Inspired by Springfield's K-9 War Dogs Memorial, which honors military working dogs and their handlers, Community Voices producer and Marine Corps veteran Zack Sliver spoke with U.S. Air Force handlers Staff Sgt. Mantrease Robertson and Senior Airman Jordan Johnson about the training, challenges and bonds that define the job.
Mantrease Robertson: Yes, sir. So, to become a handler, you have to go down to Lackland, San Antonio, Texas, Air Force Base, right? With that, you'll learn your basic commands, your dog history, health point checks. Then you'll go over your patrol, your detection training, your obedience training, which is probably the most important part—obedience training. For the dogs in general, there's a mix, right? So you have your dogs that are born down in Lackland.
They're bred down there, trained down there. Then we have the dogs that are vendors that come from overseas, like Germany, Europe, wherever it might be. You also might have some stateside vendors, right? They'll be brought back all to Lackland and they all get trained down there.
So that's what they're learning: 120 days—sorry, I'm kind of long-winded—120 days of obedience, detection, and aggression, which would be your patrol.
Jordan Johnson: I mean, I just got back in February. I'll definitely say the probably challenging part about that as a new baby handler going in, probably the obedience. Some of these dogs can be very frustrating.
You have to really play it out and be exaggerated and really play along when you're praising them. You got to really praise them. The better you praise, the better they want to do it.
They want to work and all that stuff. So, I really enjoyed the praising part, and I really love it now. If you ask them at the kennel, I'm very, I'm weird with my noises.
So, I love it though, I'm not embarrassed. You're looking on the outside, you're not a handler yet. You're just looking at them, watching them do detection, all that stuff.
But when you're actually handling the dog and you're actually telling it to seek and doing detection around a building or a big open area and it's like, it's a lot of space. You got to search this whole thing. People depending on you.
So, end of the day, it's a life-and-death job, you know, so it's very important and can be challenging.
Robertson: Like people think it's physical, where you're just telling the dog to do the commands or pulling them to that point. It's a lot more mental than you think.
Whenever we're doing detection, I have to think about, is my dog really sniffing? Or is he, like, BSing and not doing the job, right? So, it's like a lot to go into it. And then at the same time, I have to worry about the whole area in general. What haven't I looked at? What haven't I searched, right? So, it's a lot more mental than a lot of people think about it.
Johnson: Like you said, really just trust your dog. Also call him out if he's BS-ing, bring him back to the kennel, have him check, you know, if you don't feel like he's doing good enough. But try to meet him in the middle. So if he does good, praise him—big parties, all that stuff, like I said—and just keep it going.
Robertson: You can train any type of breed to do that line of work, right? In the past, they've used Dobermans, they've used Rottweilers.
A lot of those dogs kind of got phased out when they kind of figured out what type of dog that the military would be good for, right? Kind of went from German shepherd, bigger dog.
So now you see a lot more compact when it comes to your Belgian Malinois. They're able to move around a lot faster and do the job at a high capacity. So there's a big variety of other dogs that do the job together.
But it's also just about the stability of it. Does the dog really want to do the job? Because I can get a Belgian Malinois, and he might not care about any of that, right? So you also have to look at, okay, yeah, we got the breed, but then we got to make sure that that specific dog is actually good for the job because you can have the breed and the dog might not care about what you're trying to teach them to do. So, yeah.
So military working dogs retire, they go through a process where either one of the handlers, last handler that was on, would either get the dog, or he'll go down the list from the handlers. If none of the handlers want them, the dog will most likely get kicked back to Lackland, San Antonio, and it'll go through the adoption process down there.
Johnson: One of the dogs that recently retired is MDVD Flex. He's in Hawaii right now. Actually retired, living his best life, drinking piña coladas or whatever. So, I'm kind of jealous.
Robertson: I do not have a dog right now. I didn't want to get a dog and then also have to go to work, deal with another dog, then come home and kind of neglect that dog because I'm tired.
Johnson: Yeah, I don't got one either for that reason. These dogs tire you out at work. You come back— I got to walk this dog.
Robertson: Yes, sir. Thank you.
Veterans' Voices is presented by Wright-Patt Credit Union. Additional support comes from the Dayton Ombudsman Veterans Transition Team and Montgomery County Veterans Service Commission. Veterans' Voices is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices.
