Military dogs help defend Iraq

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Bob Oldham
  • 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
TALLIL AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) --  Hiding behind mounds of dirt or anything else his handler could find, Tino sat and waited for an intruder to breach the base’s fence on his random listening and observation post.

Suddenly, the military working dog’s ears, eyes and nose zeroed in on two men as they entered the base’s perimeter. As the men closed in, Tino stood up, fluffing up his hair and tail to make his presence known.

“You could hear them stop breathing (when they saw Tino),” said Senior Airman Eric Stafford, a military working dog handler here from Moody Air Force Base, Ga. “They knew it was over.”

The two men threw their hands in the air -- their foray onto the base was over. Stafford called for backup, and the two were hauled away. Mission complete.

In today’s Air Force, it takes a special breed of airman and dog -- German shepherd, Dutch shepherd or Belgian malinois -- to secure the perimeter of a military installation, and it is no different here.

To help security forces airmen cope with the hazards of the job, they team with military working dogs to thwart potential aggressors and keep base airmen safe to do their jobs. Stafford and Tino are just one example of that teamwork.

All of the Department of Defense’s military working dogs are trained at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. Once trained, dogs are shipped to units and paired with a trained handler. The two work together at home station and temporary duty locations, as is the case with Tino and Stafford. They will separate only when the airman permanently changes duty stations.

Tino is not just a security dog, he is also trained to smell explosives or explosive-making materials. The dog and Stafford are one set of an undisclosed number of dogs and handlers here, keeping intruders and terrorist bombs out, officials said.

While both tasks are important, so is keeping military working dogs healthy. That job falls to a trained Army veterinarian technician who monitors the dogs’ health on a weekly basis, looking for signs of disease or injury.

To keep the dogs hydrated, they drink the doggie version of a human sports drink to replace lost electrolytes. They also have special equipment that works like an ice pack to help them stay cool when temperatures rise, officials said.

Military working dogs are one line of defense in a multi-layered defensive plan. The dogs serve two roles: to detect and to deter, said Tech. Sgt. Michael Silvin, the kennel master here.

Detection is manning a post, looking for bad guys, much like Tino and his handler. Deterrence comes in a couple of forms, like posting the dogs in areas visible to those entering and exiting the base and by word of mouth, such as the two intruders that Tino stopped in their tracks, he said.

“The locals talk,” Silvin said. “They know we have them, and they’re scared to death of them.”