A Military Working Dog team at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, earned the distinction of being among the top 1 percent of the many handler/dog teams trained nationwide by Custom Canine Unlimited during the Advanced Tracking Course conducted at Fort Leavenworth in August.
Sgt. Gerald Leith III, 67th Military Police Detachment (Military Working Dog), Special Troops Battalion, and MWD Zira, a 4-year-old Belgian malinois, were named “Top Dog” of the course based on academic and practical tracking performance.
“I’m proud of what we were able to do in the course because (when) teaching a dog something completely new, brand new, if you’re not consistent while you are teaching a dog, they can easily pick up the wrong behaviors, behaviors you don’t want. But I’m very proud of Zira, she’s a very smart dog, and I had really great instructors, so it’s just really a testament of the dog and the instructors,” Leith said.
Custom Canine Unlimited awards the Top Dog distinction based on overall performance encompassing “excellence in leadership, academic achievement, problem-solving skills, cognitive application and tracking accuracy” as evaluated by a panel of expert/experienced tracking professionals.
“The Top Dog award is one that CCU holds at the highest standards in our MWD tracking course. This award is not given lightly and is something that Sergeant Leith consistently showcased throughout his tracking course,” said CCU Apprentice Keely Hill, one of the course instructors. “Sergeant Leith showed excellent leadership and not only set the standards for others within this course, but also held them accountable. He showcased his extensive knowledge that he has obtained while being a part of the MWD program, took what was taught in this course, and brought it to the next level of application.”
Five local MWD teams and one from Fort Huachuca, Arizona, participated in the monthlong course. Sgt. 1st Class Cody Barratt, 67th MWD Detachment kennel master, and Staff Sgt. Joshua Stiles, 67th MWD Detachment operations NCO and handler of MWD Alfonz, served as observers during the course, “so we can understand what they are doing and how to implement a training plan for them to continue to become a better tactical team,” Stiles said. “We also have the ability to reach back out to the instructors if we have any issues.”
Course participants attended classes each week covering tracking, scent theory, different types of tracks and tracking dogs, grooming, travelling with their dogs and more, and tested weekly on that week’s lessons, as well as all of the prior lessons, with a grade of 75 percent required to pass the course. At the end of each week, participants used the week’s lessons in practical exercises, working on obedience and tracking as they competed against their classmates.
Leith said the scenarios for the MWD teams were to not only determine who was Top Dog in the classroom, but who was Top Dog in the course overall, and for the teams to be able to apply everything they had been learning. Leith said “unknown track” was one of those practical exercise scenarios the teams were challenged on.
“All they give you is your starting location but they don’t tell you what direction the person went,” Leith said. “They just tell you ‘hey, he was last seen here,’ and you have to get your dog to establish on a track. Establishing on a track means to pick up the target odor, which is the target, the person we are actually tracking.”
Hill said tracking is not something that can easily be done but that Leith and Zira showed great aptitude for it.
“There are so many different scenarios, environmental challenges and distractions that a tracking team must navigate through; however, (Leith) pushed not only himself but also MWD Zira in order to bring to light their true capabilities and confidence. Sergeant Leith showed a true desire to understand all of these changes, differences and the science behind tracking and was committed to making the best decision to allow his MWD to be successful.”
Leith said tracking is difficult because there are many places the tracked person could go, the dog’s behavior has to be constantly read and interpreted correctly to make sure the dog is on track, and as important and maybe even more so, to determine when the dog is off track, referred to as when the dog ‘negatives.’
“If you are on the track right, and then you start to notice your dog negativing, then, in your mind, you go back to the last place your dog was on track, where you had last seen the behavior that fits being on track, and then you do something we call ‘cutting’ to get back on the right track. Cutting is just searching in a 360-degree circle of where you had last seen the change of behavior, and then wherever your dog gets on track during that cut, you just go with it,” he said.
Leith and Zira used those skills as they tracked an “escaped inmate” in the Army Corrections Command’s escaped inmate exercise Sept. 18.
Leith said Zira performed well during the exercise but noted that there was some cross contamination on the track that complicated things.
“The dogs, they don’t know ‘enemy’ odor, they just know human odor, so if someone was just out there, they are going to follow the freshest track possible, and it might not be the track you want, but that is just a risk you deal with in real-life tracks,” he said. “It took a long time (to locate the escaped inmate role-player), but sometimes that’s how it is. You can’t really put a time limit on tracking. As long as the dog is working, you just have to keep them on task and work through distractors.”
Hill said the Top Dog honor was a way to recognize the team’s ability to encompass and demonstrate everything that was taught during the course.
“We truly wanted to recognize the leadership, dedication and perseverance that was given to this tracking course in its totality, and Sergeant Leith, as well as MWD Zira, demonstrated that consistently throughout our four-week course and never disappointed,” she said.
Leith said going forward, the award means he needs to work even harder.
“Because you get an award called Top Dog, it doesn’t mean the work stops — you need to remain Top Dog. You need to keep running tracks, keep throwing distractors out at the dog, keep challenging the dog and challenging yourself.”
Leith said continuing challenging training is essential, and that even teams who train all of the time have fairly low tracking success.
“Even the best dogs around the country, their find rate is 40 percent of the time, so, if you’re not working on tracking, the skill itself, you’re going to fall way below that. There are just a lot of different factors that can disrupt the track, but it is worth it the one time where you find someone. You follow your dog, you see their behavior, you make the right turns — there is nothing better than finding the person at the end of that track. So, it is definitely a skill that is worth developing and working on because people go missing all of the time,” Leith said. “Just because we went through a course for a month doesn’t mean we’re where we need to be as a dog team, so you need to keep pushing and challenging, continue to develop that asset so we can provide that skill for the Garrison.”
The skills used to find escaped prisoners in a deployed setting are the same used to find children or other missing persons in a Garrison setting, Leith said.
“There’s always someone that needs to be found.”
The Fort Leavenworth MWD teams don’t have police authority off post, Leith said, but they can provide help to area law enforcement when asked for assistance.
Leith has been a MWD handler for four years at Fort Leavenworth, his first duty station, with about one year working with Patrol Drug Detector MWD Boomer, a German shepherd, before working with Zira, who is a Patrol Explosive Detector – Enhanced. The “enhanced” amendment means she has enhanced off-leash capabilities. Leith and Zira also earned Top Dog during their three-month enhanced course, which ran January to April 2024 at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Leith was also named distinguished honor graduate of his Basic Leader Course earlier this year.
“The only way to really state it is he’s just been crushing it lately,” said Capt. Bronwyn Kirkpatrick, commander of the 500th and 67th MP Detachments. “He really excelled at BLC above his peers. He was only a corporal for 19 days, which I think is like a new standard. He really sets himself apart by holding himself to the highest standard, more so even than what we can ask of him. And then with Zira, as well, was in the top 1 percent of those Canine Unlimited tracker course graduates.”
Kirkpatrick spoke as Leith and Zira, as well as Pfc. Emily Liter, 500th MP Detachment, Special Troops Battalion, were recognized by Garrison Commander Col. Duane Mosier with unit coins before the quarterly training brief Sept. 18 at STB Headquarters.
“Pfc. Liter and Sergeant Leith have both been performing above and beyond the standard and really setting that new standard for both their peers and their superiors,” she said.
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