They Sniff at Danger
How a Motley Crew of Dogs Found Their True Calling -- Fighting Terrorism

By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 30, 2007

The day before Ricky Bobby Baby Jesus was scheduled to die by an injection of pentobarbital, along came the cookie lady. She brought dog biscuits to the Howard County Animal Shelter. When she saw the yellow Labrador -- evicted for feistiness from three homes -- leap to catch a ball, she had an idea.

In a New York prison, Mary Jane, a black Labrador raised by a convicted murderer, was balled up in her cell. Bred from guide-dog stock and trained in an inmate program, Mary Jane flunked her test. "She lacks self-confidence," the evaluators noted. The convict sat on the cell floor and rubbed Mary Jane's belly, reading "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" out loud to her.

How Ricky Bobby Baby Jesus and Mary Jane went from being underachieving curs to canines sniffing out terrorists in Rabat, Morocco, is the story of how some Americans -- or at least their dogs -- are finding second chances through the war on al-Qaeda.

In a 16-week program jointly run by the Justice and State departments, the two dogs, along with four other Labradors, transformed themselves from losers to potential lifesavers. Each canine teamed up for training in the Shenandoah Valley with a Moroccan law enforcement official. They would join more than 700 American dogs who have been deployed with foreign counterterrorism forces.

"May Allah the Almighty bless you," said Ricky Bobby's new partner, Lt. Nabil Chakir, 24, of the Moroccan Royal Gendarmerie. He spoke in halting English in a graduation speech last week at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Canine Training Center in Front Royal, Va. Morocco recently raised its terror alert to the highest level, following suicide attacks and warnings from al-Qaeda. Earlier this month, a man tried to blow himself up near a busload of tourists.

Saluting an ATF instructor in front of a giant American flag, Chakir told the crowd: "Long live the collaboration between the United States and Morocco in the common fight against terrorism."

The audience -- federal kennel workers, trainers and volunteer puppy raisers who had driven hours to see their Labs graduate -- watched Chakir pin a gold "ATF Certified" badge to his blue uniform. Chakir patted his dog, whose name, taken from a joke in the movie "Talladega Nights," had been shortened to Ricky Bobby in deference to his adopted Muslim country.

An ATF instructor, Shawn Crawford, explained in an aside: " 'Baby Jesus' wouldn't fly."

The Explosives Detection Canine Handler Course, established in 1991 by ATF with the State Department's Office of Anti-Terrorism Assistance, has grown since Sept. 11, 2001, into the world's largest bomb-dog program, supplying canines for both domestic and overseas law enforcement. The center has trained dogs and foreign handlers for more than 20 countries, including Australia, Italy, Israel, Thailand and Qatar.

Last month in Mexico, an ATF-trained dog uncovered a shipment of guns, says Terry Bohan, the center's director. In Iraq, a dog located a 500-pound bomb. In Egypt, a dog alerted a SWAT team that the door of a terrorist's house was booby-trapped. The next class of handlers will come from Indonesia.

For a country to qualify, it must provide veterinary care, exercise fields and clean facilities. During a visit to Cyprus, American inspectors noticed the black Labradors were wagging white tails; the Cypriots had just painted their kennels.

When the foreign students arrive for training in rural Virginia, Crawford says, their top three questions are: "Where's Wal-Mart? Where's Circuit City? Where's Potomac Mills?" The State Department screens candidates for security risks, he says: "If Uncle Ahmed lives in Syria, they're not going to come."

Translators accompany the students, though the foreigners learn basic commands in English, such as "sit," "search" and the international toilet directive -- "take a break." The American trainers help them adjust, Bohan says: A Jordanian villager was stumped by water fountains; the Egyptians came back from the flea market waving Confederate flags; the Malaysians drank "stone-hot Budweiser," until the American explosives experts taught them how to ice the beer in the bathtub.

The Labradors experience their own period of adjustment. Most are 12 to 18 months old and are dropouts from other programs. In Ricky Bobby's ATF class, two sisters, Wendy and Wags, had failed the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection course because the reward system involved playing tug-of-war with a towel. The sisters did not want to play.

ATF uses food rewards; the dogs get fed only when they sit to signal the presence of explosives. They can detect more than 19,000 kinds of explosives from up to a third of a mile away. "My last dog would work all night for baby carrots," Bohan says. "A dog's instinct is to hunt, but he learns, 'If I follow Dummy over here, I get food.' "

Many of the Labradors have been dismissed from guide-dog schools. "We have dogs that are bouncing off the wall, wild-horse dogs. If you have a handicapped person with him, it's going look like a chariot race," says Bohan, a 2007 Homeland Security finalist for a Service to America Medal. "We channel that energy into detection."

As a puppy, Ricky Bobby's energy level was so high, three families took him home and then rejected him. The Howard County shelter was about to euthanize him when Joann Chambers, 71, a Lab Rescue volunteer, spotted his potential. Lab Rescue placed Ricky Bobby in the Falls Church home of Amy Waggoner, a graphics designer who fostered him until ATF admitted him.

"I think he could have hung onto the ceiling fan and twirled," says Waggoner, 28, who sprinkled Parmesan cheese on Ricky Bobby's food, turned on Animal Planet on two televisions when she left for work, and shared her pillow with him. ("I love dog breath, I love dog kisses, I love dog drool.")

At first Waggoner opposed sending "my lovely baby boy" to work abroad. She imagined him sleeping in a dark kennel, on hot, concrete floors. But ATF staffers assured her, and then one night a friend's 9-year-old came over to play and raised her arm to throw a ball. Ricky Bobby sprang, knocking the child into a wall. The dog needed a job.

Mary Jane, Ricky Bobby's ATF classmate, had also been a misfit. Mary Jane's parents, says Janet Sommerville of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, "came from long lines of guide-dog producers. Our creme de la creme." Three of Mary Jane's siblings, Alba, Alexis and Alec, had all passed the entrance exam. But when Mary Jane took her guide-dog test, "she whined the whole time." She shrank to the floor when she saw an opened umbrella.

John Pucci, 62, an inmate serving 25 years to life for his involvement in a 1978 drug-related shooting, was not surprised. He had adopted Mary Jane at 8 weeks through a program called Puppies Behind Bars. He had trained her from the winter day he'd zipped her into his jacket. "She licked me all the way back to the unit," Pucci recalled from the Fishkill Correctional Facility in New York.

For 15 months, Pucci slept next to Mary Jane's crate, on top of his prison bed, so he could jump up if she whimpered, he said: "Mary Jane never had an accident."

"She keeps me smiling!" Pucci wrote in a letter to his daughter. "I take her for a walk. Around and around I go, and it seems like I'm miles and miles away from here."

Though satiny black and affectionate, Mary Jane was "not a confident dog," Pucci said. She wasn't a leader, but she could be led, so she was transferred from Guiding Eyes for the Blind to the bomb-dog program.

Pucci threw a party for "my baby girl" who was leaving to fight al-Qaeda. He made her "ooganooga meatballs": mashed puppy food, olive oil, peanut butter and rice.

Pucci said, "I may be a criminal, but I'm an American criminal." His voice caught. "A little piece of me goes out to fight for the American way -- to keep the Yankee games going."

At the ATF facility in Virginia, the staff paired Mary Jane with Thami Eddahane, 42, a Moroccan officer who said he'd joined the police because he wanted "to combat evil."

"Don't cry," Eddahane said, stroking away Mary Jane's whimpers, as the class lined up for their commencement ceremony.

Mary Jane and Eddahane marched with Ricky Bobby and Chakir to receive their diplomas. Wendy and Wags, the DHS dropouts, nipped each other's chins. Crosby, who'd been expelled from guide-dog school for lunging at leaves, broke away from his Moroccan handler to jump on Phyllis Odell, an elderly volunteer who'd raised him and who had driven six hours to see him one last time.

"I don't know about him going so far away," Odell said. She had expected him to be a guide dog for some sweet blind lady; now Crosby was shipping off to North Africa to nuzzle bombs with a man who pronounced the dog's name "Groseby." Odell crossed her arms and said, frowning, "I'm sure that guy doesn't want to get blown up, so he's got to keep Crosby safe."

The man-dog teams had trained seven days a week, learning how to sweep a stadium, how to find explosives buried in a field and how to secure a train station. The program cost, Bohan estimated, $20,000 to $30,000 per dog. None has died in the line of duty.

After the speeches and cake, puppy raisers like Amy Waggoner walked outside to say goodbye. In a matter of hours, her Ricky Bobby would board a Royal Air Maroc flight. Right now, though, Ricky Bobby was trying to mount Mary Jane.

"Ricky Bobby Baby Jesus, cut that out! That's rude!" Waggoner shouted.

Ricky Bobby trotted over to Waggoner and licked her nose. Chakir stood nearby watching them. Waggoner, kneeling in a pink cardigan, looked up and smiled at the handsome Moroccan officer. He had come from a town in the Atlas Mountains. Now he would return with a laptop from Staples, a dress for his mother from Macy's and a dog named after a Will Ferrell movie.

"Nabil is going to take care of you," Waggoner whispered into Ricky Bobby's neck. "Maybe you'll learn French, then you can really get the ladies. Make sure you brush your teeth. Go save somebody's life." Had it only been six months since he was in a shelter about to die? She kissed his pink nose. "You're an important doggy, okay?"

Waggoner and Chakir exchanged long looks and e-mail addresses.

"He knows I love him," she said, and turned.

Chakir clicked on Ricky Bobby's leash and led him away: "I love him, too."