down. You"re making us look bad," they told him. "No, you you gotta speed up," he replied. gotta speed up," he replied.
Even the boss wanted him to put on the brakes and use the approved methods. If nothing else, it was safer. But Knight said he wanted to do it his way because it was the most efficient method and better for the valves themselves, since they didn"t run the risk of getting sc.r.a.ped up by the cranes. In the end, the boss had him sign a waiver, and he proceeded.
It would become a common theme in the story of his life, this business of wanting to do what"s best and bucking the system if he had to. He went to college for awhile to become a forest ranger, dropped out the day his grandmother died in 1992, and became what he calls a wild child. He rode motorcycles like he was invincible, partied hard, and lived free. In October 1994, a lifelong friend told him he was thinking about joining the marines. They were at a party and very drunk. "He wouldn"t stop talking about it, so I said, "If you"ll shut up, and you"re serious about joining, I"ll join with you." He was serious and I kept my word." His friend got out after four years, and Gunny"s been in since. Knight went the MP route right away. Eight months later, he was at Lackland, learning how to become a handler. Dogs have been his pa.s.sion ever since.
In the years that followed his enlistment, he rose through the ranks, got a BS in education (he says he could be a captain now, but he would not be able to work with dogs, so he remained a noncommissioned officer; while most of his job these days involves paperwork to keep the program running, he tries to get out with cla.s.ses whenever possible), had two combat deployments, became a trainer, and in March 2010, came to Yuma to be course chief. whenever possible), had two combat deployments, became a trainer, and in March 2010, came to Yuma to be course chief.
While training with the Israeli Defense Forces in 2006 ("the air force would count that as a combat deployment; I count it as a vacation") he met his future wife, Rinat. I met them for sushi one night in Yuma"s nicest shopping center. Rinat Knight is a pretty, funny, smart woman with long, dark, wavy hair, eleven years his junior. He had told me on several occasions, including our first phone conversation, "I am the luckiest man on earth, and a lot of that is because of my wife." She is on one of his two screen savers at work.
Those closest to Gunny in the dog world say he could be in the private sector earning a lot more money than he does in the military. He says he"s not going to stay in forever, and in fact, he might retire within a few years. But he has no desire to leave just yet. "I just love what I do. Every day is a Friday. Why would I risk trading my Fridays for a Monday for more money? It"s not worth it to me. That"s why I do it, and that"s why my staff does it.
"I want to make a difference before I leave. I want to make sure all these kids are getting the allotted time to properly prepare and come back home."
Gunny"s other screen saver is a photo of him with military working dog Patrick L722. Gunny is running and holding out his arm, which is covered with a bite sleeve, and Patrick is up in the air, biting at it and looking like although he means business, he"s having the best time in the world. They are collided, suspended in time in this dynamic photo that greets Gunny every day.
He helped train the handler who would help train Patrick. The dog was fresh out of dog school in Texas when he arrived at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to serve with the II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF). "He was a hyper mess when we received him, but he showed all the potential to be great," Gunny says. Patrick"s handler and Gunny deployed to Afghanistan at the same time in May 2009. While there, Gunny continued to advance the team"s capabilities, including trying to make sure Patrick could work off leash. Force (II MEF). "He was a hyper mess when we received him, but he showed all the potential to be great," Gunny says. Patrick"s handler and Gunny deployed to Afghanistan at the same time in May 2009. While there, Gunny continued to advance the team"s capabilities, including trying to make sure Patrick could work off leash.
Patrick made it home and, because his handler needed multiple wrist surgeries, was a.s.signed a new handler. They deployed to Afghanistan in December 2010.
Patrick would not make it back alive this time. But everyone else on his final mission would, thanks to this dog and his ability to sniff out bombs without a leash.
27
A VERBAL LEASH