Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1182254
P116 CN III CROSS-RUTTED BY JEAN TURNER O ur nation's eyes are currently on canine war veterans following the news of the hero dog injured in the recent Syrian raid, and rightly so. The story of the dog (and her handlers) who cornered the ISIS leader in Syria is remarkable in every sense; Conan and her team deserve our utmost respect. Her story brought to mind another honorable veteran I met at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 2018—his name is Bullet. Last summer at the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials (BMST) as we gathered for the riders meeting, I snapped a few photos of a Belgian Malinois who was wearing goggles and a camo vest with a patch that read, "Doin It For The Bitches." Upon closer inspection, there was a smaller "Special Forces" patch and his collar read "K9 Explosives." I chatted with his owner, David Scott, a competitor at BMST and also a veteran. "This is Bullet," David proudly said in the deepest voice you can imagine. "I got him from Mission K9 Rescue in Texas." YOU MEET THE NICEST PEOPLE AT THE RACES, BUT SOMETIMES THEY'RE NOT PEOPLE The story of Bullet is far more complicated than a veteran canine retiring to a loving new home. What never occurred to me is that our canine soldiers suffer from PTSD, much like their human counterparts. Sadly, it is even harder for the dogs to find the help they need to cope with life after service. But thanks to guys like David Scott, healing is possible, even for a dog like Bullet who was nearly deemed beyond rehabilitation after his eight years in Afghanistan. "When I got him he was so aggressive they were kinda fear- ful of who they could give him to," David explained. "They were thinking about a guy named Mike Ritland; he has a non-profit War- rior Dog Foundation that takes in dogs that are super aggressive that have been at war and they have real issues like doggy PTSD. He puts them out to pasture and lets them live their life out on his ranch. They were thinking about giving Bullet to him but I said, 'I think I'll try it.' "When I got him it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I got bit. My girlfriend almost got bit, my realtor almost got bit. He was really, really aggressive. But what I did was slowly over time, I got him to learn that people aren't bad." David spent the next three years working with Bullet every day, helping him learn to be "at ease" and trust people again. "What I did was I muzzled him, You meet the nicest people at the races. But sometimes they're not people at all.