Looking forward to the next story. With regard to the shooting of the pistol above the dog’s head. The other day I came across a dog training video - looked to be from overseas. The dog when called would come to assist his handler - and was ALWAYS between the handler’s legs! Seemed pretty akward for the handler. But the guy would move up, back, sideways, etc. with the dog between his legs.
At one point the guy was kneeling on one knee, dog underneath him, and firing his handgun. Then moving at a crouch and firing. Dog was barking I think the entire time during all of the demonstration, but no flinching or anything. Pretty amazing what they can train those animals to do.
The Patrol Dogs that we had with us were way too big to do the "between the legs" maneuvers: they were gigantic German Shepherds and they were trained to be vicious and only touched or approached by their own particular handler. We were told that if the Dog Handler was killed or wounded that we were supposed to immediately shoot the dog before he could attack us.
I hitched a ride in the back of a Deuce and a Half from Danang once and there were three Patrol Dogs in the back with me wearing muzzles and they were very, very dangerous-looking - like large, red-eyed wolves, so I hopped out of that truck and caught another ride.
Once we were in the field for a while with the dog and his handler, the dog would warm up to us some and although we couldn't take the chance of petting it, the dog clearly wasn't looking at us as the threat. One of the bigger laughs we had was when we were taking a break in a village and our dog developed a "romantic attachment" to one of the much smaller curly-tailed Vietnamese dogs and despite his very earnest efforts and the little dog's acquiescence, there still was a one foot gap between the intention and the target. We had a very frustrated dog and we all found it very funny.