Terry Adams Jr., a former US Army working dog handler, rates eight military dogs in movies and television shows for realism.
Adams breaks down various breeds of military working dogs, particularly the Belgian Malinois, in the search-and-apprehension scenes in "SEAL Team" S1E7 and E14, the explosive-detection dog in "Megan Leavey," and the guard dogs in "John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum," with Keanu Reeves and Halle Berry. He looks at working dogs outside the military, such as the narcotics-detection dog in "Breaking Bad" S4E12, starring Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul; and the German shepherd in "I Am Legend," who protects her owner — played by Will Smith — at all costs. He also explains the safety protocols and realities of dog handling during warfare, such as detecting weapons and explosives in "Max," and "NCIS" S10E18, and the realities of post-traumatic stress disorder among retired military working dogs in "Dog," starring Channing Tatum.
Adams has six years of experience as a military working dog handler for the US Army, as well as 10 years of experience handling and training civilian dogs. He had three military combat deployments, all in Afghanistan. He is the founder and head trainer of Tactical K9, a facility for training civilian and military dogs.
You can follow him here:
https://tacticalk9.co/
https://www.instagram.com/tacticalk9approach/
Adams breaks down various breeds of military working dogs, particularly the Belgian Malinois, in the search-and-apprehension scenes in "SEAL Team" S1E7 and E14, the explosive-detection dog in "Megan Leavey," and the guard dogs in "John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum," with Keanu Reeves and Halle Berry. He looks at working dogs outside the military, such as the narcotics-detection dog in "Breaking Bad" S4E12, starring Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul; and the German shepherd in "I Am Legend," who protects her owner — played by Will Smith — at all costs. He also explains the safety protocols and realities of dog handling during warfare, such as detecting weapons and explosives in "Max," and "NCIS" S10E18, and the realities of post-traumatic stress disorder among retired military working dogs in "Dog," starring Channing Tatum.
Adams has six years of experience as a military working dog handler for the US Army, as well as 10 years of experience handling and training civilian dogs. He had three military combat deployments, all in Afghanistan. He is the founder and head trainer of Tactical K9, a facility for training civilian and military dogs.
You can follow him here:
https://tacticalk9.co/
https://www.instagram.com/tacticalk9approach/
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TechTranscript
00:00 [dog barking]
00:02 Pretty bad a**.
00:05 If the dog can't get your leg or arm,
00:10 it's gonna go for wherever it can get a solid bite.
00:13 Hi, I'm Terry Adams, and this is Tiny,
00:15 nine year old Belgian Malinois.
00:16 She is a trained dual purpose dog,
00:18 trained in tracking, detection for narcotics,
00:21 and apprehension.
00:22 I am a eight year army dog handler,
00:25 with also 10 years of civilian handling
00:28 and instructing experience.
00:30 Today, we'll be looking at military dogs
00:32 in movies and TV, and judge how real they are.
00:35 Look left.
00:40 Server is slack.
00:41 Really, honestly, it's pretty spot on.
00:44 Only thing that would be different would be,
00:47 in my experience, is directing the dog with a laser,
00:51 versus letting them free sniff.
00:54 You know, the dog being able to climb the ladder
00:56 and hop into the window,
00:58 and then search from there with direction,
01:01 all that's realistic.
01:02 He's got something.
01:03 That is totally realistic.
01:08 If the dog is sent in to a building and sees a threat,
01:12 then the job of the dog is to apprehend.
01:14 The dog does target the arm.
01:17 We do train them to apprehend from the arm and the leg.
01:20 The things that we use are gonna be a hidden sleeve.
01:25 In this scene, the subject is actually using
01:27 a hidden sleeve, that's how he's taking that bite,
01:29 without actually being bitten.
01:32 - Check here.
01:35 I found him.
01:42 - Good body.
01:43 - When it comes to tracking a scent, a dog is awesome,
01:47 especially in the conditions that they were in.
01:49 The canopy holds a lot of odor,
01:51 which makes it even easier for dogs to track
01:54 when it comes to my military experience.
01:57 We have tracked more or less not insurgents,
02:01 but we track more explosives,
02:04 from the source of the explosive
02:07 to maybe where someone is sitting, ready to ambush.
02:11 So yes, you can use clothing
02:13 to search for a familiar smell for the dog.
02:17 It doesn't have to be a living person.
02:19 It can also be a dead person as well.
02:22 I definitely give it a 10 out of 10.
02:24 Some of the things, if you notice
02:33 that the dogs are targeting the arms and legs,
02:35 you see that there's some stomach shots.
02:37 So, you know, if the dog can't get to the arm or leg,
02:40 then they're gonna go for another area, for sure.
02:43 You see the two Belgian Malinois being worked together.
02:49 The Belgian Malinois is an awesome dog.
02:54 Before the Shepherd was the go-to dog,
02:57 now the Belgian Malinois has replaced the Shepherd.
02:59 Based off of speed, stamina, size,
03:02 they're not as big as the Shepherd would be.
03:04 Pretty bad [beep]
03:11 [laughs]
03:13 But this is not as common to teach.
03:16 But once again, if the dog can't get your leg or arm,
03:19 it's gonna go for wherever it can get a solid bite.
03:22 Scaling the wall to bite the subject is very realistic.
03:30 In the military, it wouldn't be so realistic,
03:33 only because if we had a threat up high,
03:36 we would just neutralize that threat.
03:39 But if we wanted to get a dog up high,
03:42 that is a possibility.
03:48 You see a lot of crossfire
03:51 from a lot of the good guys and the bad guys.
03:54 The dogs probably wouldn't last very long in the real world.
03:57 Probably within, after the first or maybe second bite,
04:01 they would've been shot by someone.
04:03 Realistically, we wouldn't put our dogs
04:05 freely in danger of a lot of that.
04:08 They'll be sent to a specific target
04:10 and then brought back to us
04:13 to make sure that we're not getting any crossfire.
04:16 These dogs are really desensitized to gunfire.
04:19 Would've been also great to watch them have ear and eye pro
04:23 based off of the new technology that's provided today.
04:26 I'm gonna give that a seven out of 10.
04:29 There's a lot of shooting going on,
04:30 and normally a handler isn't gonna put their dog
04:33 in harm's way of that many guns.
04:36 - Oh, and Dennis, can you put out some of your people for us?
04:39 Confuses the dog's nose.
04:44 - They're searching a building.
04:46 They have everyone leave.
04:48 Normally, we would not necessarily detain everyone,
04:51 but we would isolate everyone to a certain area.
04:54 So then that way we know no one's physically gonna harm us
04:58 as we search the building
05:00 or try to figure out a way to throw the dog off
05:03 as we're doing it.
05:04 This is a DEA dog,
05:05 and they're looking for meth and narcotic.
05:09 (keys jingling)
05:11 The handling from the handler wasn't all that great.
05:19 He did a lot of touching stuff.
05:21 In the real world, especially in the civilian world,
05:25 a little more than military,
05:27 it's a big liability to sit there and touch the objects
05:31 that you're wanting the dog to search
05:33 'cause you can cause the dog to give a false indication.
05:35 You want to minimize as much as possible
05:39 your manipulation of the dog.
05:41 So when conducting a building search,
05:44 we would let the dog free search,
05:47 then we would come back and detail.
05:50 When we detail, we would stay off of the object,
05:53 but point towards where we want the dog to search.
05:56 - How long we gotta be quiet down here?
06:02 - They're gone.
06:06 (keys jingling)
06:07 - We're good.
06:08 - So here we see the dog doesn't indicate
06:09 on possible narcotics.
06:12 Just means that the dog wasn't in the best area for a sniff.
06:17 Now, with the narcotics being a floor under,
06:22 the dogs can catch the odor with it being a floor under,
06:25 but it would have to be in a productive space,
06:29 which are areas where odor collects,
06:32 and the dog can then track it to source.
06:35 We'll give that handler a three out of 10
06:37 for his handling skills.
06:41 (laughs)
06:42 - Hey, kid, stop!
06:44 (dog barking)
06:46 (gunshot)
06:48 - The dog is barking.
06:49 That can be a sign of the dog having odor to a explosive.
06:54 We like a little bit calmer alerts
06:58 when it comes to explosives,
06:59 just because of how volatile they are.
07:03 And with something like that,
07:05 that's that it's either a mine or an IED, right?
07:08 An improvised explosive.
07:10 We don't want to do anything
07:12 that can trigger that explosive to go off.
07:15 Most times our indicators are gonna be a down or a sit
07:20 instead of a barking,
07:21 just because we want that calm behavior.
07:23 And based off of the placement of the odor
07:27 is how they indicate.
07:28 So if it's something that's lower to the ground,
07:31 they will perform a down.
07:33 If it was something that was higher up into a ceiling
07:36 or placed into a wall,
07:39 they're doing a sit.
07:41 - Seek, Dex, seek!
07:44 Come here, seek, attaboy.
07:45 Seek.
07:47 - You see that the handler says to the dog to go seek.
07:52 It is a common word, zeek, zook, find it.
07:57 These are all common words that are used
08:01 throughout the military and civilian
08:03 to go and search for an odor.
08:06 Find it.
08:06 - What is that?
08:13 - You see that there's a Labrador.
08:16 This is a common choice of breed
08:18 for an explosive detection dog.
08:21 The reason why they make really good
08:23 explosive detection dogs are one, nice in nature,
08:27 very high, high driven, very good at hunting odors,
08:32 rather if that's an explosive, narcotics, or even a bird.
08:37 The handling of the dog would have been different,
08:40 definitely.
08:41 The dog would have been a little further out
08:43 from the handler.
08:44 Most of these dogs are used to clear routes
08:46 where there were old minefields
08:48 or just routes that are known for insurgents to place IEDs.
08:53 We would want the dog to be a good distance
08:56 so that we can save the handler
08:58 just in case the dog trips the explosive.
09:01 - All right, good boy, good boy, no booms.
09:03 No booms, good dog.
09:05 - Words of encouragement are a big thing for dogs.
09:08 In these situations, you're not able to reward the dog
09:11 physically with a tug or a ball, some sort of toy.
09:15 When we train these dogs, we teach these dogs
09:18 that explosives or narcotics equal this big reward,
09:22 this toy, and so that's why they are.
09:25 So willing and eager to go out and find these explosives.
09:30 In this scene, you see that the dog
09:32 is a little bit more vocal.
09:35 It's not a deal breaker.
09:36 Biggest thing is we understand that these dogs
09:40 are working off a motivation of a toy,
09:42 which is what causes the frustration,
09:45 and that's where you get those barks from.
09:47 I would give it an eight out of 10.
09:49 Reason for not having a 10 out of 10
09:51 is based off of the handling of the dog.
09:54 (leaves rustling)
09:57 - Found something!
09:59 Good boy.
10:03 - The way she's utilizing the dog is all correct.
10:07 We didn't necessarily use flags.
10:09 We used chem lights, though.
10:10 If we did do a flag, it was a makeshift flag
10:12 out of rocks and reflective tape,
10:15 where we would just drop it at a known area of interest,
10:20 and we used the chem light to mark
10:23 how far from said IED.
10:26 - Clear!
10:27 - Levy, check the vehicle!
10:28 (explosion booms)
10:33 - I've actually been in a situation similar to this
10:36 without the explosion.
10:37 My dog passed an IED because of the wind current.
10:42 We were traveling north to south,
10:45 and the wind current was going north to south.
10:49 So with the odor being pushed past us,
10:52 and me and my dog actually walked right over an IED.
10:57 My dog caught it about 50 yards,
11:01 and he picked it up going back.
11:03 But the IED was rigged for MRAPs,
11:06 and our little weight wasn't big enough to trigger it,
11:10 but we could've definitely been in a situation like that.
11:13 Megan Levy and her dog partner were wounded from an IED,
11:23 and military uses dogs commonly for this reason,
11:28 to be able to protect soldiers from being hurt or killed,
11:33 which is one of the reasons why we train the dog
11:36 to work at a greater distance from us.
11:39 She was a little bit on the luckier side.
11:43 Based off my experience, I have lost a dog from an IED.
11:47 I'm going to give it a 10 out of 10,
11:49 based off the equipment,
11:50 based off of the situation itself.
11:53 You remember me?
11:54 It's your favorite chew toy from 2015.
11:58 A lot of the military working dogs
12:02 are fairly temperamental.
12:04 I definitely have a few bites on me currently
12:08 from dogs when I was in the service
12:12 that going in, leashing them,
12:14 and they decided to go ahead and bite me.
12:17 So we do use muzzles quite a bit
12:19 for more aggressive dogs.
12:22 Typically in the beginning, when you first meet your dog,
12:25 you're not meeting them with a muzzle on.
12:28 Just because of the establishment of a bond,
12:31 we don't want to stress the dog out
12:32 with having a muzzle on.
12:34 Now, if it's a very high-risk dog,
12:38 then yes, we would put a muzzle on,
12:40 just because we know that that particular dog
12:42 is more than likely going to bite you.
12:45 - Man, you're going to go on a little road trip.
12:48 1,500 miles, just to act like your daddy's
12:51 looking down on us from above.
12:53 - As the handler approaches this dog,
12:56 he approaches slowly.
12:57 We would want to approach a little bit more confidently,
13:00 just to show the dog that we're not giving off any fear,
13:04 so the dog doesn't take advantage.
13:05 The voice, the way he's speaking to the dog is all correct.
13:09 We don't want to come in with a harsh tone,
13:12 but we also don't want to come in
13:13 with a passive tone as well.
13:15 We want to come in with a confident, inviting tone.
13:18 - All right, I'm going to leash you up.
13:21 All right.
13:22 Be cool.
13:24 - He gets down to the dog's level.
13:29 Wouldn't necessarily get down to the dog's level,
13:32 as in face-to-face, only because that's a very big risk.
13:37 But also, we don't want to come in and hover the dog
13:41 as a dominant, and showing a dominance play.
13:43 Realistically, he could do this,
13:45 but he would put himself into more of a dangerous situation
13:49 with having a dog right in his face.
13:52 - What are you all so scared of?
13:53 She's mellowed out big time.
13:54 [laughing]
13:56 - Hey, man, I forgot to tell you
13:57 not to touch her on the ears, man.
13:59 I left that part out.
14:00 - Most dogs don't really care about their ears.
14:03 It's just every dog has its own trigger.
14:05 It could be its paws, it could be a leg,
14:08 rubbing the side of them, putting your hand over their head.
14:12 And this particular dog had, its trigger was its ears.
14:16 [dog barking]
14:18 - And we wish her off to Prozac,
14:19 so she might get moody from time to time.
14:21 - This dog's on Prozac for PTSD.
14:24 You have some that, when they retire, totally normal,
14:27 regular, they can turn into a,
14:31 really turn into a pet, a household pet.
14:34 My last military working dog,
14:35 he actually went to a home as a retirement,
14:40 a home with kids, and he's been doing great.
14:43 This particular dog is suffering from PTSD and anxiety
14:46 based off of its military experience,
14:49 and based off of the loss of its handler as well.
14:52 Rating-wise for this scene, I'm gonna give it 10 out of 10.
14:55 It's very realistic for a dog with PTSD, too,
14:59 and aggression issues, and with the trigger
15:02 of touching the ears.
15:04 [dog barking]
15:09 - No, no, let's go!
15:11 - It wouldn't really be realistic
15:12 to send a dog on another dog,
15:14 one, because we don't train that,
15:16 because it would be more of a distraction,
15:19 especially when it comes to military working dogs.
15:21 And even as law enforcement, they wouldn't want that.
15:25 With the dog not having training to do that,
15:27 this would be more of a natural reaction versus training.
15:30 - You're okay, you're okay.
15:37 - With Sam being a German Shepherd,
15:39 it is fairly common for a protection dog.
15:42 Dog is very loyal, it is a great protector,
15:45 and it is a dog that will give its life to protect you.
15:48 This scene, I would rate a three out of 10.
15:50 Really, we would never send a dog on another dog.
15:54 - Okay, Max, go search.
15:56 - It is an option to have the dog search free of handler.
16:04 One of the things with that is you do take a big risk,
16:09 because you do have, like, you have the kid
16:12 with the ball behind a corner.
16:14 You know, there's a little bit less control.
16:16 So normally you'll see a dog on a very long line,
16:20 like 30 to 50 feet worth of a line,
16:23 to be able to control a little bit better
16:25 just in case you do have that sort of situation.
16:28 [dog barking]
16:33 [dramatic music]
16:35 You see the dog, he indicates on the weapons.
16:41 That's very common with an explosive dog.
16:43 We do teach it black powder, which is in most weapons,
16:48 and smokeless powder, which is in weapons as well.
16:50 He probably missed that guy that was around the corner,
16:53 because he was overwhelmed from the odor
16:56 of the weapons that were down there.
16:59 My rating for this, for Max,
17:01 is definitely gonna be a 10 out of 10.
17:03 Everybody has their way of searching,
17:05 and that's one of the techniques,
17:07 and he performed it very well.
17:09 Based off of clips that we watched today,
17:11 my favorite scene is gonna be the John Wick.
17:14 We don't see that particular style happening
17:18 with all that action, but it's amazing to watch those dogs.
17:22 [dramatic music]
17:26 [dramatic music]
17:29 [dramatic music]
17:31 (dramatic music)
17:34 (upbeat music)