Intruders beware: When this 80-pound German Shepherd isn’t patrolling Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, he’s training to take trespassers down at the drop of a command. Bleck, a 6-year-old German Shepherd, is assigned to Navy Installations Command as a member of Pax River’s force protection team along with his handler, Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Evan Desrosiers. Desrosiers knew when he joined the Navy more than a decade ago that he wanted to be a dog handler, he told Navy Times Tuesday, but he had to spend some time in the fleet as an MA before he could get orders for training at…
Browsing: Military dog handling
Dogs have a long history of combat service in the military — they were first officially used by the U.S. in World War II. The military’s working dogs are trained at their own school at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas. The dogs have been trained as sentries, to sniff for drugs, or simply catch bad guys while working with military police. And you can’t forget the military working dogs sniffing out bombs with Navy explosive ordnance disposal teams. So it comes as no surprise that the dog pictured at right is serving sailors off the battlefield. “Admiral” is not a…
Senior Chief Master-at-Arms Michael Toussaint had an anniversary of sorts Feb. 5: It marked one year since his Retirement Grade Determination Board met in Norfolk, Va., to decide which grade he would take into forced retirement after having his re-enlistment request denied by Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, and being censured by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus in the fall of 2009 over alleged abusive leadership practiced while serving as the top sailor at Bahrain’s military dog division in 2005 and 2006. Yet Toussaint, who passed the 20-year mark for retirement eligibility in January 2010, a couple of…
