Thrity-six metres off the side of a Darwin Esplanade hotel? No worries.
Earlier today Australian Defence Force commanders and soldiers were undergoing adventure training, and their trusty four-legged friends were along for the ride.
The focus of adventure training is to build courage, determination and confidence according to Corporal Joseph Abbey. In this case, it involves lowering one’s self to the ground face first, from a great height, with a dog hanging from a harness between your legs.
‘It’s just a training course to put guys out of their comfort zones, see what coping mechanisms they use,’ he said.
If you’re worried about the dogs, don’t be. It’s the soldiers who balk.
Corporal John Cannon is the Explosion Detection Dog senior handler in the First Combat Engineer Regiment. He’s done three tours of duty in Afghanistan since 2005 and says the dogs don’t mind it a bit.
‘The dog’s in a harness, and he’s attached to my harness so he’s actually hanging beneath my legs. Initially they used to be a little bit frightened and try to wriggle out, but now they just sort of relax and dangle out of the harness.’
But while these dogs are a man’s best friend, Corporal Cannon points out they are combat tools first and foremost.
‘I tell the people on the dog handlers course, if you’ve joined military dogs to work with dogs, maybe you shouldn’t be here, maybe you should be in the circus... Even though we work with dogs, the bottom line is, we’re engineers, we search for Improvised Explosive Devices, and that’s our bread and butter.’
So don’t try to lower Fido off the shed after reading this. Rule of thumb: If they can’t sniff out a bomb at a few kilometres, they probably won’t like it.
You could have seen it here first...
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