Navy Seal Dogs By Mike Ritland

The book Navy Seal Dogs: My Tale of Training Canines for Combat is a dramatic story told by Mike Ritland of his life growing up and learning his passions of being a trainer for Military Working Dogs, also known as MWDs. The book shows how to not let others control you. Rutland's passion was dogs and because he didn’t let others control him he was able to fulfill his passion and work with dogs and make a special bond with them. The book is based on Ritland's experiences in training dogs in the US but a lot of the book tells the dog’s stories that he trains over in Iraq so the setting is constantly switching between the fun, happy times training the dogs in the US and the dirty, dark times in Iraq. These different settings lead to different

As he finds his passion Ritland is training to become a SEAL and finds the MWD program that he instantly falls in love with. The book then skips over to him actually training these dogs and the skills that each dog acquires from the training. As the dogs continue their training Ritland evolves an emotional connection to each dog and connects that emotion to multiple scenarios where it really moves the reader to think about the dog and human relationship. The book then reaches the point where the dogs are getting deployed and goes over stories of each dog and their handlers. These stories become the climax as each dog is quickly put to the test in Iraq and there is that uncertainty that the dog will come out ok after each mission. The book then ends with talking about two dogs that were injured during service and talks about Ritland’s current job in eastern Texas, training dogs for the rest of the military and private

Ritland loves dogs and he has realized that dogs love their owners and love it, even more, when they are given a task so he will jump at any opportunity to give a dog an owner and something to work towards. Ritland is very unselfish and even started a non-profit organization to help retired service dogs achieve long, healthy, and happy lives. Ritland is a smaller guy and was bullied when he was younger so he spent a lot of time around dogs because they didn’t hurt him or bully him like the guys his age did. This time spent with dogs is what gave him his passion for dogs. One of Ritland’s traits is he is very unselfish, this is proven multiple times in the novel such as when he told a story about training a dog that was not in good condition at all to go overseas because it had been abandoned but he worked long and hard working overtime to train Kwinto. Kwinto became one of the SEAL’s best dogs. Kwinto was especially skilled at night because of his homeless background and needed to hunt for food at