Navy SEAL Dogs: My Tale of Training Canines for Combat

PROLOGUE

Northeast Afghanistan, 2007

The tense silence inside the airborne MH-60 Seahawk helicopter was broken only by the sound of the aircraft’s rotors and blades beating like a quickened pulse. Inside, sixteen members of a West Coast–based U.S. Navy SEAL team waited to reach the site of their mission in Northeast Afghanistan. The team was based at a forward operating base (FOB) in Afghanistan, close to the Pakistan border in a mountainous region called the Hindu Kush. In military circles, the Kush is well-known for being an area Taliban terrorists use to travel undetected across the border that divides Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Just a few hours earlier, in a premission briefing, the team had learned the nature of their mission. The operations order commanded them to take out a high-value target deemed essential to the Taliban. The target was located in a village about 30 miles (50 kilometers) away. According to the intelligence report, the target was a leading Taliban munitions expert and one of the head trainers who instructed terrorist cell leaders and their underlings in the deadly craft of making improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

As the MH-60 neared the landing zone, everyone on the team felt a collective sense of heightened anticipation. Everyone, including Chopper, the canine member of the team. From his seat between the knees of his handler, a SEAL named Brett, Chopper’s chest rose and fell at a slightly agitated rate in response to the men’s eagerness. The men were about to rappel out of the plane into the pitch-black night and into enemy territory, and Chopper was going with them. They all had a job to do.

The copilot radioed that they were several klicks (kilometers), or a few miles, from the landing zone. In their briefing, they had learned that there was no landing zone in range large enough or flat enough to accommodate the three helicopters that were on this mission. So they would have to fast-rope in—literally slide down a rope to the ground.

Brett stood and commanded Chopper to do the same. Then Brett turned his back and waited. The platoon chief stepped forward, squatted in front of Chopper, wrapped his arms around the dog’s rear end and chest, and lifted him up. Chopper remained alert but still and remained that way when he was strapped into a harness on Brett’s back.

Brett felt a thwack on his shoulder, a signal that he and Chopper were safely joined together and good to go. Brett spent the next few minutes making his way to the front of the line. He checked the rigging and stepped out of the MH-60’s bay and into the dark night air. The dog on his back remained silent. The only sounds were the wind rushing past Brett’s ears and the high-pitched whirring of the rope snaking through the device.

Brett and Chopper touched down, and Brett unhooked the line and waited for another team member to release Chopper. He then grabbed the dog’s lead, double-checked the harness, and proceeded to the head of the formation. Behind him, the other men moved out of their defensive perimeter position to follow Brett and Chopper, all of them careful to maintain their spacing discipline.

Chopper’s years of training and experience, coupled with his honed instincts that had been held at bay during the flight, were now working full force. Steadily moving at a pace between a lope and a trot, with his broad snout alternately pointed to the ground and lifted above his shoulder to pick up any target odor, Chopper worked along a snakelike path. He was a trained expert at sniffing out explosives and was positioned at the head of the line to detect any IEDs or munitions caches. With his nose guiding him and the platoon, Chopper led the way forward.

After maneuvering for several klicks along a dirt road, Brett noticed a change in Chopper’s demeanor. He had anticipated that he’d see a signal from Chopper that indicated the dog had detected the odor of explosives, but Brett was not seeing Chopper’s usual body language. Previously, whenever Chopper smelled explosives, he hoisted his tail straight up like a flag and shook it from side to side. It reminded the men of a rattlesnake alerting others to its presence. In addition, his movements became more rapid and intense as he zeroed in on the explosives’ exact location.

Now Brett was seeing Chopper do something entirely different. The dog’s body had gone rigid, and he had assumed the stance of a show dog in the ring: Chopper’s head was raised, and he was staring straight ahead. His front shoulders were at attention and stretched forward, and his rear haunches were also straining forward. Brett could feel all that strain and tension on the leash. Then he heard Chopper emit a low, whiny whimper.

Brett knew immediately what the dog was telling the platoon. They were not alone. The enemy was close by, somewhere out there in the dark night.

Brett called out, Hey, Chopper, and the dog looked at him briefly before resuming his stance. Brett filled the rest of the men in on what Chopper had detected with his nose. The platoon immediately fell out and assumed an antiambush formation, finding cover behind rocks and trees. Brett waited a moment, then unclipped the lead, held the dog by the halter, and whispered, Reviere, a command that means Search! Brett released him, and Chopper eagerly sprang forward and disappeared into the darkness.

Suddenly Brett and the other men heard a ferocious commotion, a combination of dog snarls and human shouts and agonized screams coming from down a shallow embankment yards ahead of them. The forward members of the team advanced to the embankment, and shortly afterward the others heard a few bursts of gunfire. Then the night was dark and quiet again, until the stillness was broken by a SEAL team member calling, Target is clear.

Chopper emerged from the embankment breathing a little more heavily but unscathed. His head held high, he trotted back toward Brett. The handler knelt and clipped the dog back into his lead.

Braafy! Brett used a word that Chopper recognized as praise. He petted the dog and ran his hands along Chopper’s flanks. Chopper curled into him and lifted his snout into the air. A few other men passed by, each with some sign of praise or thanks for Chopper. Chopper sat there and took it all in, but for him, it was just another day at the office.

Most of the team then busied themselves with defending the perimeter while a small group checked out the embankment. They discovered that four insurgents had been using the embankment as an ambush nest—until Chopper came along and caught them by surprise. He had held them at bay, snarling and biting, until the forward members of the team arrived with their loaded rifles.

There was a Russian PKM machine gun, several AK-47s, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in the embankment. The team cleared the four dead bodies from the site and detonated the munitions and weapons. It was a good night’s work for a hardworking platoon, with an unforgettable assist from a well-trained warrior dog with a lifesaving nose.

PART I

NAVY SEALS AND DOGS

1

A VISIT TO CHOPPER AND BRETT

Southeastern California, 2010

The dog lay in the shade of a palm tree, his head up and his ears at attention. He was scanning the desert scrubland, vigilant, the muscles beneath the heavy fur of his flanks taut and ready. Even from behind him, I could see his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, flopping like a pink fish.

Chopper, the man beside me said.

The dog turned to look at us, his expression keenly alert, his dark eyes intent.

Heerre.

The dog sprang to his feet and made his way across the dusty yard. Under other circumstances, I might have tensed up at the sight of a 75-pound package of fierce determination approaching. However, I could see a very tiny softening of the muscles around his eyes as he neared us and recognition dawned in them. He knew who I was.

He also knew not to approach me first, even though the two of us had spent the first few months of his life in the United States together. As commanded, he came up to Brett, his former SEAL team handler. He sat down alongside the man he served with on dozens of dangerous missions for six years. Now they were living on a small ranch outside Ranchita, California. Brett and Chopper had ceased being on active military duty only three months earlier, but they both would have chafed at being called retirees.

Chopper sat, still very much at attention, until Brett told him it was okay. Then Chopper looked at me, and I gave his head a few rubs with the flat of my hand. I ran my hand down his shoulder and along his rib cage. He was still in fine fighting form, but I noticed that he relaxed a bit and leaned into me. I smiled at this sign of affection and appreciation for the attention I was giving him.

I noticed that the fur around Chopper’s muzzle and eyes had lightened a bit since I’d last seen him. It was no longer the deep ebony that had glowed like a spit-polished dress boot. The slight unevenness to the side of one of his large ears was still there, though. Some scuffle as a pup in his kennel outside of Tilburg in the Netherlands had left him with an identifying mark. In my mind it was never a flaw. Rather, it was a mark of distinction.

He’s doing good, I said to Brett.

Always. He’s a good ol’ boy, said Brett. He pushed his sunglasses up and squinted into the distance. He likes it here. Looks a little like the sandbox, but there’s a lot less action. I thought we’d both miss it, but we don’t at all. Brett had spent more than a dozen years as a West Coast SEAL team member, the last of his time as a handler working with Chopper.

Having served my own time as a SEAL team member, I knew exactly what Brett meant. The transition from active duty to civilian life takes time for both servicemen and military working dogs (MWDs). Given my experience as a trainer of both Navy SEAL dogs and their handlers, I also understood quite a lot about the deep bond that the two had formed and would share for the rest of Chopper’s life.

My trip to visit Chopper and Brett wasn’t just a social call. It was a part of a responsibility I take very seriously. I founded a nonprofit organization, the Warrior Dog Foundation, to make certain that retired MWDs are able to live out the remainder of their lives in a positive environment. Though I knew that Chopper was well cared for, I still wanted to check in on him, just like I do with fellow members of SEAL Team Three, or members of other SEAL teams I’ve come to know in my new role. Whether you’re a canine or a human, if you’ve been a SEAL team member that means you’re a brother, and we are all our brothers’ keepers for life.

Visiting Chopper and Brett was a privilege and an honor, and, most importantly, it was a great pleasure to see them still together.

*   *   *

In most ways, Chopper is still more fit and more capable than 90 percent of the dogs in this country. Even so, that isn’t good enough for the kind of demands a military dog has to meet downrange in places like Afghanistan. Not only is the work extremely demanding, but also the stakes are so high that anything less than the absolute best is not acceptable. It wasn’t a question of heart. Chopper still has the drive and determination, but the inevitable toll of age and years of stress has started to creep in.

I knelt down alongside Chopper and draped my arm around him, Braafy, I said. It always amazed me that something as simple as that short statement of approval could mean so much to a dog that, over the years, teams like Brett and Chopper had developed such a bond of trust that the dog would willingly and gladly place himself in positions of peril.

A few minutes later, Brett and I sat down on the deck he’d recently built. Chopper resumed his perimeter position in the shade. Brett told me a little bit about the enclosure he had built out of split rail and wire. Then he nodded out past the line of post holes that he’d dug and the piles of dirt like overturned funnels flanking them.

I’m not sure if I’m keeping the coyotes from getting in or Chopper from getting out, he said. I’m likely doing those varmints a favor either way. Chopper would give them more than they bargained for, no doubt. Brett’s voice still had a mild twang that revealed his Smoky Mountain roots.

Inevitably, our talk turned to war stories and to stories of Brett’s work with Chopper. Brett recalled one incident, while he and Chopper were still training together, that forged his bond with the dog.

That time you took us out on that training exercise doing the house-to-house maneuvers. Brett shook his head and smiled. He got hold of that target and I thought I was going to have to choke him out to get him to release it.

They do like to bite, I said flatly, underscoring my understatement. And Chopper does more than most.

I remember looking him in the eye, said Brett, "and neither of us was willing to give in. Then it dawned on that dog that he was the one who was going to have to give in, and it was on account of me, and not because he wanted to. Then I knew I had him."

Brett said he believed that was the moment when he and Chopper came to truly understand one another. I think of it this way, he said. My daddy raised me to fear and respect him, and I did. But with how you conducted the training, Chopper obeyed me because he got the idea that it was the right thing to do and not because he was afraid of me. Brett paused, then said, Never in my life would I have thought a dog could communicate so much with just a look and his posture.

It doesn’t always happen, I said, "but when it does, it almost defies