Wardogs

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

I gave each of my nephews one of the folding stools. The one with the lion stool argued that his animal was the toughest. The one with the rhino stool said no way: his would beat the lion in any fight. To settle the argument I told them that each animal was so tough that they'd hurt each other if ever they fought. As a result, they'd agreed never to come to blows. Lion and rhino knew they were each other's equals, which was just as my two nephews should be with each other.

After Kenya, I knew that I had this innate affinity with animals, but it was seeing that search dog at work in Northern Ireland that really lit my candle. I realised there was a big part of me that wanted some of that, yet I hadn't got the faintest idea how you got into K9. Still, I went ahead and got my first dog, a magnif icent German shepherd called Max. And that was it - dogs became my life.

On a second tour of Northern Ireland I was posted to Ballykelly, in County Londonderry. There was a K9 unit stationed nearby, and that gave me the chance to visit their kennels. Pretty quickly I realised that this had to be the ultimate partnership between man and animal. The dog teams worked in the twilight zone where doing their duty forever put them in the line of fire and up against the bomb makers. It was only their trust and faith in each other that enabled them to overcome their fear. The dogs would give their lives for their handlers, and vice versa, and I knew that this was something I wanted to be a part of.

I was posted to the British military base on Cyprus, and one day I had to take Max to see the resident vet at the RAVC unit. I volunteered to start helping out at their kennels, and one of the first things I did was build the dogs an assault course. It was the kind of thing that they'd use to train the dogs for deploy ment to places like Iraq, and eventually to Afghanistan.

Eventually, I plucked up the courage to ask about how I might get to be a dog handler. The bad news was that at thirty-two years of age, I was already too old to apply. But in light of my total, burning commitment, the RAVC agreed to bend the rules a little and to make an exception.

In 2002 I left the Cheshires and joined up as the RAVC's oldest ever recruit. It was the most significant decision I'd ever made as a soldier, and the turning point in my life. I had to accept demotion from sergeant to lance corporal, as the RAVC argued that most of what I'd learned in the infantry was irrelevant to K9. I was sent to the RAVC's Defence Animal Training Centre, at Melton Mowbray, and my instructing sergeant was a good few years younger than me. I told him I was fine with that, as long as he taught me everything he knew about working with man's best friend - the dog.

I loved every minute of my K9 training. I learned how German shepherds were prized for their strength and ferocity as guard dogs. My German shepherd, Max, had epitomised that during the years that I had him. They have everything you want in a military working dog: strength, endurance, devotion, athleti cism, plus the drive to learn and to work. I learned how Labradors and spaniels made the perfect search dogs, due to their bound less energy, curiosity and intelligence, coupled with their unri valled sense of fun.

At the Defence Animal Training Centre I was put through my basic training. I started by practising how to say my commands properly, using a plastic bucket as my stand-in dog. I'd have to reward the bucket in my praise voice': high-pitched, squeaky and unthreatening. I'd have to chastise the bucket in my 'punish voice': low, throaty and growly, as if I was angry.

I graduated onto learning basic handling techniques with real animals. I learned I had to build a good rapport with my dog, before I could start the specialist and intensive work to turn him or her into the most highly trained animal on the planet - which Arms Explosive Search (AES) dogs are.

We trained the dogs using a Kong - an indestructible rubber ball - giving them a play with it when they responded to the right scent in the right way. From that basic foundation we built months of further specialist training, searching across fields and forests and factories and parking lots for tiny amounts of explo sives hidden in the most unlikely of places - explosives which the dog had to find but never touch.

I was deployed first to Northern Ireland as a qualified K9 handler, and it was there that I first got to hear about this enig matic search dog called Hunter. Hunter's reputation went before him. In RAVC circles he was this legendary black beast, one who would apparently bite your hand off as soon as look at you. He was a dog with a big personality and teeth to match. He sounded rough, tough and boisterous, and like he didn't take any pris oners. In a way he sounded a lot like me.

It's in my nature to favour the maverick and the rebel, and I simply had to get a look at him. As I walked down to the kennels I was expecting to encounter a snarling whirl of white teeth and black fur. But I told myself I wasn't going to show fear. Hunter was known as a dog that loved to challenge who was boss. I decided to kneel down at his cage and get eye-to-eye with him. That way, he'd know I wasn't afraid.

I did just that, and this black beast of a dog came up and stared at me in silence for several seconds. And then the most amazing thing happened. He flicked out his tongue and licked me on the nose. That was it: it was love at first sight. I told him there and then: 'I want you, Hunter my lad, and I'm

going to get you!'

I did get Hunter - but it was then that he became the teacher and I the student. He had bags of Northern Ireland search expe rience and I had next to none. He took me through the ropes of being an AES dog handler for real, and taught me all that he knew.

I was certain that there had to be something behind Hunter's nasty, rebel reputation, just as there was behind my own rebel lious ways. I looked into his background, but there was nothing I could see to account for the dark reputation that he'd earned. Hunter had had a loving upbringing with the Abbott family. They'd got him when he was a tiny, cute ball of puppy fluff, and their kids had adored him. But over the months that followed they'd realised that Hunter had too much energy and too sharp an intel ligence to sit around being a pet.

They found they had to strap him into a protective plastic collar because the young and boisterous puppy kept leaping about, crashing into things and falling over. Without that collar he was constantly getting hurt. From the earliest days the only way to keep him still was to give him a giant bone to chew on. He exhausted the family with his non-stop hunger for play, and eventually they made the difficult decision to donate him to the Army.

Hunter had been with the family for two years when they decided to give him up, and it was a tearful parting. But the Abbott parents were right: he needed more than they could give. In a way they'd done Hunter a favour. He was tailor-made for being a search dog, and at the RAVC he was amongst handlers who had all the time and energy to challenge and push him.

Hunter had taken to search work like a duck to water. He passed his training as an AES dog with flying colours, and it was a couple of years after that when I'd managed to get him. Over the months of training and play I'd learned that Hunter never tired of his ball, and never tired of the search. To him they were both just a fantastic game. From the start I realised that Hunter's favourite toy wasn't a Kong: it was a green tennis ball, the same type that I now carried with me on patrols into the Afghan badlands.

Whilst Afghanistan is Hunter's first war, it's not mine. I've come here worrying if he'll deliver the goods and be able to use his nose in full-on combat. Would he stand the heat and the pres sure? Was the love between us strong enough to make him into the heart of battle time after time and keep finding the bombs? Would he do it for me? And would he do so repeatedly, day after day after day? go

I figure I've pretty much got my answers by now. Hunter's a rock, and there's an unshakeable, indestructible trust between us.

It's worries about my own capabilities and losing some of the Bravo Company lads that are at the forefront of my mind.

I'm called into an Orders Group with Major Cheeseman. He briefs me on our next mission, which is going out at night under cover of darkness. It's a black-light op- operating in the depths of night and with no lights. We'll be working on night vision goggles (NVG): special binocular-like aids that boost ambient light, enabling you to see in the dark.

The aim of the operation is to secure the 611, the main road leading into Sangin, so a resupply convoy can come in. But the mission's got a real sting in its tail for Hunter and me. The major wants us to search and clear an old tank park to one side of the 611-a graveyard of armour from the time the Soviet Red Army was fighting in Afghanistan, back in the eighties.

The major's got intelligence that the abandoned tank park has been sown with IEDs. I've got no problems with the mission but I tell him that I'll need my own set of NVGS (as dog handlers we're not issued with any). I'm told there are none available.

'Sir, if I've got no night vision how will I see my dog?' I ask. "How will I know one end of him from the other when he's sniffing out what's what?' Black-light operations weren't something we'd done much of in Northern Ireland, for the Belfast city streets were always lit

by streetlamps or by car headlights. Even so, it's obvious to me

that without NVG I won't be able to see Hunter work, and partic

ularly because the only harness I have for him in Afghanistan is a black one. Apparently, the previous handler managed it, the major tells

me.

'His dog wasn't black, sir. It was a yellow Lab. And I'm not him.' The major exchanges a glance with his second-in-command. He still can't seem to get his head around a mere corporal telling him he can't do what he's just been told to do. But as far as I'm concerned, Hunter's got the world's most hazardous job already, without heaping added risk and trauma on his shoulders.

'Sir, if I can't have NVG you'll need to put up a light, so I can see my dog work. 'Corporal, my men are going in under cover of darkness and

showing no lights to try and catch the enemy napping. How can

we put up light on a mission such as that?"

I don't see what more there is to say. I'm not taking Hunter out on an operation that risks getting him killed for all of the wrong reasons. The Orders Group breaks up with the matter very much unresolved.