 Good afternoon. I'm Peter Bergen. I've run the international security program at New America. It's my pleasure to introduce Becky Frankel who has been a longtime friend of New America. We've known You work with us for five years at least Becky as you know has come out with war dogs which Got rave reviews in the Washington Post and in other for her And so she's gonna talk about the big themes and stories in her book and then we'll open up Q&A Well, thank you everyone for coming. It's nice to have a small group. So I appreciate you coming in the middle of the day So yeah, so the the book has been well received and that's really nice for me But I think it's even nicer because it's it's being shared by all of the handlers and the community that surrounds them Which is sort of a protective community They are very committed and passionate about what they do and I think that you know to be able to highlight not only what they do or not only they're sort of harrowing stories because I think people get very attached to the idea that you know dogs are our heroes and certainly they are but the Difference they're making is very significant and I take it very seriously and I know they do too So to have people be you know coming to this topic in that way is a great thing So this started in part with my work at foreign policy. I work with Tom Rex who is Associated with Peter and New America Foundation and also is a wonderful guy and a very prominent and talented and Dogged journalist he was you know the Iraq war correspondent for the Washington Post he covered the Pentagon for the Wall Street Journal and I started to work with him for the best defense And as I got to know Tom who has a sort of an intimidating presence I think at first is sort of a younger journalist working with him and I found out that he has these two very small dogs and he loves them very very much And that was just sort of a way that we bonded and it was a way that I I got to know him And it was through his his dogs and actually at the time I had a cat and he wanted to hear nothing about it. He was not interested in my cat at all So we just talked about his dogs and one of my my jobs at foreign policy is I do a lot of photo editing and During that time. This was like 2008 A lot of the photos that were coming off the wire from Afghanistan and Iraq were war images certainly and and those Images are very gritty and and sort of hard to look at and you become kind of accustomed to them. I think and But one photo came across and I saw it and sort of stopped and thought I have to send this to Tom and it was a picture of Marines In Helmand province and they were with their bomb sniffing dogs at their barracks, which was essentially this very makeshift outside Arrangement near you know, you could see the Hasco borders in the background, but they looked so happy The dogs have these like huge smiles on their faces and it was just such a contrast It's just our contrast to everything else that I've been seeing and so I sent it to him And of course, he got very excited about it and asked me to find some more and I said, okay Sure, I'm happy to look for photos of dogs for you And and I found a lot more and it's a very rich and deep Subjecting goes back hundreds and hundreds of years and there are these little sort of gems these little nuggets in history And I was finding them, you know in papers from World War one reports to Vanity Fair or to the New York Times and so we started to do the war dog of the week post which Which led to this which was which was wonderful But just wasn't the most widely read story that on fp of all time was Yes for a long time running. I think one other piece has now surpassed it But when the the news about the Osama bin Bin Laden mission came out in May 2011 There was this little piece of piece in the report that there had been a dog on the mission And they named the dog Cairo and they said that the dog had been in the US Navy SEALs And that wasn't surprising to me at all, but people kind of went bananas over this news and I thought well, all right fine, you know My my boss at the time season Glasser said we'll just pull together some photos, but you know and just do it and I can say it's huge the small group But I was actually supposed to go on vacation with a friend and I was like, oh, I don't want to do I just want to go out of town and I I pulled together some photos and just tried to answer the question of Why why doesn't it surprise me or why shouldn't it surprise the rest of us? That there was a dog on this mission and so I pulled together some photos and It went viral as they say and I did not get to go on vacation but I got to do a little bit of press and It did very well for the magazine And then the opportunity to write the book kind of came to me even though Tom for a long time had been saying Oh, this should be a book But I think the connection that I made with Tom over dogs um actually proved to sort of be the The path that I forged into this community that is so protective that is so defensive of The work that they do and their and their dogs because I think a lot of time people from the outside might see the training that they do, which is Intense at times. It's very very very physical and can be kind of rough These dogs some of them are you know, they weigh up to 100 pounds and they're very aggressive and they've got really sharp teeth and they're trained to do patrol work, which is bite work and So they you know the first time I was the first trip that I went on was to Langley Air Force Base a handler that I knew through just I called him I found a story about his kennels Which is at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado and he was touring the country giving these clinics to smaller teams of handlers through the Air Force And the first time I I went to watch them train He told me later He was really nervous about having me in the yard with them because he had to handle this one dog who Sort of got worked up into a frenzy and couldn't be calmed down any other way But for him to become a little physical And I thought it was funny because the whole time I wasn't watching him, but I was watching the dog Just to sort of see how the dog was reacting and the dog was fine So I I didn't see that as abuse, but but they are Kind of standoffish a little bit until they sort of get Get that you get dogs and get that you get the work that they're doing But I sort of found through my research and my reporting trips and You know these conversations that you have even though you're talking about dogs. Yes, you are still always talking about war and I and you know, I'm asking these men and women about the worst days possibly hopefully of their lives They watched Friends Die They had you know IEDs explode in front of them, especially the Marines who went into Iraq in 2003 bore the worst front of sort of our unpreparedness to combat IEDs and so you know One Marine told me Excuse me that he had been blown up No less than 13 times in a period of six months And of the Marines he went originally to Iraq within 2003 only out of the 12 of them. I think only 10 of them had survived Excuse me. 10 of them had been killed. Only two of them had survived And was he with these EOD technicians? No, they weren't. They were the dog handlers. They weren't dog handlers actually Dog handlers didn't go into Iraq until 2004 and took them about a year for them to pull together first the idea that they could be of use to them and then to because the dogs the dog teams that were First sent in the ones that they deemed to be the sort of most Ready for this kind of work still weren't trained to track IEDs because nobody knew that they would need dogs to do that They weren't anticipating this threat at least in the way that I think they met with it once on the ground um So they had to sort of learn as they went But if you were to ask a vietnam handler Who went to war with a dog who used dogs for Scouting on patrol so it meant that the handlers and the dogs were out in front and they used the dogs as sort of a measure for danger. So the way that The way that they would do it is that there's a leash between the dog and the handler And as long as the leash is taught it means the dog is comfortable going forward Once they perceive a threat of any kind whether it's their smelling Ammunition they're smelling guns. They're smelling humans. They're hearing noises in the trees. If maybe it's a sniper They'll stop and then the leash goes slack. So in the in the dark. This is a very good way to judge whether or not you can Move forward. It's a sound less Quiet way. So if you had asked a handler a vietnam handler in 2003 What they should be doing with the dogs They could have told you exactly what they would have been good at but unfortunately Vietnam in particular The dog program was disbanded and mostly because they left the dogs there in vietnam and sort of haste to leave the country and the evacuation which is A terrible chapter in our dog history as it were And many of these handlers are still very much Traumatized it's hard for them to talk about their dogs Because they didn't know the dogs were being left behind But in any event so So moving forward so but I found that talking to people about their dogs First was a way to establish a very solid Connection and that actually made it much easier To talk about war through talking about a dog And that might seem Simple but it actually sort of worked And I think it's sort of People have so much love for their dogs if you're a dog lover then of course you already know this but And there's many reasons why humans connect more easily with canines than they do with other species There's all these fantastic studies that have been done to show that In fact, there is a a bond And a sort of a biology between between the species for example You we might take for granted that you know when you talk to your dog and you you tell them like We're going to go for a walk and they of course. They know what you mean You're sort of you made a gesture and they know what the leash means and so okay. They're at the door They that is communication. It's easy. It's simple and you don't think about it You didn't train them necessarily to understand that leash means walk that they just know this But in fact, it's actually not So unremarkable as that, you know, there's a woman In sweden who conducted a study between Communication between humans and chimps and humans and dogs and you would think that Chimps are much closer in terms of biology to humans and then certainly dogs are but in fact It's much easier to communicate with the dog. So her experiment was She was sitting across from a chimp that knew her they'd sort of been In the clinic together for a long time and she had three three cups and she Took a piece of food and she took a cup and she put the food down and she Covered it with a cup and so then she starts talking to the chimp and she said Hit the food is here. Here's the food and she's using her voice and she's gesturing in her faces Also communicating and the chimp is doing anything but listening to her She's picking up the cups and she's looking around but at no point Is there any sense that one is sort of reading off the other? And then it flashes to the same experiment but this time with a dog and the food is on the floor And she walks into the room and from the minute she comes into the room the dog is focused on her He's looking at her. He's tracking her And she says the food is here. She says the dog's name like, you know Rex the food is here and he goes right to where she loves him and maybe he smelled it but you know Because dogs do have incredible Sensory powers their noses are amazing But in fact, you know, the dog was was listening to her was communicating with her Didn't Anderson Cupert do a form with this experiment on 60 minutes a few months ago? I don't know. I missed it. Yeah, did he with the dog? Yeah, okay So so he's testing improving the theory then I guess But it is I mean it's so for me that was really Sort of a profound realization that actually there is so much more to this that seems so natural and simple between humans and dogs Which I think just sort of resonates to why um human to human contact through this thread of a dog and through the The love and affinity we have for dogs makes talking about war a little bit easier and So so that was an interesting part of the book for me Also something that was surprising Was to find out that a lot of the handlers had a hard time Even if they could talk about how much they loved their dogs. It was very hard for some of them to use the word Um, I think that part of it might come from the training They're the older school of training as always, you know, you're not supposed to get attached to your dog Um, you know, don't treat your dog like a pet and and certainly that is important When the dogs are working there working just like when you're working you're working You can you know, it's easier to do your job if you're focused solely on the task at hand and same for a dog Um, but I was very surprised that when I actually asked the question, you know So do you think your dog loves you then and some of them said no No, they don't I said well, we were just talking five minutes ago about how You lost your first dog and how it was the first time you cried in front of your, you know The men and women that you work with and and how hard it is for you still to think about them But you don't think that that's about love and and they would say no and they rely oftentimes in this sort of alpha wolf pack speak which is I think still pretty common in in training dogs And we rely on the model of a wolf pack, which I think originally it was the idea that there was the alpha and then the The betas who sort of fall in line behind the one the one wolf Um, but if you read a little bit more about some of the recent writings on dogs They look at wolf packs not as hierarchies, but actually as families. So the relationships are Really more about bonding and loving and then sort of following the leader So I this was sort of what I came away with of course, you know handlers and dogs the the emotion exchange, you know is is love It's whether it's familial or You know a bond between friends. It is even if you can't Use the word and then it is very much about About connecting and I also found that you know the dogs and the handlers that seemed closer Performed better Which to me would would be something you'd think that they would want to foster Because if we are relying again on this sort of understanding that dogs and humans have this unique ability to communicate That doesn't it seem to make more sense than that the closer they are the better their communication is And the better they will perform as a team And I learned this lesson very Very this early on my own because at one Training exercise I went to I spent a week in colorado and I went to a bunch of different military bases there Excuse me and at four actually at Buckley Air Force Base I was watching a number of different teams do a number of different searches They were searching for drugs and they were searching for explosives And so we get to this bathroom and one of the sergeants says okay, rebecca You know, it's your turn and I was very comfortable sort of hanging out in the back and taking pictures and writing notes and being very quiet And they said no, no, no, it's your turn. You're going to find the bomb And so they gave me the leash to this dog. It's named haas the german Shorthair pointer and we had been getting along very well. Haas was a really gentle dog. He was uh People friendly And so we'd been hanging out and I thought okay. Well, this might not be so bad I think I can do this. I've been watching all of these handlers, but you know for hours We've been doing this and I was studying them very closely So I thought okay, and I was a little bit nervous because it was me and about 12 other kind of big dudes and they were all going to watch me in this very brightly lit bathroom and so I took the leash and That was it. They just said find the bomb. So I thought okay, I can do this And so I get into the bathroom and I tell a haas I say seek and I like tell him You know, I point to the door seam Excuse me the seam where the wall meets the floor, which is how you conduct your search So you go clockwise around the room and he did it. He followed me and I thought okay so here we go and he's moving very fast because These are not slow searches, right? Like if there really is a bomb in this bathroom then you want to find it and you want to find it very fast so haas just like takes off and goes and we go to the sink and I you know Tell him to hop up and he gets up on that not all the way up But he puts his front paws on the sink and then we're doing pretty well and then we hit the bathroom stalls and So the first one was fine I managed to open the door and I got him to go around sort of the the toilet and I'm in there with him and it's crowded But he gets out and then he shoots out ahead of me and he goes to the third one And so the second one's I have to pull him back and then we get into the second one And he gets all tangled up in the leash and then I get tangled up in the leash and I was I could hear them snickering in the doorway and I could feel my face getting red But I was like I'm not gonna give up. I'm not gonna give up And so we get to the second stall and then we come out and it happens the tangling happens all over again And I had the the bathroom door hit me in the back and it really hurt and I just thought in my head I just thought I can't do this and I was still at the moment while I was saying that I was still giving the motions I was still telling haas to go forward and he just stopped right there And sat in the middle of the floor and he looked over at the guys in the door and he was like No, she can't do this And I mean he really exposed me and it was but it was a very quick lesson because A number of things that they had been telling me all the way up until this point I had not I had been listening to but I had not been Absorbing and those things are one The emotions run up and down the leash that's something handlers say all the time So when you get frustrated your dog is going to feel that you get frustrated If you're nervous your dog might be nervous But also it works the other way too. So if your dog is sensing danger, then you should be able to sort of feel that And also if a dog doesn't trust you they're not going to That follow you, you know that they're very intelligent animals. They know how to do the job. They're supposed to do and Haas was like You don't know what you're doing at the end. What are the you know the the breeds of choice? um, so mostly right now the military the united states military uses German shepherds and belgium melon was and the reasons for that are german shepherds are very intelligent dogs Which means that if you're a handler for a german shepherd, you have to keep them engaged You can't have a rote Sort of like we do the same training all the time because they're going to get bored or they're going to think ahead of you And know that okay, I know if I sit down on alert, you're going to give me my toy Which is sort of their driving ambition there And the belgium melon was have this crazy high work drive. I mean these dogs could work and work and work and work until they drop they just Cairo was a belgium melon was so they say yes Although I've I've heard off the record that his name is not cairo. Um, but let's let's assume that his name was cairo for the moment What was he doing? What was he supposed to be doing? So I I would guess that what he was doing is um, Probably there so special forces dogs are trained a little bit differently um You know, there's no record of them, of course What they do and I I was able to watch one they have covert identities. Thank you They do and so I got to know some veterinarian stationed in bagram Really a team of three. They're really wonderful and they saw all the dogs that came through afghanistan um And They would tell me, you know, they told me how many special forces dogs they had but there were no Records of them kept necessarily and um when they were killed no record is kept of how many dogs are killed So that was actually one thing that was really hard for me to do was to determine how many dogs have been killed since we started in iraq because While records are kept each branch keeps their own records. They all keep them differently Some of them put will put down a cause of death. Some of them won't And so it's it's complicated. Um, but what what cairo would have been doing I would have guessed is Possibly there for um helping to detain anyone who might have tried to flee on foot Because yeah, if you've ever if you've ever watched any of these bite training, you know These dogs if if somebody is running at a great speed and the dogs chase them down the momentum that Catches when they connect them when they hit It's it's unbelievable how hard they go down and uh, actually that was something else I did in training I Got into the bite suit and I I I went got bit And I was wearing not the thickest jacket because those are really enormous. And so it didn't fit me so I couldn't wear it But the one that I was wearing I they said no, you're not going to feel anything Like he's they they train the dogs to catch people like right here on their arms Or right here on their chest or on their legs But this is the best way to if they're chasing someone at a high speed and they catch them here and go down It's very easy for them, right? They pull that they can pull a person down Whereas if they were to hit their legs they might stop them but not totally knock them off their feet um And so yeah, I felt it I felt every bit of it and it really hurt And I excuse me. Um, I Had a bruise afterwards and I've seen some of the bruises on these you know much really these like really big broad muscular arms and they're They're like this big they're huge and it looks like you know somebody sort of just painted it black My bruise was very big for me, but it was not uh, it was like You know a paper cut compared to like a gunshot wound. It was nothing to complain about but it If I can't imagine what that would feel like without anything Look, talk us through the reporting process I mean did you do this big literature review about dogs? And then dogs in the military and then you where did you travel to and how did So I went to um a bunch of different military bases only here in the united states Um, and for me it was more about where I knew people Um, I tried to avoid at all costs going through the military's public affairs office While I I certainly appreciate and respect The work that they do, you know, if you want to really know anything about How this works you go right to the source. Um, you don't want Someone sort of walking around making sure you're not asking certain questions and so and they didn't have to go through their public affairs to do I didn't I ended up not not being able to um, I always had permission to be where I was But there was at one point, um Well off off the record. I will say that at one point I I was able to go watch something I I didn't have permission to do and I didn't have to hide in a van for a little while But in and and the reason why I think that they allowed me to do this is because I really was First and foremost interested in educating myself. I wanted to know everything That they were willing to show me and so if they said Where we start, um, you know pt at 5 a.m. And I would say, okay, I'll be here at 4 45 and you know, I didn't leave until they left at night and Are the trainers mostly men? They are mostly men. Um, it is a very the military You know, there's a lot of ego and and machismo and certainly there is that in the dog handling field Um, a lot of handlers like to talk about, you know, who's got the baddest dog and whose dog bites the hardest Um, you know, it's a thing, you know, they they talk about it But the handlers I found were to be the the ones at least that I gravitated towards were the ones who Would say things like you're never done learning. You can learn from everyone, you know, all the people who go into this field That's what they're gonna do A lot of them that I met wanted to, you know, work with dogs and either police force A capacity which, you know, it's very hard to have a long career in dog handling in the military There's only a few rungs to climb and then once you get to the top you kind of what is the top rank? Uh, kennel master. What's that kennel master? Okay, and is that a what is that rank equivalent of? Um, I think it's like an e Four or five I'm not I'm not sure But it but it's a it's enlisted or is it an off? I mean is it is it so some The the dog handling community in the military is like a microcosm of the the larger military, so it's been very small um It's very very small Even though I think that it is important to acknowledge how big an impact such a small community is having over across the broader Especially in combat zones But it's like any any job field right that the higher you go the finer the point is at the top and so those opportunities are fewer and further between and But not all of them are enlisted at that point But I think it's very rare to get a high ranking position like that and have retired out of the military So, um How's the you've had all these great reviews, uh, you've gone around the country and what do what do I'm looking at? It's very open to anybody with for questions unless you're you've got something else you want to say I mean I can talk about this forever. So I'd rather I'd rather talk about So like, you know, what has been the overall response? I mean who's the we were talking earlier I mean, you've got this big Venn diagram of the military, which is a big group and people and then Big group of people who love dogs and sort of like this group in the center, but they're The people do you tell me what you just told me the idea before we were at World Chats lunch? Oh You know, it's it's definitely a mix a lot of what I've enjoyed a lot And doing so they sort of talks and then meeting people one Couple, you know when you're when you're giving a talk and or you're talking to a group of people And you're sort of looking and making eye contact There was this one couple and they were sitting in the back and they just were so Happy they were just so happy and then they came up to me afterwards and it turns out that their son had been a handler in Afghanistan He just finished his service I think with the marines and he's okay, but he has his dog and he loves his dog and they they felt like, you know They wouldn't have wanted to have sent him without the dog They felt like the dog kept him safe and that they you know would have done anything to for this dog, you know That they're so grateful and thankful and Um Those kinds of things are nice. I was in tamp tamp or st. Petersburg rather A couple of weeks ago. They had a book fair and I hadn't expected this so I wasn't really prepared for it and I wish I had sort of Replied a little bit differently, but this man came up. He didn't say anything. He just handed me a post-it note And his book that he wanted signed and on the note It just said rex and had a number and I knew that that meant it's the The id number the tattoo number that they put in the dog's ear like their dog tag and I realized by his age, of course that he had been in vietnam and we had I had been talking In the talk about what had happened to this One handler and how he tried for years and years to find his dog and how you know this still sort of rattles him and and to know that she had been killed and Without him being there without knowing it just is like this thing that haunts him and he this man didn't say anything to me He just sort of handed me his book and I said this was your dog and he just sort of said yes, and he was I think kind of overwhelmed with emotion and so That means a lot to me to have those kinds of meetings But what I was telling peter is that a woman wrote me an email and said there was too much swearing in my book And that she couldn't get through the first chapter and had to return it to the library So I thought all right Fair enough, but I mean you're also saying you know I mean people who have an interest in the military have a strong interest and people have an interest in Dogs have a strong interest so it's like these two communities that are pretty intense The enthusiasm is extreme And and that's that's kind of a wonderful thing to know that you know People who care about something so much are finding value because it means then that if You know like anyone who's a diehard fan of any you know sort of niche topic that You you consume as much as you can so I'm sure they've already read All the wonderful books on this topic or I read just wonderful books about dogs and there are so many of them I have a huge dog library now Dog book library. I should say What are the best books on dogs? um On dogs in general. I I was particularly drawn to mark durr's books. He's written for the atlantic before He's he's I talked to him for hours. He's a really interesting man But he wrote a book called on the dogs history of america, which is fascinating and he's he's a very intelligent writer And he has these wonderful little stories about you know dogs all the way through um, and you know, he writes about how columbus used dogs and to to very horrific degrees as sort of Hunting people down. Yeah, and using them to kill people so Not not a great guy columbus Do you have um thoughts about what your next project might be? I do Is it going to be in the canine field? Um, I I Certainly came across many Like, you know, you go sort of down these like rabbit holes and they're really particularly interested in world war one um, some of the best books on animals and more I think came out of that time period um urinal Paris Baines is the last name um urnist herald baines. I think is his name. He wrote a book called um animals in the great war And it's yes. So it's like a perfect storm. Yes British love dogs and they love the first world war Absolutely, and it's written in sort of you know, each each uh wartime has its own sort of uh vernacular exactly, you know the world war two it's sort of there's a lot of like nancy drew type writing so it's like Golly gee this dog was was great and um World war one. It's very gentlemanly, you know sort of Archaic Vocabulary, but they're they're wonderful and and the stories are wonderful, but they're So this vietnam handler ron a yellow that I interviewed who brought his dog stormy to vietnam. He was a marine He Goes to these uh handler reunions every a few years for the vietnam guys and maybe about 10 years ago They were having one in new jersey somewhere and so they all got together his group of friends that have stayed in touch And they went to new jersey and they realized that it was a reunion for world war two handlers That they had just not paid attention to the flyers or something and it just sort of ended up there by accident And he said Just sort of stay and they ended up he said they ended up staying in one hotel room with a bunch of guys or in some part of their hotel for like Almost 24 hours together almost the whole time just telling stories and he said, you know It didn't and the end it didn't really make a difference that it wasn't the same war because the stories were sort of the same So I think that that is definitely true Anybody has a question How many dogs are currently in the active duty and do they use these dogs to breed new dogs to for war dogs so the united states military working dog program is uh the The overseeing branch is the air force So the sort of main hub is at san antonio and in san san antonio at lackland air force base in texas And they have the dog training school there. They have the um big veterinary hospital there that they call the walter reed for dogs Um, and then they have the breeding program there. So they breed belgium malin was um, and they have a litter Uh, they have lots of litters. They all get assigned a letter. So they have a double consonant Double double letter before and you know at the beginning of every name. So the r litter had Rock and risky and they are our isky So they do um and currently right now the entire program has about 1200 dogs, I think But these are not dogs in combat zones These are dogs, you know station that any base any military base around the world the united states military base so The the numbers are much fewer than they were about five years ago. They're they're drawing down the canine forces Peter jule, I'm from south american progress more here in my capacity as a dog person. So So they're building off of that question why the air force and my my main question is what's the sort of the career path for the dog and what happens to the dog when Or she gets mustered out of military service Um, I I don't actually know why the air force took over as sort of the overseeing branch. I would think that it would have been the marines, but possibly because The marines are much smaller in terms of you know, particularly in terms of the canine program they The way that they use dogs is a little bit Not in their capacity and sort of a day-to-day job, but in terms of when we enter a conflict how the marines they sort of You know tip of the spear go in. Yeah So it's a good question that I don't have an answer to but So in terms of a dog's career field a path rather Dogs operate very differently. They get assigned to a home station and they don't leave unless they're transferred for a particular reason um And so it's the handlers that kind of come in they cycle in and out and as they move to their different assignments But a dog and a handler always deploy together and they return to the home station together And then if a dog gets assigned a new handler then then the process always takes place at the home station But it really depends on the dog Sort of maybe just like any other individual in the military um some dogs have Longer working careers working lives than than others. They just weather it better But it's a hard sort of a harder life, you know, so some of these dogs start aging out. They can age out as early as nine But some of them have been some of them are in their whole their whole lives So but when it is time for a dog to sort of finish their military service Then what happens is there's a review process And the veterinarian in charge of the dog who looks at the whole So dog records are mostly kept through the veterinary records and then they have sort of their training records So they look at training records. They look the veterinary records the handler and the kennel master of the home station and A behaviorist comes in and sort of Looks at the dog to make sure that if they're going to retire into a home What kind of home is most suitable for them? So can they be in a home with other dogs? Can they be in a home with young children? You know, what is the answer usually? A lot of them do do go into regular homes, but some of them, you know, it's a matter of safety So they're too aggressive or they have sort of triggers and You know, they're they're they're too one person protective So and that sort of all depends I was curious about the photograph Oh, yeah, yeah, Genesis of the photograph. Yes. So this is actually I believe from a training exercise My publisher picked that one But it is sort of they they do the repelling from sometimes from helicopters So the photo that kind of launched the Viralness of that Osama bin Laden. It's a very famous picture. It it became one. Yeah, right And did you did you launch that I I think so? I mean, certainly I didn't take the photo, but I Tell me what it looks like. Tell everybody what it looks like. There's a very famous picture Yeah, so it's taken from the back of a Chinat helicopter and you see Presumably the handler and a dog and they're launching into the water And you kind of see the dog in midair and when I first saw the photo I called a few handlers that I knew and I said, you know, tell me what's going on here And this is this dog going on his own and some of them said no, he probably had some help But then a year later I decided to track down the photographer and like get the story behind the photo And I found him and we talked for a while And he said that it was just a lucky shot that this was at the end the dog and the handler were the last ones of the The guys to take their jump and what I hadn't realized if you look out into the water You see these little tiny like ghostly figures and it's Men in the water and they're going like this. They're cheering the dog on And he said that the dog went on his own the handler went and the dog went But you can you can google these things. There's a lot of handlers that will they take Jump out of airplanes with their dogs. They get strapped in there. They teach them to do this And so you sort of I wouldn't I wouldn't jump out of a plane on my own accord Maybe if it was going down and somebody wanted to like give me a push I would go but So I don't really understand the uh the thrill in that but You so you see them go down and the dogs got a muzzle on and He's just kind of hanging it and the dog has But does the dog have its own parachute or no, he's strapped into it So they get strapped in like this and so they sort of cradle them And then you see what happens when they get on the ground and these dogs are like Just running around crazy. They're so excited and then in another one I watched I was it was kind of awesome It was a handler who had Been in an IED explosion. He lost his deodev his feet amputated So this video is of him taking his first jump with his dog After after sort of healing up and you can see the dog knows exactly where they're going. He's like the way you know Maybe not to the vet But like if you're going for a ride in the car with the dog and the dog likes to stick his head out the window It's sort of the same thing. So he just can't wait to get on these all he lets himself get strapped in so You have to imagine some of them really do love doing this even if some people wouldn't want to What's your favorite story of a dog in a handler that you've come across Too many You know I was thinking about this the other day because somebody asked me and I didn't have a good answer already But something and I I still actually tear up every time I read it Amazingly, it's this Napoleon wrote about coming across a dog. He wrote about it years later when he was in exile Sort of looking back on this experience and he talks about going to Into the field after they sort of devastated this battalion of men and there are just bodies all over the place and there was this one dog and he was sitting by the The body of whoever he had been attached to and when he Saw these people come in the dog got very excited And kept running up to Napoleon and then running back to the man on the ground and like licking his hand And basically Napoleon was saying that he was clearly employing Him for help And he said that you know in writing about this he said it was the most moving experience He'd ever had in battle but and no other time In all the lives they laid to waste fighting that he ever felt so ready to Show mercy on on the enemy Then he did at this dog. So I just It it just resonated in a way that is sort of all these stories have in the middle of them this very sort of Bare tenderness to them. I think because Dogs offer their service so unconditionally And they're they can also be manipulated for quite evil purposes and the nazis use dogs for fairly frequently for Having people up and yes they did and I think In understanding that you have to sort of understand that it's not the dogs that are evil certainly And that what they're doing is just following orders following orders exactly Which which might ring a little bit lame Any other questions Okay, well, thank you. Thank you very much for this wonderful presentation. I'm sure you'll be willing to sign books Thank you very very very much