Untrained

Untrained

by Marco M. Pardi

“Man is the only creature that knows nothing and can learn nothing without being taught. He cannot speak nor walk nor eat; in short, he can do nothing at the prompting of nature – but yell.” Pliny the Elder. 1^st Century CE.

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.” George Bernard Shaw

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Curious about the picture? I will try to be brief. Maybe. In the Fall of 1962 I had been handling a military working dog for about 17 months based at Wheelus Air Field, east of Tripoli, Libya. The air field was the weapons training, storage and development center for the Air Forces in Europe and Africa. The dogs were called “Sentry Dogs”, a military euphemism to not upset the locals. They were Attack Dogs. They did not sniff out explosives or drugs; their one mission was to detect and destroy all human life except that of their handler. They could not be rehabilitated and adopted at the end of their service; they were “euthanized” – killed. Becoming a handler was strictly voluntary; no one could be assigned to such duty as the 90 to 115 pound dogs were life threatening, as were the scrub desert areas and distant stations we worked, alone, only at night. The K-9 Unit was the “tip of the spear” in base defense.

The night after I first landed on base, as I was being shown to my K-9 living quarters, we passed an open room where I saw two handlers, one with a large turban-like bandage on his head and the other, shirtless, with a large bandage on his abdomen. I had a moment of joy; I was in the right place. But, it turned out “Tom” had just displayed a picture of his wife and “Bill” had said Tom’s dog was better looking. As the two seasoned handlers engaged “Bill” bit off the entire top half of “Tom’s” left ear while “Tom” bit a large chunk out of “Bill’s” abdomen. Oh, well. In the next room there was only one handler, his roommate “Pedro” being in the base hospital. Dressing for his midnight shift “Pedro” had borrowed a pair of his roommate’s fatigue pants. Unfortunately, they had not been washed, and carried the roommate’s scent. As “Pedro” entered his dog’s darkened kennel the dog all but castrated him before other handlers could dive in and subdue the dog, themselves getting bitten in the process. The dog was fine, but “Pedro” was reassigned after “recovery”.

I had been given my choice of five available dogs. The moment we made eye contact I knew my dog, as I’m sure he knew his human. Yet, the kennel master told me I would not be able to “get in on him” in less than 30 days. I sat outside his kennel and talked with him, and in three days I was able to enter his kennel, lock the door behind me, and leave with only a minor bite. He thought I had tripped him when I hadn’t. After bandages and shots at the hospital I came right back into his kennel. We talked.

Then, ready to begin our relationship, we embarked on our rotations of six nights work and three nights off, hunting “penetrators” from as far away as Egypt on the east and Algeria on the west, with a substantial number from various Libyan tribes seeking to seize control of the country. The King had fled to France and Qaddafi had yet to seize power. The takfiris (Islamic extremists) were there, but not yet out in the open.

The three off days included training sessions, mostly repetitive and difficult in the 120+ degree summers. From the first day I took issue with the harsh and cruel methods employed in training. For example, I refused to use a “spike choke chain”. I refused to slam my dog against a hurdle he wouldn’t jump. I said that using a padded sleeve to encourage a dog to bite was a sure way of getting a dog killed as it trained the dog to go after the sleeve and not the unprotected parts of the man. In fact we did abandon the use of the sleeve, putting a muzzle on the dogs and having them attack unpadded volunteer handlers (illegal by USAF standards, but lives depended on it). I did that often.

In my constant refusals of harsh methods I pointed out the unnecessary dangers to the handlers. During one session a handler using a spike choke chain tried to force his dog to sit on the hot sand. From over 10 feet away I heard the bones crunch as the dog leaped up and crushed the man’s right wrist. Permanently disabled, the Unit unnecessarily lost another handler. But my gadfly persona infuriated the training master to the point where the Unit Chief intervened and suggested we stage a “Dog Show” for the entire base, pitting my training methods against the training master’s. My dog and I were alone against the 19 other teams which qualified for the contest. So, the trophy you see in the picture above. Our 1^st Place finish was many points ahead of Second Place.

You may have noticed above that I said I talked “with” my dog, not to my dog. That’s my point (Oh, he finally got to it). There is a distinct difference. But I had not come suddenly to that realization by holding eye contact for the first time with the dog I had selected. Since just before age 5 I had been exposed to dogs and horses and in each case the dog or horse was older than me (Let’s not go down the “dog years” rabbit hole). I did not know the details, but I sensed that each dog and each horse had learned from a broad scope of experiences I could only begin to understand. I sensed they had a wisdom they might share with me. I also sensed that they were capable of doing so only if I learned how to receive it. Thus, my interest in ethology.

As years passed and I experienced more interactions, read science literature especially in ethology, and thought deeply about my learning I became that 18 year old sitting outside a chain link gate talking with a dog who could rip me to shreds in seconds. I had learned: Dogs are predators. They rely on particular senses in order to detect prey, feed, and survive. Dogs hear differently from humans, doing better particularly in the high frequency range. With very low volume sounds they tie with humans in the common ranges and exceed humans in the upper ranges. Dogs process sound differently. They can discriminate pitch in a far wider range than can humans. They can categorize sounds easily, and they can discriminate differences in human languages. For example, my mother had a very shrill and haranguing voice. While vocally praising the handsomeness of one of my Siberian Huskies she reached for him. He bit her. For the Husky, all the information was in the shrill tone. And, while sitting outside my attack dog’s kennel reading a book aloud to him to accustom him to my voice I noticed he was moving around. Turned out that whenever I said, Sit, Down, Watch, or similar words he reacted as if to commands he had learned from previous handlers. But I was not using a “command voice”. My tone was simply reading aloud.

So how do dogs and horses compare to humans? Dogs have roughly 40 times the number of olfactory sensors than humans have. These sensors are of a greater variety, enabling the dog to detect a far greater range of scents than humans can. They can detect week old finger prints and scents 40 feet underground.

A dog is very near sighted, and sees colors as does a person with red – green color blindness. But their nose and ears more than compensate for vision.

Horses are prey animals. They rely on particular senses to detect predators and to inform them of the location of food and water, mates, and friends. Their sense of smell is thousands of times more powerful and sensitive than that of humans. Their forward vision is less efficient than peripheral or rearward vision; their vision is mainly to escape predators. Whether riding or simply standing with a horse, the key to their communication is the position and movement of their ears. And, as you ride they are watching you; their rearward vision is superb. So, watch their ears to determine what they are telling you.

Of course, we can’t stop without citing comparative facial expressions. People are often quick to ascribe meaning to dog expressions, and less so to horses. But, horses display 17 clearly distinct facial expressions (Yes, that horse was sneering at you. Get some riding lessons). And dogs display 16 clearly distinct facial expressions. (Caution must prevail when assuming a Husky is smiling. This mistake is also made regarding other mammals such as porpoises). And, according to research at Ohio State University, humans display 21 clearly distinct facial expressions. We aren’t really that much ahead.

Handling an Attack Dog at night provides lessons far beyond merely staying alive. I quickly learned that watching my dog’s movements was far more important than staring into the darkness. Once I understood that I realized that my dog was always communicating with me, not just to me. By watching him I could quickly determine if one or several persons were out there, in which direction they were moving (if they were) and at what pace. His silent movements, or stillness, communicated his assessment of the nature of the threat, its imminence and its severity. His life and my life were intertwined. From then on, in every other way, whether by the silent hand signals I used or by the tone of voice I employed I sought to bring him into the communication, not just subject him to it. That was the crucial difference between my way of handling the dog and the “training” employed by all the other handlers, those following instructions from the “training master”. I interacted with a person, albeit somewhat different from myself; the others handled furry mechanical objects not greatly different from the various firearms we carried. (We did like to say, A dog is the only gun that can shoot around corners.)

I’m sure every reader has at one time or another heard someone, probably a parent, say, “Don’t use that tone of voice with me.” Yes, we are each sensitive to the various tones of human speech. But it turns out that dogs, horses, and probably a lot of other non-humans are far more sensitive to tone than we are. We increasingly live in a world in which we can issue voice commands to objects and obtain an immediate result; Alexa, play Santana’s Abraxas. On Star, call Home. And when we use that tone of voice as, Satan, get your chew toy, we are speaking as if to an object, not to a remarkably sentient companion.

So that’s my message: Untrain yourself from the confines of seeing everything non-human as merely objects to be manipulated, often through force. That horse may one day kick you half way across the pasture; that dog may some day take a chunk out of you. If you treat them as objects they will tire of your abuse, and until you untrain yourself you may never know why.

But let’s hope you never have a need to earn the patch below.