The stainless steel dog trailer full of new canine recruits pulled into the kennel parking lot at RTC. Highway dust from the thirteen-hour drive from Indiana—including two bathroom breaks for the dogs—dulled the sheen of the trailer, but the excited barking of the dogs was anything but muted.
They wanted out.
Instructors and handlers gathered to see what kinds of dogs two canine staffers had picked out at Vohne Liche Kennels for the brand-new Personnel Screening Canines Open Area (PSCO) program, aka the “Friendly Dog” program, aka the “Floppy-Eared Dog” program.
These would be the first Secret Service dogs to scent vapor trails coming off people, rather than fixed objects—an additional layer of defense for the White House or anywhere they might work. The future Friendly Dog handlers had been in classroom training for a week and were anxious to meet their potential partners.
Steve M., a canine program instructor, stepped out of the truck and stretched the kinks out of his back.
“I think we got some good ones here,” he said. He and another instructor began bringing the dogs out of the trailer one at a time.
He introduced the staff to several Labrador retrievers, a couple of springer spaniels, and a cocker spaniel. They all seemed fairly affable, despite the long journey. Most stopped barking once out of the trailer.
These dogs had the hallmark floppy ears that were supposed to help prevent tourists from moving away from them in a crowd, as often happened with Malinois and other pointy-eared law-enforcement dogs whose reputations and looks tend to be more intimidating. Most wagged amiably. It was an altogether different group of recruits from the dogs that normally charge out of the trailer.
And then there was a dog who fit no category.
Part terrier, part border collie, most likely—a shaggy, scraggly morphing of the two. His fur looked like a black-and-white shag rug that someone had regrettably thrown in the dryer on extra hot. A cowlick partway along his back added to the chaos.
His muzzle was mostly white, with black mottling from his skin showing through in patches. White hairs intruded on the black fur that covered most of the rest of his face, giving him the appearance of an older dog.
To top off the look, hanging three inches down from each side of the dog’s mouth were long, coarse tendrils of fur with a rusty orange hue. Brian thought it looked like a canine version of a Fu Manchu mustache.
He stepped back and silently surveyed the dog, from his pointy black ears—ha ha, so much for floppy-eared dogs—to his white-tipped tail.
What’s THAT? he thought, but didn’t say it aloud.
“Well, pretty is as pretty does,” he uttered through his chuckles.
“This is Roadee,” Steve smiled and told the group. He knew the impression the dog must be making. “I think he may have real potential.”
Steve, a master sergeant in the United States Marine Corps Reserve, spent his nine active-duty Marine years as a dog handler and trainer. When he thinks a dog has what it takes, the dog usually does.
Bill strode up from the kennel office.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” the agent said, laughing and shaking his head.
Roadee looked up at him, eyes narrowing slightly, ears tipping backward, mouth firmly shut. His expression left little room for interpretation.
You wait and see, pal.
—
The handsome Labs and peppy spaniels made the rounds with the handlers during the first week of Friendly Dog training. Ziggy, a mellow, smart yellow Lab, was the dog most of the handlers wanted to work with.
Roadee wasn’t part of the rotation the first few days. He was like the kid who never got picked to be on a team at school. He sat in his kennel and watched as the other dogs paraded in and out. He’d go on walks, but that was it.
No one wanted to interact much with him. When someone would pet him, he would get so excited he’d unleash his bladder. One of the springers, Dyson, had the same issue, but he was being worked and trained most days despite this.
Then one day, after it became evident that a couple of the other dogs didn’t have the right stuff, Roadee was brought out of his kennel. It was more a matter of protocol than the belief he could be a bona fide member of the Secret Service. They couldn’t return him to Vohne Liche Kennels without at least giving him a fighting chance.
A good bath and solid diet had made him look a little less rough around the edges. He bounced out of his cage, jumping around at the end of his leash and wanting to work.
It quickly became clear that Roadee had more previous training than the other dogs. Maybe too much.
While most of the other dogs were green and just beginning on obedience and some scent work, Roadee already knew the ropes. When instructors tried him out on basic scent work, he would alert.
In fact, he would alert to almost everything he was asked to sniff. It didn’t matter if it had an explosives odor or not. He would sit. It was one alert after another. If he went out on the job like this, the White House would be under constant lockdown.
The instructors realized he had played this game before and he knew how to get paid. They set to work encouraging him, with positive reinforcement, to make more honest choices.
With the exception of his cheating ways, he quickly proved himself to be a top student. He was a fast learner and had the kind of high energy needed for the job.
Most of the handlers didn’t mind too much if they were assigned Roadee for the day. They just didn’t want him for keeps.
They couldn’t imagine dealing with his “glee pee,” especially at home, much less out in public in front of the White House gates where he’d be sniffing out passersby for potential explosives. Sometimes all it took was a look from someone and he’d let loose a stream.
Even though he looked better than he did when he emerged from the kennel trailer, the handlers didn’t think he had the appearance of a Secret Service dog whose mission was to protect the president of the United States.
The handlers had all been in the Secret Service for years, mostly in jobs other than handling dogs. Ending up with a canine partner who looked like he lived down the alley from Oscar the Grouch wasn’t something they’d envisioned when they signed up for this duty.
By the end of the second week with the dogs, the instructors had decided on the matches. They would be announcing them later that day. But just for fun, that morning they asked the handlers to rank their choices.
Ziggy was the first choice of most of the handlers. He had proven to be a super quick study, and with his happy, chilled-out personality he’d be a welcome addition to any household.
Only one person even put Roadee on his list. Josh B., the longtime handler of an EDT dog who was about to retire, realized Roadee’s potential.
“The only thing going against him besides the pee thing is his looks,” he told one of the other handlers in his class. “If he looked like Ziggy, I might put him as number one.” Instead, he put Roadee as number three out of three.
The handlers all ranked their choices, handed them to the instructors, and went out for a few more hours of training.
They were outside at Rowley Training Center working the dogs when a flashbang went off somewhere in the distance from unrelated Secret Service training. It wasn’t terribly loud. Most of the dogs didn’t seem to notice.
But Ziggy did.
He immediately appeared to deflate and lose all his confidence. He tucked his tail between his legs, and when he could be convinced to walk, he barely moved. It took exuberant motivational praise to even get him back to a normal walk, and after a few minutes he’d slow down again and his ears would pull back tight against his head.
This kind of reaction was not what they had expected. Ziggy had been exposed to loud noises during testing in Indiana and had not come undone. But no matter how perfect Ziggy was in every other way, they all knew that this was the end of any potential Secret Service career for him. They couldn’t have a dog who shuts down at the sound of a blast doing the kind of work he would be doing at the White House. Cars backfire. Fireworks go off. Demonstrations get loud. Kids pop balloons.
Ziggy would be heading back to Indiana. He wasn’t alone. He’d be joining Teddy, Jerry, Max, and Harley for a return trip. Because the program was new, it would take a little time to figure out what to look for in ideal canine candidates.
With the first choice of the handlers now gone from the list, they gathered in the classroom for their meeting with Steve and another instructor to learn who would be at their side at the White House and in their homes for the next several years.
“All right, five of you guys put Ziggy first, but as you know, he’s going back,” the other instructor told them.
The instructors went through one by one, adding dramatic pauses between. Halfway through the list, Josh knew he would be making a phone call after the meeting to give his wife a heads-up.
“I’m bringing home a dog today,” he told her later. “He’s a little rough looking but I think he’ll grow on you.”
—
Josh’s retired Malinois, Ciela (pronounced seel-ah), was the kind of dog who commanded respect wherever she went. Never mind that her ears are so big that Josh jokes that if Batman had a dog, Ciela would be it. Even in retirement, she’s a regal dog with a don’t-mess-with-me air. When she was still working, people generally kept their distance.
If onlookers said anything, it was usually about how beautiful she was. Only one time did someone make a negative comment about her looks. It happened the first week Josh had her out on the job.
“That’s a canine?” the woman asked. “Man, that dog is so ugly!”
Josh didn’t know what to say. He was just as mad as if she had insulted his child. He said nothing.
Ciela was an excellent EDT dog. She alerted once at the White House in 2014, her last year on the job. She dove under a car, stared up, and wouldn’t budge until Josh called her off. It was a dramatic alert that shut down an entry point. A bomb team took it seriously but couldn’t find anything.
They had worked together since 2006, and she had never thrown that kind of change of behavior outside of training. Josh was sure she had detected an odor she was trained to find, but the cause of the odor was no longer visible. She wasn’t a dog to tell fibs for rewards.
She alerted twice at the vice president’s residence as well. One alert was for a car parked near the helicopter pad. The other was, of all things, for a rope that hoisted the American flag up and down. Nothing suspicious was found either time, but Josh once again had no doubt she had smelled something in her vast odor repertoire.
Josh and Ciela had traveled extensively for the job. They’d been to Germany for the G8 summit, Copenhagen for the failed U.S. Olympics bid, Israel when Cheney was vice president, Italy for a vice presidential vacation, Costa Rica, Canada, and all over the United States.
Secret Service dog teams sometimes work with military working dogs and handlers. For the UN General Assembly, Secret Service dogs usually work close to the inner perimeter, while military dog teams tend to be a little farther out.
On one joint assignment in Florida, Josh ran across a Navy dog handler sitting in his white Ford Explorer. A big sign on the window warned: CAUTION: MILITARY WORKING DOG.
Josh walked up and introduced himself.
“You got a German shepherd in there?” he asked.
“No,” the Navy dog handler said. “A Jack Russell terrier.”
Josh laughed at the joke.
The handler rolled down the window and a scrappy Jack Russell terrier jumped up, put his paws on the door, and stared at him.
“This is Lars,” the Navy handler said.
“Oh my God!” Josh said, busting up. “You weren’t kidding!”
The handler had been through this kind of reaction many times. He just nodded and smiled. It was a feeling Josh would come to know all too well.
—
Karma is a cruel mistress.
On the lower windshield of Josh’s work van is a sign warning POLICE K-9 VEHICLE in English and Spanish, over the Secret Service’s logo. The head of a German shepherd appears to be looking at the warning words from the right.
Josh and Roadee don’t usually get out of their van at work in front of many people, but they face plenty of double takes on the job at the White House fence line. People point, they smile, they ask lots of questions. It makes Josh’s role particularly challenging, because he has to guide Roadee through the crowd, maintain a focus on what Roadee is up to, and be completely aware of any important changes of behavior that could indicate he’s onto the scent of an explosive device.
When Roadee is working, he’s serious about his job. He pulls ahead, tracing the scent of everyone near, hoping that someone, somewhere, will bear an odor he’s looking for so he can get his coveted tennis ball reward—if not then, then afterward.
Many tourists ask Josh if he and his dog would pose for a photo—sometimes just to prove to their friends that this dog really exists and works for the Secret Service. He politely declines requests that would entail him stopping.
He’ll try to answer questions when he can, but he doesn’t let anything get in the way of doing his job at 100 percent. He’s as serious about his work as Roadee is about his.
If there are too many questions, or if Josh can’t stop to answer, one of the nearby Uniformed Division officers will take over. Most know Roadee’s story. The same questions come up every day, and they’re happy to answer whatever they can so Roadee and Josh can do their jobs.
The questions usually start within thirty seconds of Josh and Roadee walking from the van to the fence line. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s crowded or relatively empty. There are always questions:
—“What kind of dog is that?” or for the less tactful, “What’s that?!”
Josh tells them about the border collie–terrier mix theory. It usually satisfies people, but there are some who set to work figuring out just what kind of terrier must be at work in his gene pool to end up with this unique look.
—“I didn’t know you guys use rescue dogs!”
“No, we go through a vendor. He looks like a rescue dog, but he’s not.” He wishes he knew more about Roadee’s history and wonders how someone who breeds working dogs chose to create a Roadee.
—“I thought you used canines!”
“This is a canine,” he’ll say with a patient smile. Just like the Navy handler did all those years back.
—“Wow, that dog’s old!”
“He’s only four,” Josh may reply. He knows that won’t usually be the end of the conversation, which usually continues with, “But his face has so much white!”
—“He’s so scraggly!”
There is no answer for this one as far as he’s concerned. Maybe just a “Yup.”
—“She’s pretty!”
“Thanks!” He doesn’t usually bother explaining the gender thing.
—“Does he bite?”
“All dogs can bite.”
—“Is he a good dog?”
“He’s a great dog.”
—“Can I pet him?”
Even though DO NOT PET is emblazoned on Roadee’s harness, this is one of the more common questions. “Sorry, he’s working” is the simple answer.
There’s another reason the tourists should not pet Roadee. This is one explanation Josh never shares with them.
—
Visitors to Josh’s house, which is down a winding country road far from Washington, D.C., are never greeted by Roadee. It’s not that he’s antisocial. It’s just that Josh and his wife like to minimize Roadee’s little accidents.
They don’t want to tell company, “Please don’t pet him.” It’s easier, and the dog is more mellow, if he’s off on his own until visitors have been there for a while.
When Josh’s parents stop in, Roadee is so thrilled to see them that it doesn’t even take them petting him to set him off. All they have to do is talk to him when they walk in, and a yellow stream hits the rug. Josh asks them to give Roadee the cold shoulder for a while after arriving, but it’s hard to ignore their scruffy grandchild.
Josh’s father was also in the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service, serving in almost every capacity for thirty-two years. Josh always knew he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, but he chose to start his career on an entirely different path. He majored in illustration at Syracuse University and became a webmaster in Virginia.
After four years of office work, he was ready to make the transition to the Secret Service. He briefly considered applying to become a Secret Service agent instead of a Uniformed Division officer, but that would have meant uprooting from his large extended family to transfer elsewhere. Agents usually start in field offices away from D.C.
Once he settled on UD, he hoped to eventually become a canine handler. “I thought it would be the coolest thing,” says Josh, who grew up with dogs.
Josh never envisioned himself in the canine world with a partner like Roadee, but the dog has proven himself a dedicated champ. He’s well respected at RTC, where he’s sometimes used to demonstrate how to do the job with focus and gusto.
Those traits follow him home as well. But at home, focus and gusto aren’t the coveted attributes they are on the job, and can quickly get out of hand.
A large yellow foam sponge rests on a counter in the kitchen. In its current state it looks like a giant piece of cheese with a corner that has been chewed away by a hefty mutant rat.
By coincidence, Roadee’s nickname is Splinter. When Roadee’s scraggly chin hairs and Fu Manchu mustache have not been groomed for a while, he bears a striking resemblance to Splinter, the wise martial arts mutant rat who mentors the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Two days earlier, Josh had been using the yellow sponge for some tile work on a kitchen backsplash. He went out to talk with a neighbor for five minutes while Roadee was sleeping. When he walked back in, he discovered that Roadee (alias Splinter) had shredded a large chunk of the yellow sponge (alias cheese) to tiny bits. There were not enough shreds to account for the loss, so Josh knew he would be scooping the collateral damage for the next couple of days.
“Oh my God, five minutes, Roadee? Five minutes and you get into this?!” Josh knew it was his own fault, though. He doesn’t usually let down his guard with his feisty crime fighter for a second.
Ciela has the run of the whole house. She has been trustworthy since Josh’s first days with her. Roadee, however, lives the home life of someone who is not to be trusted.
He’s not as free-range as Ciela. He gets to go around most of the house as long as he’s at Josh’s side, but his room is a spare room in the finished basement. It’s a spartan room, with only a couple of dog beds and a couple of plastic kennels the dogs can use as dens. The idea is that Roadee can’t get into too much trouble there. Ciela often joins him.
One night after Josh and his family returned from a restaurant, he headed to Roadee’s room to check on how he was doing with the new cover his wife had put on one of the beds. He got to the room and walked back to the stairs.
“Honey, can you come down here, please?” he called up to his wife.
He didn’t want to face this on his own.
It looked as though a snowmageddon had stormed through while they were out. The cover was shredded to snowflakey bits all over the room. The bed itself had been divested of much of its foam.
Both dogs stood at the doorway as the couple surveyed the mess. Josh looked from one dog to the other. Ciela looked right back at him with a “You know I didn’t do this” expression. Roadee looked at him with a piece of foam clinging to the side of his mouth.
“What am I going to do with you, Roadee?”
The basement also has a living room/rec room, where Josh and the human kids like to hang out, watch TV, and play games.
If someone leaves the downstairs bathroom door open, Roadee will tiptoe across the carpeting and get into the trash can or rip toilet paper off the roll. If the children leave a toy out—which they rarely do because they’ve learned their lesson—it’s in grave danger.
Fortunately Roadee is Josh’s shadow around the house. Roadee wants to be with him all the time. When Josh watches TV in the upstairs living room, Roadee will sometimes watch him watching TV.
“It’s kind of creepy,” Josh recently told a friend. “He just sits and stares right at me with this look.”
At dinnertime, Roadee is supposed to stay far from the table, near the stairs. He usually has his favorite toy, a flexible red dog Frisbee, with him. As the family gets involved in a conversation, and food gets passed around, Roadee magically appears under the table with the Frisbee, usually folded in half like a rubber taco. He’ll place it at someone’s feet as if it’s an offering, a trade, for a bite or two.
When Josh discovers him, he has a special phrase.
“Go to your place, Roadee.”
Roadee takes his Frisbee taco and trots back to the stairs.
“Your place” does not specifically mean the stairs. It means “go somewhere farther away, please.” At the dinner table, it’s the stairs. In other situations, Roadee takes about twenty steps in whatever direction works, and settles in.
During a short lull in the dinner conversation, a little click-click-click-click is heard. Here comes Roadee again, trotting across the wood floor, the folded Frisbee in his mouth, hoping again to make a deal. Tonight it’s for chicken parm. But no one trades with him.
“Go to your place, Roadee.”
And back he goes.
At least for a while.
For all of Roadee’s foibles—Josh describes him as “just a little quirky”—Josh knows he’s worth the extra vigilance. He and the canine staff have tried to get to the bottom of the “glee pee” issue, but it appears to be firmly engrained. Josh has managed to work around it pretty well.
Roadee’s shredder tendencies can be controlled by being extra watchful. Josh doesn’t want the dog to have to live in his crate or be shut in a room all day on his days off. Roadee already gets plenty of exercise on his job and before work when he cuts loose outside, so more exercise is not the answer. And anyway, his energy is part of the reason he’s such a good detection dog.
Roadee has many admirers in the canine program.
“I may have laughed at Roadee when he came off the trailer, but he got the last laugh,” says Bill. “He’s a great dog, and Josh is a great handler. One of the best. They’re an excellent team.”
Josh has similar words about his dogs. As with most other handlers, the superlatives flow when describing his canines.
“Both my dogs have been the best,” he explains. “Ciela was the best at the EDT side when she was working. Other handlers will tell you their dog was the best but Ciela was the best. She really was the best.
“As far as the PSCO world, Roadee is the best. He really is. I have been very lucky. Both of them have been super eager to work, to please, very high drive, and I don’t see ‘quit’ in either of them.”
As the Secret Service looks at other uses for the Friendly Dog program, travel might become more commonplace. During the pope’s visit, Josh and Roadee took their first road trip. It was by van, so no planes to contend with. Roadee did well and remained focused for the detection work.
Josh carefully watched Roadee in the hotel so he wouldn’t eat the towels, sheets, and toilet paper. He wouldn’t let him out of his sight. If Josh left the room, he shut Roadee in his travel kennel.
If air travel becomes part of the job of the Friendly Dogs, Josh hopes Roadee will handle it with the cool aplomb of Ciela.
Josh smiles at the mental image of his scampish dog flying around the world in a military cargo plane on missions to protect the president with the big boys.
“I’m just as curious as everyone else how he’d do on a plane. It would be . . .” he says, and pauses, “interesting.”