- Vladimir Alexandrovich, after being transferred to the reserve, you continue to train counselor soldiers and service animals at the 470th training center for service dog breeding of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation near Moscow. Are your pets currently working in the Donbass?
- I can’t judge with 100% certainty, but, most likely, all the dogs underwent initial training with us.
Then they are trained to perform specific combat missions in combat units and engineering troops.
In Donbass, as far as I know, cynological calculations prepared in specialized centers of the Russian Guard and the Ministry of Emergency Situations are now working.
All animals are working according to their intended purpose, I think that the range and scale of their use will increase.
© Photo from the personal archive
“Technology is developing rapidly. Robots, electronics, highly sensitive sensors - why do we need a "sapper with a tail" today?
The mine detector is looking for metal.
Can you imagine the road that the war swept through?
These are kilograms of fragments and various beaten iron rubbish.
The appliances are over the top.
Do not forget that more and more explosive items are produced in plastic cases.
There metal - only grams in the fuse.
In addition to commercially produced mines, terrorists of all stripes around the world are riveting homemade mines.
The dog is looking for the smell of explosives, and its natural scent has not yet been replaced by electronics.
The exceptional olfactory selectivity of this animal's nose allows it to decompose odor at the molecular level.
The best gas analyzer is able to do this, but only in a sterile room, and the dog makes an accurate "analysis" against the background of many other odors.
Scientists say that any mongrel can easily distinguish between them up to 2 million. Therefore, not a single army in the world, even in the most industrialized countries, has so far abandoned the use of animals trained to search for explosive "surprises".
Russia is no exception.
- Did you yourself use dogs for demining?
We can say that he became the "founder" of military cynology in the 201st motorized rifle division (MSD), and even in the entire Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces in Afghanistan (OKSVA).
I’m joking, of course, but when I took command of a demining platoon in Kunduz in 1981 as a senior lieutenant, I received four emaciated service dogs along with fighters and equipment.
Nobody knew what to do with them.
They were sent along with counselors at the end of 1980 from the Union, but no one understood why they were and how to use them in the war.
Me too.
I knew that they were used in the Great Patriotic War, but how should I deal with them here?
There are no instructions, not even feeding norms - no documents at all.
One dog was blown up by a trip grenade, he was tortured to write it off.
In the army, after all, everything is registered - from a tank to a boot.
How did you deal with the live dogs?
- I began to ask the dog handlers what they were taught for six months at the 4th Central School of Military Dog Breeding - that was the name of our 470th training center for service dog breeding.
What he tried, he began to repeat.
Trained dogs to smell explosives.
- Did you mix tol into food?
- This is a common misconception.
Do not feed explosives to dogs.
I took a thick saber, on top of it - a piece of delicacy.
Very soon, my four-legged wards remembered the half-forgotten lessons from the dog school, and I began to take them to the real wiring of the columns.
We sappers always went first.
Practice has shown that animals work well and quickly.
True, not for long.
© Photo from the personal archive
The Afghan heat and dust of our East European Shepherd Dogs quickly took them out of readiness.
From 15 to 45 minutes, one dog was engaged in the search, then I sent it to the armored personnel carrier, and from there the fighters got me the next one.
Finding a mine on the road or on the side of the road, the dog sat next to it or gave a signal by barking.
I ordered my soldiers to take cover, walked, looked, what kind of “surprise” did the dushmans prepare for Shuravi?
Depending on the type of ammunition and the method of its installation, either a sapper "cat" pulled out a mine, or destroyed it with an overhead charge.
We didn't have any explosions.
This was noticed and noted by senior commanders, which gave me a reason to file reports in order to let my dogs live “like a human being”.
- What is it like?
- First, I solved the problem with food.
By that time, according to my reports, documents were delivered from the USSR: animals are supposed to have meat of the second category.
What kind of meat, what category?
The entire personnel of OKSVA is sitting on canned food!
At the headquarters in Kabul, they “counted” the ration for stew and made a mistake by one zero - they added an extra one.
Instead of 150 g, 1.5 kg came out for each dog.
The error was noticed after some time.
The head of the food service came to me with a demand to return the surplus.
I brought him to the dogs, I say: “Take it!”
By that time, I "survived" the inspection of the future Major General and Hero of Socialist Labor, and then the head of the engineering troops of the 40th Army, Valentin Valentinovich Kelpsh.
He saw with his own eyes how my dogs work on demining, and after military labors they rest in good enclosures.
Not only that - I even had a pool for service animals!
Kelpsh praised and ordered my advanced experience to be distributed to all engineering and sapper units in Afghanistan.
So I “fought off” the chief food officer easily, especially since the sappers were in good standing with the command of the 201st MSD: in our area of \u200b\u200bresponsibility, the columns passed unharmed.
How many mines have your dogs cleared in Afghanistan?
- I didn’t think, somehow in the war there was no time for statistics.
Some were found by fighters with probes and mine detectors, some were found by cynological calculations.
The overall result of the work in the complex is positive.
- Were there "excellent students in combat and political training" among the dogs?
- "Excellent student" was a shepherd Dara.
We gave her to the infantry for a combat exit to the mountains.
There is an armored personnel carrier, on the armor of which they and the leader were blown up from an anti-tank grenade launcher.
Flew from the gap to the ground, beaten both.
A month later, the dog could not work on the mines.
Then, it seems, she came to her senses, but suddenly she discovered a completely different talent.
The convoy was walking along the route already checked by sappers in the morning, and suddenly Dara jumps from above into the hatch of an armored personnel carrier to the driver, throws herself on his feet and literally blocks the work.
The soldier tries to drive her away, and she growls, snaps.
This forward security armored personnel carrier stopped, and all the trucks followed.
And then they started shooting.
Fortunately, from a significant distance, dushmans fired from the peaks, no one was hurt.
But if the column were drawn into the area where the enemy ambushed,
How Dara, on the move of the armored personnel carrier, could smell from afar the mixture of smells she remembered of the "spirit" - an unwashed body, gun grease and burnt gunpowder - no one understood.
But how did it work!
Soon, this shepherd dog was literally begged from me by the commander of the reconnaissance battalion of the 201st MSD, and his scouts almost licked this dog, because Dara had saved soldiers' lives more than once, warning in advance of enemy ambushes.
- After Afghanistan, your service also turned out to be connected with service dogs?
- At the Academy of Engineering Troops, the topic of my diploma was as follows: "The use of service dogs in an army counteroffensive operation."
After practice in theory, I calculated that the sapper dog, both in defense and in the offensive, acts more efficiently than a soldier with a probe and with a mine detector - faster and better.
Then I served for a long time
in the 470th training center for service dog breeding of the Armed Forces of Russia.
After leaving the reserve, I work in this military unit as a teacher of the cycle.
RIA News
© Viktor Antonyuk
- What breeds are most effective when searching for mines and other ammunition?
- German and East European Shepherds, Belgian Shepherd Malinois.
Previously, hunting breeds and Airedale Terriers were used, now they are not in our troops.
- Who is better looking: a female or a male?
Girls are more diligent and reliable in their work.
But twice a year, due to women's problems - estrus - they drop out of order.
Boys work faster but get distracted more often.
What do you take from them, males ...
— How do you assess the use of animals now, when clearing mines in the Donbass?
- I don’t undertake to evaluate: I’m not at the place of work of cynological calculations, and judging from hearsay or after watching television reports is stupid.
In my firm opinion, the place of a service dog is the second echelon of the combat formations of the troops.
On the front line, and even more so in urban battles, animals often lose their working form due to shell shock.
Even if someone else's, even if their own artillery fire is fatal for them: they stall.
The only use, in my opinion and the opinion of my colleagues, on the front line is to send out a dog in a free search for the enemy in the indicated direction.
At the same time, the counselor remains in the shelter.
But this is also only a private matter.
The dog must not be sent into thick grass.
She does not notice stretch marks, she dies.
Pollen in forbs clogs the scent.
Roads, roadsides - this is the profile of the work of such a sapper.
RIA News
© Konstantin Mikhalchevsky
Personally, I think that now it is more important to use not mine-detecting dogs, but guard dogs.
In the Donbass and Ukraine, the enemy is actively using sabotage and reconnaissance groups.
Trained German, East European, Central Asian and South Russian Shepherd Dogs will provide reliable combat protection of the near rear of our troops.
Field repair shops, fuel and lubricants and ammunition depots, drone control centers and hardware communications, mobile bakeries - all this needs protective barriers.
A service dog will sense a saboteur 100-600 meters away. With a silent warning - a jerk of the leash, a sharp rise - it will warn the leader, who will raise the duty unit to its feet.
Forewarned is forearmed,