Charlène, a dog handler in the 132nd Dog Handling Infantry Regiment, was working in a large book-shop in northern France during the wave of terrorist attacks that swept through France in 2015 and 2016. Already attracted by the physical activity an army career would promise and brought up on stories told by her father about his military service in Germany, she realised it was decision-making time. “I wanted to do something, I’d been wanting to join up for quite a while and realised that I didn’t know what I was waiting for to do so,” this calm young woman recounts.

The recruitment officer must have been a little surprised to hear this young book-seller, armed with a literary baccalaureate and two years at university studying the art of theatre, announce that her first choice was to join the special forces and that her second choice, backed by her love of animals, was to be a dog handler in the special forces. “It was probably a little naïve of me but I thought that the special forces was where I would find interesting missions and adventure.” Charlène smilingly admits that adventure and action attract her. What did her parents think? She smiles broadly: “my parents weren’t fans but they support me.”

French special forces have been open to women since the 1990s, but thus far only about a dozen women have got through the extremely tough recruitment tests. It was the dog handling part that Charlène was encouraged to pursue.

There followed some days of physical, phycological and medical tests. “The physical tests were an important part because a dog handler walks between 15 to 20 kms a day,” she explains. She joined up as a rank and file soldier, signing a five-year contract. Even though she’d decided from the outset that her career would be in the army she wanted to start at the bottom of the ladder in order to gain in legitimacy. “I think that when I’m in command I’ll be fairer,” she adds.

Her plan is working out: in the last quarter of 2020 she completed the non-commissioned officers’ course at Saint Maixent. She thus has a new five year contract to sign “but it won’t be the last,” she laughs.

Her civil partnership is with another soldier in her regiment “which helps a lot because we each understand what the other’s job entails, notably when we have to be absent for many weeks on mission,” but her work partnership is with Muukay, a Belgian Malinois Shepherd “with a dominant personality” who took a few months to understand that Charlène was the boss! “He’s never actually bitten me, but he would spin sharply around as though he was going to and to show me that he wasn’t happy,” she says. Charlène, who had a lot of cats growing up but never any dogs, had to learn to show Muukay that she wasn’t frightened of him.

A novice dog handler is trained by experienced dog handlers and by attending lessons in canine behaviour. The ‘apprentice’ dog handler undertakes exercises with their dog whilst the ‘master’ corrects their gestures, tone of voice or body language. Once the dog has understood who the master is, he can be trained to work. “A dog always works for a prize,” Charlène explains, adding with a smile that “Muukay’s ultimate prize is a ‘kong’”, a toy specifically designed for canines.

To train a dog to intercept a person, soldiers work in a ‘handler-helper’ pair. The ‘handler’ holds the leash and gives their orders to the dog whilst the ‘helper’, wearing a protective outfit that weighs about 15kg, plays the role of the ‘criminal’ whom the dog must attack. “We’re trained in both roles because we are the ‘handler’ of our own dog and the ‘helper’ for our colleagues’ dogs,” Charlène explains. “The next step is to decondition the dog from the equipment, in other words, teach him to recognise the smell of a human” rather than the smell of the protective outfit. That is achieved by removing the protective outfit bit by bit until it has entirely gone to train the dog to search (the dog is unleashed and signals the presence of a suspect individual by barking) and to detect (the dog is leashed) and the attitude of the dog signals to the handler that a suspect is nearby.

The training period is not fixed “because it depends on the dog, but mine learns fast so we were operational within six months.”

There are three companies within the regiment: one specialised in finding explosives and the two others specialised in apprehending suspects and it is in one of the latter that Charlène and Muukay work. Their job is to support other units on mission (patrols, urban combat, points of control, reconnaissance of specific areas…), and to secure and protect military bases and sensitive zones, for example. “We patrol and the mere presence of the dog is in itself extremely dissuasive,” she says.

Muukay and his mistress were deployed for four months in Côte d’Ivoire. “We allow the dog a bit of time to acclimatise whenever we deploy somewhere where the weather is very different from what it is accustomed to,” she explains.

Charlène does not take Muukay home with her every evening. “One has to consider that my dog is like a weapon, so he stays at the regiment.” And, unlike what usually occurs, Muukay will not retire at his handler’s home after working for eight to 10 years. “His difficult temperament will never allow him to become a family pet so I will work with him as long as possible,” she says. “Our team still has many years to be together. We have strong ties to each other and we still have many days ahead of us to serve France before Muukay meets the conditions to be reformed.”

After which Charlène will have to built a new partnership with another dog.