Take photos of your dog. Take lots of photos. Everywhere you go. At home. At work. Just keep a record. One day you’ll be very glad you did.
The advice a seasoned dog handler gave Erica F. when she was starting on the Secret Service Explosive Detection Team made a lot of sense to her. She had spent eight years in the Army and had witnessed the bonds between soldier dogs and handlers. She had seen dozens of photos the handlers had proudly shown her of their “kids” on deployments and overseas duty.
Her Secret Service sniffer dog, Noisy, was a natural poser. The German shepherd would look right into the lens, ears alert, eyes bright. He seemed to like the attention that came with the whole photo-taking process, and especially the praise after Erica snapped a few pics.
They traveled to fifty locations by plane from 2009 until 2015, and Erica has photos from almost all of them. “I always found a way,” she says.
Noisy starred in hundreds of photos, from Peru to Beverly Hills to the top of the National Cathedral—“It’s a lot of stairs.” The stairs were nothing for Erica, an ultrarunner who has done hundred-mile runs in under twenty-four hours. And they were no trouble for Noisy either. He looked like a German shepherd and chilled like a shepherd, but he worked with the tireless spirit of a Malinois.
There’s an especially colorful photo Erica loves. It’s from a flower production and exporting facility in Bogotá, Colombia. Behind Noisy, bunches of vibrant carnations lie sideways, gently suspended in white cloth bundles. Noisy is staring directly at the camera. He looks effortlessly calm, but his eyes sparkle, his ears are perked, and he has an unmistakable happy smile on his face.
“He was patient, but I’m sure sometimes he was like, ‘Mom, can we not have to take another photo?’” says Erica.
One of her favorite photos is not from their travels. She took it in their living room, as Noisy was sitting facing the window and looking out intently, but serenely, through the open blinds. He is in profile, and appears strong and noble.
But if you look closely, you can see that a strip of his front right leg has been shaved. What you can’t see is that his whole underbelly has also been shaved and is healing from recent surgery.
About a week earlier, Erica had noticed Noisy’s belly was distended and brought him to Fort Belvoir for a check. After an ultrasound, they discovered he had a tumor on his spleen and he was starting to bleed internally. They opened him up immediately and removed the tumor.
Erica watched the surgery through the observation glass, willing him to be OK, focusing on his breath.
If you’re breathing, you’re alive, just keep breathing.
She spent the next thirty-six hours at Noisy’s side, her upper half in the large, floor-level veterinary kennel, her lower half on the floor. She kept vigil as they transfused him and gave him all his IVs.
When they came home, Noisy’s two Jack Russell terrier “siblings” were jubilant to see him again. He wagged when he saw them doing their happy dance. They kept him company, staying near him as he slept.
Several days into his recovery, the vet called with the lab results. Very bad news, she warned. Noisy had hemangiosarcoma, an aggressive cancer of the cells that line blood vessels. Hemangiosarcoma has been referred to as “among the most challenging and mysterious diseases encountered in veterinary practice.” It’s not an uncommon cancer in dogs. German shepherds are afflicted by it more than most other breeds.
The vet told her there is no cure. Noisy could be gone in a matter of a few weeks.
Erica felt the floor drop out from under her.
She determined she would savor whatever time she had left with him. She took more photos and spent as much time as she could right beside him. Once, on a good day, she even brought him out to training. He had always loved his work, and she knew he must be missing it. He was almost his old self that day, wrapped in the thrill of the hunt and the joy of the reward that came with finding the scent of explosives.
Erica had hoped to get him into a study that could one day benefit other dogs with this form of cancer. But eleven days after his diagnosis, she knew it was too late. Noisy was beyond tired, his gums had grown pale, and his stomach was starting to look like it did the first time. She brought him to the vet, not knowing if he would be making the return trip.
His blood work showed something bad was going on inside again. The veterinarian gave Erica options that could keep him alive a little longer. Options that wouldn’t be easy for him, including opening him up again.
Erica considered them, but only briefly. She knew anything she did to keep him going was for her, not for him. She didn’t want to put him through anything else. He had been through enough.
He was tired and seemed remarkably relaxed. She couldn’t fathom waiting until he was in terrible pain to let him go. She sat down next to him and bent close for a little one-to-one talk as she cradled his head in her arms.
“You’ve been the best dog in the world,” she told him, trying to maintain her usual calm, sure composure. “But if you’re tired, it’s OK to go.”
He fell asleep and started snoring in her arms. She felt some comfort that he could be at peace in their last moments together.
The vet and a couple of techs came in. They put a blanket under him. He was still sleepy. Erica got behind him. As they administered the drug that makes him unconscious, she kissed his head tenderly. When she was ready, they gave him the final drug.
“And then it just stops. Everything stops,” she later told her husband. “And then you’re just kind of sitting there, like ‘What do I do now?’”
She caressed his fur, felt his skin, still warm, and cried her heart out.
She walked out alone, with his leash and a gut-wrenching emptiness.
A few days later, she was back at the White House, working as a regular Uniformed Division officer.
On the way to work, she would look over her shoulder, expecting to see Noisy there. The absence of his breathing, of his constant companionship, made the long ride from Northern Maryland a lonely one. She never realized how much she talked to him until he wasn’t there to talk to anymore.
During breaks and downtime, she would often find herself scrolling through her phone and looking at all the photos she had taken of him over the years. It sometimes made her feel the enormity of the loss even more, but mostly it was comforting to see him smiling back at her from their adventures around the world.
When she had Noisy at her side, she never minded working overtime. Whenever she was with him, no matter how hard they worked and how late the hour, it felt more like she was hanging out with a buddy. Now, no matter how friendly and empathetic her fellow officers, she felt part of her was missing.
“I’m kind of an introvert as a person, so getting to be around your buddy all the time made it so easy. When we were done with a sweep, there would always be someone to sit with,” she says.
Because of the canine program’s long-standing “one and done” policy, few handlers ever go back into canine. At first, Erica didn’t want to even try to get another dog. She could never replace Noisy and didn’t want to go through the pain of losing a working dog again.
But then a handler left to take a job at another agency, and Erica decided to apply for the vacancy. She had to submit her application just like everyone else and pass a PT test (not a problem).
The program had a dog who needed a new handler as soon as possible, and here was this handler, all trained. Erica was offered the job.
A couple of handlers who had also been given another dog after their first dog died took her aside. They told her that she’d probably want to keep a distance at first but that eventually the new dog would win her over.
“Don’t worry,” handler Tim D. told her. “Noisy will always have a piece of your heart no matter how much you end up loving your new dog. It’ll take time, but you’ll grow to love him. They have a way of invading your heart.”
On a warm August morning in 2015, Erica and a black German shepherd named Kid officially started their partnership. Part of her didn’t feel she was ready. The dog looked quizzically at this new person who had taken him out of his kennel at RTC.
She introduced herself.
“Hey, Kid, I’m Erica. You lost your handler, and I lost my dog, so we both have something in common. We’re both kind of lost. Maybe we can help each other out. What do you think?”
He gave a wag and stood up.
She vowed not to compare Kid to Noisy too much, but it was only natural. She liked how Kid would chill out in her van. Noisy rarely did. But like Noisy, Kid was friendly and sweet.
They’d have to pass the tests all other new dogs and handlers would, so after a few days of hanging out together, grooming him, and taking him on walks, it was time to get to work. They would spend the next few weeks getting back up to speed together with the help of one of the instructors.
Around the holidays she sent an e-mail update to friends. Among the news was the latest on Kid:
“We are doing well. It always helps to get out of training and really start working and bonding together. We’ve taken a couple of trips together and he is adjusting well to me and my style of things. He is a really good boy and VERY smart.
“Time keeps moving on and I have to as well. Lucky for me I have another great partner to do that with. I can’t wait to see the finished product.”
She attached a photograph she had taken just before they finished certifying together. It shows this black furry face looking straight up at her from a heel position close at her side. His mouth is open, his tongue is hanging out, and his warm brown eyes are looking directly into the camera.
He looks attentive, friendly, and hardworking. He also seems to be a good poser.
This was not the first photo she had taken of him. And it certainly would not be the last.
—
“As a handler you’re immortal, if that makes sense,” says Tim. “And the dog is mortal. And you outlive your dog. It’s the hardest part of having a dog, and the hardest part of this job.”
Dogs never live long enough. It’s a fact everyone who has ever loved and lost a dog knows.
“Why parrots live for eighty years and dogs only live for eight or ten or twelve makes no sense,” says Brian.
By the time a Secret Service dog passes, a handler will probably have been with him or her for several years, and nearly 24/7—far more than most pets and their people. “It’s like losing part of your soul,” says one handler. “The best part.”
Ideally, before the end, Secret Service dogs will have at least a couple of years of retirement, where they can find their inner couch potatoes. With only one exception, Brian says Secret Service handlers have always chosen to adopt their dogs when the dog retires. There’s just no question.
As much as most dogs love working, they seem to fall into retirement quite happily.
Jim S.’s dog, Spike, retired in 2012 after nearly eight years on the job with Jim. Spike, a former K-9 Olympics winner, was slowing down due to old age and hip issues. The day Spike retired, Jim went to Five Guys and brought him back a cheeseburger and fries.
“You deserve this, Spike,” Jim told him before handing him the canine equivalent of a gold watch. “You protected two different presidents and you did your time. Happy retirement.”
All the ERT dogs are on a strict eating plan. Table scraps don’t figure into their diets, much less fast food, Marshall’s late-night celebration with Hurricane notwithstanding.
Spike ate it in ten seconds. Five minutes later, he went outside and threw it all up. Undaunted, he came back in and sniffed around for more of where that came from.
Spike had been a one-man dog his whole career. But three months into retirement, his loyalty had shifted to Jim’s wife, who worked from home.
“I come home and I tell him ‘no’ about something, and he’d be like, ‘Whatever!’ He’d walk over to Mom, and he’s like, ‘You’re not the boss anymore!’ to me.
“It was great because my wife and kids, they just loved him so much. Then they finally had that time with him to be a pet and they didn’t have to treat him like a work dog so much anymore.
“They’d sneak him treats and he got fat. They’d feed him from the table. Sometimes it made me so mad because the trainer in me said you can’t do that. Then it’s like, oh you know he’s a home dog now,” he says, and pauses. “And, yeah, maybe I dropped him a piece of steak or two myself sometimes.”
Spike even got human bed privileges, but not until Jim left for work.
“Every single morning, he jumped in my spot. I got him a nice memory foam dog bed, but he’d ditch it every day to be where I’d been. Retirement was very good to Spike.”
While many dogs seem to fall right into retirement, it can be rough on a handler to suddenly be working without a dog.
“Those who are out of the program always miss it,” says Brian. “You always see them standing at the gate, watching and reminiscing.”
Jim took a couple of weeks off before going back to work without Spike. He needed to decompress and get used to the idea that he was no longer a handler. He’d still be on the Emergency Response Team, just without a dog. He’d work alongside handlers with dogs, but in some ways, that made it more difficult.
“The transition was really rough. I felt naked,” he says. “It was hard to come to work and see the other handlers working with their dogs and feeling like you’re not part of that anymore.
“You do it so long and you spend so much time with this dog. I was spending more time with my dog than with my own family, traveling with him, going all over the place. He becomes a part of you. You’re not just the person, you’re a handler now. It’s not easy to lose that. It’s not just a job. It’s who you are.”
—
On the way to work one evening, Stew’s ERT dog, Mike, began coughing. It sounded almost like he was trying to hack up a hair ball. Stew stopped along the road and brought Mike over to a secluded area to check him out.
Mike was hunched over and moving lethargically. Stew called him over, but Mike went the wrong way—something he never did. Mike hadn’t had anything to eat for hours and hadn’t been exercising, so Stew ruled out bloat. Besides, Mike’s belly wasn’t distended.
He called work and told a supervisor what was going on and that he needed to take Mike to the vet at Fort Belvoir. He called Belvoir and told them he was on the way. A few minutes into the drive, he looked to the back of the van and saw that Mike’s stomach had swollen up. He knew Mike couldn’t make it all the way to Fort Belvoir.
Stew radioed the Joint Operations Center and told them he was running code (lights and siren) because his canine partner was in medical distress. They relayed this to local law-enforcement departments.
Maryland State Police met up with him on the highway. They used their own sirens and lights when needed to help clear the way for him to rush his partner to help.
It’s what they would do for any officer-down situation.
When they crossed into Washington, D.C., they were joined by the Metropolitan Police Department, U.S. Park Police, and vehicles from the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service. To those they passed, it may have seemed like they were escorting the president, or at least a significant head of state.
When they arrived at Friendship Hospital for Animals, other law enforcement had already set up a perimeter. Staffers were ready outside with a gurney. They raced Mike in. After a quick exam, the vets were afraid Mike had bloat, perhaps with gastric dilatation volvulus (GDV).
Bloat itself is a dangerous condition that affects primarily deep-chested dogs. In bloat, the stomach becomes badly distended with gas. A rapidly enlarged stomach can cut off circulation, or press against the lungs, affecting respiration.
With GDV bloat, the stomach twists at both ends, and the gas can’t escape either way. The effects can be rapidly lethal.
A simple preventative operation called a gastropexy is performed on all military working dogs who weigh more than thirty-five pounds. The surgery entails making a small incision and stitching the stomach to the abdominal wall. The procedure won’t prevent bloat, but it will prevent the deadlier complication of GDV.
Gastropexies aren’t done on male Secret Service canines unless a dog is having surgery already and needs to be anesthetized. The Service tries to avoid anesthesia because of possible risks, so male dogs—generally unneutered—usually aren’t pexied. Female dogs going under for spaying usually get the procedure since they’re already anesthetized.
The exact cause of bloat isn’t known, although sometimes it comes about after eating or drinking too much, or exercising too soon after eating. Mike had done neither.
The vets tried to stick a tube down Mike’s esophagus to release pressure, but it wouldn’t go in—a clear indicator of GDV. They jammed a needle between his ribs and Stew heard the air rush out. Mike was not sedated for this emergency procedure and moaned in agony.
They rushed Mike to the surgery. The staff had to remove a third of his stomach, his spleen, and part of his small intestine, which had all been damaged beyond repair by the lack of circulation.
Stew knew his dog might never work again. He just wanted him to live.
The setup at the hospital isn’t like Fort Belvoir’s, where handlers can often stay next to their dogs when they’re in their recovery kennels. The staff let Stew rest downstairs on a couch, but he couldn’t spend the night next to Mike.
About five times during the course of the night, someone ran down to get Stew because Mike’s blood pressure was dropping dangerously low. They thought Mike might not crash if his best friend came up and talked to him.
Sure enough, when Mike saw Stew, he raised his head and looked at him, and his blood pressure immediately climbed back into a normal range.
After a few minutes, Stew would have to go back to the room downstairs. Sleep failed to come on the couch, and he thought about the bond between handlers and their dogs. Seeing Mike’s pressure go back to normal without tail wagging or jumping or any physical movement to induce the reaction proved to him that these dogs feel, think, and love above and beyond any level people can comprehend.
He thought about police K-9 handlers and military dog handlers who lose it when their partner is killed or even badly injured. These handlers know this connection. It can’t be defined, and there aren’t really people who understand, other than handlers who have been through something similar.
About twenty-four hours after the emergency began, Mike seemed to be out of the woods. Stew decided to drive to the ERT’s D.C. office to take a quick shower while Mike slept at the vet’s.
His cell phone rang. It was one of the vets. She had devastating news.
“You need to get here as soon as possible. Mike has taken a sudden turn. We don’t think he’s going to make it.”
She told Stew that Mike’s stomach was basically melting where they had stitched him. She said they could do another surgery, but his chances of pulling through were not good.
Stew tried to reach his supervisors to no avail to get the OK. It didn’t matter. Mike had to live. He told the vet staff he’d put it on his credit card. They told him they would take as much off the bill as possible.
As Stew was racing back to the hospital, the Service got his message and agreed to pay.
Stew arrived at the vet’s after the surgery had started. He didn’t get a chance to see his dog first and tell him he’d be OK, tell him he loved him and what a good dog he was. He’d save it for when Mike woke up after surgery.
He never got the chance.
An hour into surgery, a vet came out and gave him the news that Mike didn’t make it. They carried Mike’s body to Stew in the room where he had been waiting. This big, strong, almost invincible man leaned over Mike’s body, holding him and crying uncontrollably. In his grief, he had no idea what to do. He felt more alone than he’d ever felt in his life.
Then the door opened, and in strode four ERT guys in full kit and machine guns, fresh off their shift. They surrounded him as he mourned his dog. He didn’t hold back because they were there. He felt far less alone with his brothers so close at hand.
—
The Tactical Canine Unit needed handlers, and a few months later, Stew was offered another dog. He fought it for a long time, not wanting to have the pain of this kind of loss again. But eventually he relented.
It took him about a year to warm up to his new dog, Nero. He had been comparing everything the dog did to Mike. He knew it wasn’t fair, and this dog would have been considered a great dog by anyone else. The problem was that he just wasn’t Mike.
But one day Nero did something that made him laugh, and the ice broke. They went on to form a special bond during their eight years working together and Nero’s three years of retirement. Stew couldn’t imagine that he had once felt ambivalent about Nero—the best dog in the world.
When Nero was thirteen years old, he fell suddenly ill. He wouldn’t go up the stairs, and the normally food-loving Mal wasn’t eating.
Stew took him to his personal vet. After Secret Service dogs retire and are adopted by their handlers, they’re considered pets, and the Secret Service no longer pays medical expenses or sends them to Fort Belvoir.
The veterinarian discovered that Nero had a massive tumor that was pushing up against his stomach and spleen. He told Stew his dog had no chance of survival no matter what, and that he was probably in a great deal of pain.
Stew called a fellow ERT handler. “I didn’t bring him here to put him down,” he told him in shock, trying to contain his grief. “I just wanted to see why he wouldn’t come up the stairs.”
He didn’t want Nero to suffer any more than he already must have. Since Nero was sedated for the diagnostic X-rays, he made the agonizing decision to let him go.
Before euthanizing Nero, the staff set him on a blanket and laid him on the floor of an examination room so Stew could spend some time with him. He lay next to him for an hour, telling him all the things he wanted him to know. He wished his idol, James Taylor, could be there and sing Nero into his final sleep with “Sweet Baby James.”
When he felt as ready as he could be—not ready at all, really—he gave a nod, and the vet and a couple of techs came in and administered the lethal dose.
Stew lay on the floor next to his dog and sobbed. He didn’t try to contain his grief. It was like Mike all over again, but even worse.
They had spent years working together, had many memorable adventures, and now his retired, old dog was a beloved fixture in his home. And suddenly he was gone. Stew didn’t want to leave, didn’t want Nero to be taken by the staff to a back room. But he couldn’t stay there with him forever.
He said a final good-bye and left the room. As he opened the door, he saw, lined up against the wall of the hall, four of his guys from ERT. This time they were in civilian clothes. They had come in on their day off to be with him. One had driven two hours.
He had a fleeting moment where he wished he hadn’t let his grief overcome him after Nero died, because they surely heard him. But he knew that as hard as the ERT guys are, they know this bond, and understood.
They told him they would carry Nero to the back room themselves and stay with him until he was processed and everything was OK.
“It’s all right, Stew, you go. We won’t leave him,” they told him.
That these men had his back during his darkest hour helped make the loss a little less devastating.
—
Barry galloped joyfully around the grassy front yard after his bath on a warm summer afternoon. He loved baths, but he especially loved what happened after baths if the weather was right.
He ran a couple of laps and then burrowed into the waiting arms of his handler, Bill Shegogue. Beaming at his dog’s bliss, Shegogue toweled him off briskly, and the German shepherd bucked with happiness, bulleting off again for another round of “wheelies,” as Shegogue called his old dog’s puppylike antics.
Half a minute later, Barry sped back to Shegogue for more toweling. He wagged his tail so hard that the whole back half of his body wagged with it. His damp, dark fur glistened in the sun as he ran off again in wide circles.
Shegogue and Barry had worked together in the Secret Service for almost seven years, and Barry had retired only a month earlier because his arthritis was slowing him down. Shegogue looked forward to making his dog as happy as possible during his retirement years. This was just the beginning.
Barry cantered back to Shegogue for more towel time. Shegogue, who was crouched down, embraced him in the towel and dried him some more as Barry wagged and panted. The corners of Barry’s mouth were drawn up in what Shegogue knew was his version of a smile. When Barry was extra happy, he smiled like this.
And then as he held him in his arms on the perfect summer day, Shegogue felt Barry’s body go limp. For a moment he let himself think his dog was just suddenly tired. But when he felt the weight of his dog in his arms, he knew. He had lost Barry. Just like that, in the middle of his reverie. No pulse, no breathing. But still with a little smile.
He rushed him to the local vet. They told him he had been felled by a massive heart attack.
If ever there was a good way to die, this was it. But the blow of its suddenness was incapacitating for Shegogue. Eighteen years later, his eyes still well up when he talks about it.
You lived and died a life only meant for the fearless and strongest and finest of American heroes, and you were one of them; and you wore the Badge of the Very Elite . . . Rest and Play in Peace, K9 Maxo. Angels will sing for you now.
—Posted on the “Officer Down Memorial Page” for Secret Service EDT dog Maxo on March 7, 2013
On January 26, 2013, a dog named Maxo became the first Secret Service canine to die in the line of duty.
Maxo was a young, energetic Malinois. He and his handler had trained together for four months and had been operational for ten months. Maxo was an affectionate dog, a leaner. Everyone who met him instantly liked him.
Their future was bright, with years of fun and work ahead. The latest adventure was a trip to New Orleans on a protective mission for Vice President Joe Biden.
But as they were sweeping a parking garage for explosives, Maxo fell from the sixth-floor roof of the garage.
It was a freak accident, involving the Mal’s unending exuberance, a leash that got torn away from the handler, and a collar that popped off the dog’s neck. Maxo was rushed to a veterinary emergency hospital but didn’t survive.
His death ripped his handler apart. It’s terrible enough when a dog dies from an illness, or in the line of fire. But when it’s an accident, even if there’s no wrongdoing, the burden of the guilt can be incapacitating.
The military has been contending with its dogs nearly flying off roofs or out of buildings—and sometimes actually going over—for a long time. During predeployment training at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, handlers are reminded of the dangers of not having complete control as their dogs search the top of a mock “Middle Eastern” compound. Still, some break away and head for the edge in pursuit of a Kong, or just because they’re such high-drive dogs that they’ll take any opportunity to run.
It even happens on deployment. One day Marine Staff Sergeant Kristopher Knight’s dog, Bram, was walking around the roof of a compound in Iraq when the Kong he was clenching in his jaws dropped and bounced to the ground.
Bram decided to follow it. His fall was only eighteen feet, but Bram was relegated to light duty for three weeks.
On February 4, fifty mourners, mostly from the Secret Service but also several outside agencies, gathered for a memorial service for Maxo at a military base that’s the administrative headquarters for the Service’s Explosive Detection Team.
The team shares space with the element that stores and services the armored fleet for the Secret Service. Maxo’s memorial was held in one of the garage bays where the limos are. Two limos were used as backdrop, along with pipe and drape, so it no longer looked like a garage. There were rows of seats and a podium set up in front for the speakers.
After a call to attention, placement of the urn and flag, and a heartbreaking canine prayer read by a handler, unit commander Captain Barry Lewis stepped up to the podium. A former handler himself, he knew the pain of losing a canine partner. (In his homage that follows, the name of the handler has been removed out of respect for his privacy.)
Ten months. Ten months is not a long time. But then again, these were dog months. It’s amazing what good work a dog can achieve in such a short time. That is what we should remember today. All the good work Maxo did in his relatively short career.
[Handler], today we will present you with some mementos. Photos, poems, the flag that covered Maxo on his ride from Andrews Air Force Base back to this building. Maybe not right away, but in time you will pull them out and proudly share them with . . . family and friends. You will talk about all the places you traveled as a team and all the work he did. And maybe with fellow handlers you will compare whose dog, at times, could be the biggest knucklehead.
As you know, last year was a campaign year. The Canine Unit, like every Secret Service entity, was challenged by what they were asked to do to support the protective mission. Canine Maxo did his part in helping the unit meet our responsibility of explosive detection.
I want to share what Maxo accomplished in ten short months:
Crisscrossing the country, Maxo and [his handler] traveled on twenty-eight separate protective details to provide protection for the president and vice president.
An additional twenty-five separate protective missions for the president, vice president, and foreign heads of state were conducted by them here in the Washington, D.C., area.
The out-of-town details included the United Nations General Assembly in NYC, the Democratic National Convention, the Republican National Convention, and cities and towns from Florida to Nevada. Just a couple of months ago Maxo and [his handler] made the long trip to Thailand to provide coverage for the president.
The most recent in-town detail was the long day known as “the inauguration where Maxo helped secure the parade route.”
In ten months, Maxo saw more of the country and the world than a lot of dogs see in a career. And of course that doesn’t even take into account the work done every day at the White House and other permanent areas of responsibility.
[Handler], that is something you and the unit should be proud of today. That is what we should remember.
Last week I paid a visit to our class currently going through training. They are about three weeks into their seventeen-week course.
I asked a few of the students who they thought the best dog was so far in the class.
I heard two or three different names. Not what I was looking for, but they figured it out pretty quick. By the time I left they knew the answer.
“My dog.” The right answer is, “My dog is the best dog.”
[Handler], we don’t have to tell you that Maxo was the best dog.
The handlers in attendance knew what he meant. Every dog is the best one as far as their handlers are concerned. Handlers brushed away tears as they thought of their own dogs, of the mortality of these partners who would forever define them.
It’s a tradition for law-enforcement officers who die in the line of duty to be called one final time by dispatch. During this “last call,” police radios at the funeral or memorial are tuned to a frequency, and the dispatcher calls for the deceased officer three times with his or her call signal.
Upon hearing no response, the dispatcher says that the officer has arrived at the final assignment and that the officer’s shift is over forever, or words to that effect. There may be a mention of heaven, and how the officer will be missed by all.
Maxo’s version of this tradition was broadcast on the radio of one of the canine vans with its emergency lights on. A handler who had previously been a dispatcher made the call.
In the silence that followed the last call, even the most experienced, toughened officers wept—some more silently than others.
—
Most Secret Service dog handlers who have lost a dog still have their partner’s ashes, no matter how long ago the dog passed away. Some plan to be buried with the ashes.
They also inevitably have some memento they will never let go. Often, a favorite ball. Anything the dog loved, or wore, becomes cherished. Even the fur around the house that used to drive them crazy becomes a poignant reminder.
Jim’s dog Spike had two happy years of retirement before the onset of kidney failure. Spike died at home, in the arms of Jim and his wife, on Valentine’s Day.
Spike’s ashes are tucked away in a place where they can’t be disturbed. So is his collar. Jim let his son have Spike’s choke chain, and his son hung it on the wall of his bedroom. Photographs of Spike, including a collage some of the ERT guys put together, are displayed throughout the house.
Spike’s leash, the leather one he was issued in 2003 when he and Jim went operational, hangs near the front door. Jim would set it there every day when they arrived home from work, and would grab it every morning before heading out.
Once Spike retired, the leash was placed there indefinitely. It is not to be used for any other dog.
Seven months after Spike retired, Jim went back into the dog world as an instructor for the ERT canine program.
“Being an instructor is truly probably the greatest thing I’ve ever done in the Secret Service,” says Jim. “And losing Spike was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. It was harder than losing family members. It really was. I don’t even know how to explain it.
“I think it’s probably why I’m apprehensive to take another dog, because I know at some point I’ll have to go through that again. It’s overwhelming but at the same time I feel like I would be trying to replace Spike, and that’s just something I don’t want to do.
“Dog guys get weird,” he says with a resigned smile.
Brian marvels at all the handlers who have forgone promotions within the Uniformed Division so they could stay with their dogs.
“It’s a common theme,” he says. “For most handlers, having that dog, that partnership, that relationship, is the most important thing to them, as important as their families. You would not believe the things they sacrifice for the love of their dog.”