No Ordinary Dog Quotes

“Someone once said that buying a dog is like buying a small tragedy. You know on the very first day how it will all turn out. But that's not the point, is it? It's the journey that counts, what you give the dog and what you get in return;”
― Will Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“One thing I've learned is you can't rush recovery. Whether you're talking about the head or the heart, healing takes time. Grief recedes like the tide, leaving memories that make you smile or laugh. Life is for the living, after all, and you can only walk around in a daze for so long.”
― Will Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“On the first night in California, he slept in his kennel; by the second night, we were sharing a bed, although I do recall pushing him off in the middle of the night for being such an aggressive snuggler and blanket hog.”
― Will Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Lately, though, I've thought that it would be nice if more people knew about Cairo and had a chance to hear his story, and maybe connect with him in some way.”
― Will Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Cario was a great dog, friendly and playful and trustworthy around strangers, but he was still a dog. Centuries of breeding, combined with the best training money can by, had made him a highly adept hunter. Nothing made him happier than to sink his teeth into his prey. That’s just a simple, irrefutable fact. As a result, Cairo, like all combat assault dogs, required endless refresher training on the less enjoyable and (to them) more mundane aspects of their work, primarily scent detection. Once exposed to biting, especially real biting with bloody results, a dog wanted nothing more than to bite again.”
― Will Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“For a long time, the German shepherd was the standard bearer for work in law enforcement and the military, but for many reasons, including practicality, the breed has been surpassed by the Malinois. Among the factors in favor of the Malinois are size and resiliency. While the Malinois has nothing on the German shepherd when it comes to brainpower or strength, it does have the advantage of being a smaller and more agile breed. the Belgian Malinois is built for military work, and especially for the sort of job commonly undertaken in Special Operations. While either breed can reliably detect the presence of explosives or a human target in hiding, the Malinois is quicker and stabler, simply by virtue of it's smaller and more compact musculature. It is better suited to traversing uneven terrain, and, when necessary, more easily transported.”
― Will Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Anyone who has ever shared his life with a dog understands the symbiotic nature of the relationship—how a dog relies on his master for sustenance and shelter, and responds with love and loyalty so unconditional that it can take your breath away.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“I was Cairo’s first handler and had been through two long deployments with him, as well as years of training. He had saved my life by nearly sacrificing his. I had held him in my arms as he nearly bled to death on the battlefield. We were profoundly connected.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Migraines are another of those maladies that are unfairly dismissed as a mere inconvenience, as opposed to the soul-crushing experience they can be. This, I think, is because a lot of people will get a bad headache once in a while and describe it as a “migraine.” I might have been guilty of that in the past; maybe not. I don’t really recall. I do know that the headaches I began experiencing in the fall of 2012 were uniquely debilitating and painful. They would come on without warning, at any time of the day, usually starting as a soreness in the back of my neck before creeping inexorably upward, crawling across the back of my skull and toward the frontal lobe, until it felt as though my entire head was in a vise grip. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t see straight. All I could do was retreat to the couch or the bedroom—sometimes with a stop at the bathroom to vomit—and sleep away the day. It was like having the worst hangover in the world, when you’ve done nothing to merit the punishment.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Migraines are another of those maladies that are unfairly dismissed as a mere inconvenience, as opposed to the soul-crushing experience they can be. This, I think, is because a lot of people will get a bad headache once in a while and describe it as a “migraine.” I might have been guilty of that in the past; maybe not. I don’t really recall. I do know that the headaches I began experiencing in the fall of 2012 were uniquely debilitating and painful. They would come on without warning, at any time of the day, usually starting as a soreness in the back of my neck before creeping inexorably upward, crawling across the back of my skull and toward the frontal lobe, until it felt as though my entire head was in a vise grip. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t see straight.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“We used to call him Houdini, a nickname earned after multiple Kennel escapes. This is going to sound like fiction, but I swear it’s true; Cairo learned how to squeeze his foreleg through the front grate and use his paw to lift the latch on the kennel. If for some reason that didn’t work, he would use his teeth and his legs to twist the front grate until eventually he created enough of a gap to squeeze through.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“I didn’t sleep much that night. I was too worried about Cairo and whether he would succumb to his injuries. If something happened, I wanted to be awake and alert so that I could call his treatment team right away. And if he were to pass, I wanted my face to be the last thing he saw. I wanted to hold him close and tell him how much I loved him, and how much everyone on the team respected him and appreciated his sacrifice. He deserved at least that much.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“The rest of the team quickly responded and killed both insurgents, but not before Falco was critically wounded. By the time I arrived and saw him being loaded onto a helicopter, he was already dead. The loss hit me hard, but not nearly as hard as it hit Frank. He was completely crushed, almost as if he had lost a family member or a fellow soldier. Which, in a way, he had.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“We had two dogs embedded with us on that deployment. Their names were Falco and Balto. Night after night, I watched them do amazing work, catching or neutralizing one bad guy after another. There were virtually no restrictions on where we could take them. If we had to jump out of a helicopter while hovering fifty or a hundred feet above ground, the handler would hook the dog into his line and fast-rope with him. If we had to parachute in—which wasn’t common, but did happen—the dog would be placed in a harness and a large pouch attached to his handler, and the two of them would jump together. It was awesome to witness this, especially since the dogs always seemed so calm.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Again, I think this is a gift, something you are either born with or not. Shit always ran off my back when I was a kid. I didn’t let much get to me. My parents divorced, we lived in a trailer park, and I worked hard for everything I had, but I never felt angry or resentful about any of it. It was just the way things were. I learned early on that there are things you can’t control in life—a lot of things—so you find a way to deal with them. Eventually, even the worst shit passes.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Most people aren’t built that way. A lot of guys who enter BUD/ S are type A personalities: focused, driven, hypercompetitive. They are also control freaks. During Hell Week, you learn very quickly that you are in control of almost nothing except your own emotions. You can succumb to the fear and pain, or you can find a way to endure it.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Here’s the thing about the enlistment process: it is conducted by recruiters who are shrewd and experienced. Navy recruiters—and, I presume, recruiters from every branch of the armed services—are adept at telling young men and women exactly what they want to hear at a stage in their lives when they are both immature and easily influenced.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“At the end of the summer, I left for basic training in Chicago. It was the first time I had traveled any great distance on my own, so a bit of homesickness might have been expected. But I really wasn’t homesick. Some guys sign up for the military with a couple of buddies. Not me. I went entirely on my own, and as I flew out of Houston, I mainly just felt excitement about starting a new life.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“A lot of people look back on their first job and cringe at the memory. Not me. There was something appealing about showing up for work, being assigned a task, executing it to the best of my ability, and then going home at the end of the shift, knowing I was fifty or sixty bucks closer to buying a car, and proud that I hadn’t screwed anything up along the way.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“I grew up in a trailer park, which might sound worse than it was. It was kind of a nice trailer park, and though my parents split up while I was in school, we all got along reasonably well, and I spent time at both homes. I never thought of myself as poor, but I was certainly aware of the fact that I had less than many other kids at school. It didn’t particularly bother me, and I never felt sorry for myself. It was just the way things were. Both my parents worked, and at the end of the day, there just wasn’t a lot of money left over. I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time by myself, trying to figure things out. For better or worse, I was a bit of a loner. But I was also a self-sufficient kid.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“But the story doesn’t end there, and it doesn’t end on a high note. It never does with dogs, right? Someone once said that buying a dog is like buying a small tragedy. You know on the very first day how it all will turn out. But that’s not the point, is it? It’s the journey that counts, what you give the dog and what you get in return;”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“The same basic tenets apply when it comes to developing military working dogs. Physical attributes are essential, but all the speed and strength in the world is useless if a dog freezes at the sound of a rocket-propelled grenade exploding into a hillside, or if instinct wins out and he withers in the face of enemy gunfire, or refuses to enter a darkened room because the last time he did this, a bad guy stabbed or shot him.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Anyone who has ever shared his life with a dog understands the symbiotic nature of the relationship—how a dog relies on his master for sustenance and shelter, and responds with love and loyalty so unconditional that it can take your breath away. Well, take that relationship and multiply it tenfold, and then factor in the almost incomprehensible bond that is forged when a dog puts his life on the line for you and your brothers, every single day, and you get an idea of what it was like for Cairo and me—and indeed for almost anyone who is fortunate enough to be the handler of a canine SEAL.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“I grew up with dogs, had always been a dog lover, but I had no idea of the extent to which canines had been incorporated into the military until I became a SEAL and began to hear the stories. I remember walking into a training room once, early in my tenure, and hearing the following directive: “Raise your hand if your life has ever been saved by a dog.” Without hesitation, roughly 90 percent of the men in the room lifted their arms. They did not laugh. They did not smile. This was serious, earnest business.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“When a dog gets within a few feet, before he tries to bite, I'll give him a little poke on the nose, just to see how he reacts. Mike Reaver said. It's not hard, doesn't hurt him. but it does put him back on his feet a little bit. That's what we want. We want to see how he responds to that aggression. If he dives right in and bites, that's awesome. If he stands six inches away from my legs, barking, waiting for me to open up or give him a window of opportunity, that's okay too. but if he backs up twenty feet, that's a problem. That means he's not comfortable with this level of aggression.
The poke test may not be a perfect gauge of a dog's spirit, but it can be an effective way to measure a dog's fighting instinct.”
― Will Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Sometimes one of the Malinois will cross one paw over the other and tilt its head a certain way, and the resemblance to Cairo is uncanny.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“As a handler, I had been Cairo’s teammate, but I was also his boss. I was Dad, and like any dad, I tried to balance affection with discipline.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Dude,” he said. “I think I just shot that motherfucker.” “What?” I said. “Seriously?” Rob nodded. “Yeah. I just shot that fucker in the face.” He didn’t use bin Laden’s name, but I knew exactly who he meant.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“The mission, we were told, had been given the name Operation Neptune Spear. The reason this name had been chosen was because Neptune’s spear is a trident, and a trident is part of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare insignia.”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid

“Cheese, what the fuck are you doing?”
― Willard Chesney, No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the Bin Laden Raid