It can be a terrifying thing to see a dog streaking toward you across a field, fast and low to the ground, lips peeled back from a mouth filled with huge white teeth. But for the son of a Maple Valley couple, all he can think about, as the 80-pound animal leaps toward his arm, is making sure the dog gets a good bite.
Marine Corps Cpl. Eric Flynn, son of Tim and Joan Flynn of Maple Valley, is a military student working as a dog trainer with the 341st Training Squadron, the largest canine training center of its kind in the world.
The Department of Defense Military Working Dog Center has courses that train both new dogs and new handlers to work together as sentries and bomb and drug sniffers. The human students spend 11 weeks working with veteran dogs learning how to control and understand their future canine partners. The new dogs work with veteran handlers to learn patrol work and to recognize the scents of drugs and explosives and the behaviors that will tell their handlers they’ve found something.
“I am here to learn as much as possible from the dog trainers here,” said Flynn, a 2005 Tahoma Senior High School graduate. “I will take what I learn here back to my home station so I can assist in training our dogs.”
The four-footed students at the center learn to identify the scents of a wide variety of explosives and drugs, many of which are odorless to humans. The dogs also learn how to patrol and are taught “controlled aggression” – when it is and is not appropriate to bite a human and to let go of someone they have bitten, on command and with no hesitation. For Flynn, and others at the center working with canines is a completely different military experience.
“One of the best things about working with the dogs is being outside and doing different types of training every day,” said Flynn. “No day is the same and no dog is the same so you are constantly learning.”
Human students at the school learn the basics of their future partners including safety procedures, managing health, the gear they will be using, general record keeping for the animals and the principles of behavioral conditioning.
Then they begin to work with the dogs, learning basic obedience commands for the animals, how to control the animals, procedures for patrolling and searching an area and how to perform as a decoy to keep a working dog in top form.
“People don’t realize it, but working dogs save thousands of lives every day with their great sense of smell,” said Duritsky, who has been in the Marine Corps for four years, serving twice in Iraq. “When you put a trained military working dog together with a certified handler you get an outstanding weapon during war.”
Flynn understands that facing ferocious attacks, hammering in constant commands and providing frequent praise will one day pay off with human lives saved on the battlefield.
