FORT BELVOIR, Va. - Pressure is constant for the 27 military working dog handlers who serve the Military District of Washington. In addition to daily installation force protection, there's 32 hours a month of required real world training and a full week of validating the Soldiers' dog handling abilities every three months.
Validation week is an intense week of military working dog handler duty requirements: basic obedience, controlled aggression, scouting, vehicle searches, buildings, warehouses and aircraft. Also included are detection for explosives and narcotics.
For the 947th Military Police Detachment's Working Dog section, which is split between kennels at both JBM-HH and Fort Belvoir, Va., missions to sniff out explosives and narcotics extends well beyond the routine. The group is unique in that it works closely with the U.S. Secret Service, other military services and civilian law enforcement agencies to support high-security events in the National Capital Region, including the president of the United States, vice president and foreign visiting dignitaries, according to the unit's website.
And without passing validation week, handlers-some of whom are young enough that they can't legally consume alcohol yet-nor their dogs will be certified to provide K9 support both in the United States and abroad.
"There are no 18-year-old kids out there doing what these kids do on a daily basis making sure that everybody in the National Capital Region stays safe," said Sgt. 1st Class Raymond Richardson, the 947th's kennel master. Richardson is responsible for supervising and administering training to the more than two dozen handlers who comprise the 947th's military working dog unit.
Military working dog teams serve as not only a means of detection, but also deterrence, according to U.S. Army Lt. Col. Macedonio Molina, JBM-HH's provost marshal and director of Emergency Services.
"If bad guys know the dogs are working, they are less likely to do something," wrote Molina in an email to the Pentagram.
According to Richardson, handling military working dogs remains a small career field, mostly comprised of "younger" K9 teams who regularly find themselves either deployed, sniffing for drugs and other narcotics on U.S.-based military installations, or sweeping roadways and open areas for traveling high-ranking U.S. dignitaries.
"Our op tempo is like none other I've ever seen in the 12 years since I've been doing this," Richardson said. "From the president all the way down to all the foreign dignitaries and most recently the Pope mission."
"Anytime POTUS goes somewhere we have to go with him," said Sgt. Charles Ogin, a seasoned dog handler who has become accustomed to the rotation of stateside missions and deployments overseas.
"So you're working the road, you're doing missions, you're possibly deploying for nine to 12 months-it's just always hectic," he said.
Sgt. Wess Brown, a four-year lead dog handler who is going through validations with his new dog, Ricky, agrees that extensive traveling is familiar territory for the dog handlers.
"As a dog handler you're going everywhere," he said. "I was in Berlin, Turkey, Russia. Been a lot of places. Then Afghanistan, so on and so forth."
"So on and so forth" equates to places and missions Brown simply couldn't recall at the moment; too many to count.
Such stories prove there is no mission too great or too small for the detachment. The 947th, which belongs to the 289th Military Police Company of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), supports counterinsurgency operations in combat zones, such as on-going operations in Afghanistan. Similar to sniffing out bad guys in the U.S., the working dog teams conduct patrols to sniff out insurgents and seek out explosives.
In short, the teams are trained to be an asset in war zones overseas.
Richardson has also seen a number of deployments to combat zones and knows all too well the value of the dog's trained sense of smell.
"When you find a weapons cache down range-20 pounds of mortars and homemade explosives or whatever you find - I could have saved anybody's life," he said. "You just don't know and there's no way to put a price tag on that and how important this job actually is."
"Not only do we take those explosives off the field of battle, but we're also able to analyze those [explosives]," Brown said, to emphasize the magnitude of K9 teams in counterinsurgency. "Not only finding them, but finding their supplier."
First-hand accounts like this remind younger military working dog handlers that each day can bring an entirely different mission, and can always be life-threatening. The teams' performances at Fort Belvoir combined with their individual stories of deployments and high-security details in D.C. easily show that the job requires constant vigilance, focus and continual training.
"It's not cut and paste," said Pfc. Christina Marsh, one of the 947th's newest additions.
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