Now-Sgt. Maj. Viridiana Lavalle, an immigrant from Mexico Metropolis is the primary lady to change into the Army Army Working Canine program supervisor and the Army’s senior-most MWD handler. Lavalle is pictured with considered one of her navy working canines earlier in her profession.
VIEW ORIGINAL
WASHINGTON — Wealthy Vargus first witnessed Viridiana Lavalle’s dedication to the navy working canine career throughout a 2014 deployment.
That spring Lavalle traveled almost 8,000 miles to Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan in help of Operation Enduring Freedom because the U.S. Forces Afghanistan Regional Command-East Army Working Canine or MWD program supervisor.
Rebel assaults on U.S. troops within the mountainous nation led to a larger demand for navy working canines in brigade fight groups.
The Army started pulling infantry troops to coach as handlers within the Tactical Explosive Detection Canine, or TEDD program, a service initiative to pick out and practice infantry Troopers to obtain a modified primary handler course; offering extra canine drive groups to commanders in Afghanistan. This system condensed about 17 weeks of coaching into six weeks.
“IEDs have been taking out our children left and proper,” mentioned Vargus, then a lieutenant colonel directing U.S. Central Command’s legislation enforcement operations within the Center East. “We didn’t have sufficient conventional navy working canine groups to deploy.”
Vargus trusted Lavalle, then a 31-year-old sergeant firstclass, to validate the infantry groups throughout a 30-day acclimation after arriving in theater.
Sgt. Maj. Viridiana Lavalle, the Army Army Working Canine program supervisor and the Army’s senior most MWD handler reads a guide on navy working canines to elementary faculty college students at Fort Sill, Okla, on April 16, 2021. Lavalle is the primary lady to carry the place.
VIEW ORIGINAL
Lavalle didn’t take the duty evenly.
She meticulously studied troops’ interactions with the canines and their potential to construct confidence of their canine. She noticed how groups adjusted to the setting. Lavalle evaluated trainers and their canines on their potential to detect conventional explosives, and the threats from improvised selfmade explosives.
The Taliban used masking brokers to cowl as much as 500 kilos of explosives in an try and offset the canines’ potential to detect explosive odors.
Lavalle additionally had a tough activity to guage TEDD groups to find out if a staff can be a drive asset able to going outdoors the wire.
Whereas commanders’ referred to as for extra certified canine handlers within the subject, she remained agency in her choice and made the robust name to redeploy a TEDD staff if she determined it didn’t cross the acclimation and validation interval. She made her choices after concentrated efforts to work with handlers to strengthen primary detection protocols.
“She felt that duty,” Vargus mentioned. “She made the decision, and had the complete help of CENTCOM. …..that [took] a number of guts, however the backside line as a senior NCO, she was liable for Troopers’ lives.”
A New York Metropolis native who spent six years with the NYPD and as a particular agent for the Federal Aviation Administration throughout 9/11, Vargus revered Lavalle’s no frills perspective. Lavalle, a navy police officer from a blue collar suburb in South Florida had impressed her friends together with her data of canine coaching and exemplary management.
Lavalle respects her Troopers, no matter rank. As a frontrunner she voiced her opinion when she didn’t agree with a coverage or noticed a Soldier attempt to lower corners in coaching. She by no means accepted the established order, Vargus mentioned.
“She was a ball of fireside,” mentioned Vargus.
Now a sergeant main and the Army Army Working Canine program supervisor on the Workplace of the Provost Marshal Common in Washington D.C., she ranks because the Army’s prime MWD handler and the primary lady to carry the place.
Lavalle mentioned she’s humbled to be in her present place and strives to set an instance not just for the MWD Program, but in addition all through the Army’s navy police neighborhood.
As we speak ladies comprise 22% of the Army’s MWD workforce and have made quite a few strides since Lavalle enlisted into the Army twenty years in the past.
Vargus mentioned when the Army assigned Lavalle to change into the Eighth Army MWD Program Supervisor in Yongsan, South Korea, Lavalle labored below great strain to deliver up the low MWD certification charges. With troops solely deployed for a yr, certifications have been a problem.
No matter certification charges fluctuating she held her handlers throughout the Eighth Army MWD Program to the strict Army MWD certification requirements. She held herself and handlers to the Army’s excessive expectations.
MWD groups get examined on carious important duties similar to obedience, obedience course, detection, and patrol capabilities. She evaluated how nicely canines reply to their assigned handler’s verbal instructions and their potential to navigate via bodily obstacles.
Following her lead, the talents of her MWD handlers grew to become sharper, Vargus mentioned, as a result of Lavalle caught to her convictions.
“That feeling of all the time making an attempt to show your self and discover methods to exceed the requirements – I don’t suppose will ever go away,” she mentioned. “It’s who I’m.”
“What I attempt to clarify to younger handlers is no matter what folks suppose or say, all the time keep true to your self,” she added. “It’s not simply in regards to the Army requirements, but in addition having private requirements and all the time making an attempt to exceed these requirements in all the pieces you do.”
For the love of canines
Sgt. Maj. Viridiana Lavalle, Army Army Working Canine program supervisor, grades Sgt. Warren Bolden, 131st Army Working Canine Detachment, Mixed Army Working Canine Detachment – Europe, throughout a coaching train in simulated city terrain at Baumholder, Germany, Might 12, 2022.
Every participant is graded on their potential to guide their staff all through buildings on web site whereas testing odor and explosive detection and dealing with their navy working canine with full physique armor and a weapon.
VIEW ORIGINAL
At age 13, Viridiana Lavalle discovered her life’s calling whereas planted in entrance of her household’s tv.
As a toddler, Lavalle watched hours of basic black and white reruns of “Lassie” and “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin.”
She dreamed of changing into a veterinarian whereas rising up in Broward County, Florida, the place her household owned two German shepherds.
Whereas attending Western Excessive Faculty she enrolled in Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Coaching Corps the place her junior ROTC teacher, retired Grasp Sgt. Alexander Poole, performed the film “Warfare Canine of Vietnam” she then determined she would change into a navy Working canine handler.
“I used to be intrigued by the Warfare Canine of Vietnam and the navy’s construction,” Lavalle mentioned.
Laborious work had been engrained into Lavalle at an early age. An immigrant from Mexico Metropolis, she had seen her mother and father toil and battle as restaurant employees in South Florida earlier than ultimately her mom grew to become a tv senior producer and her father an actual property agent.
In highschool, she volunteered at a neighborhood veterinarian clinic. Whereas she cherished caring for canines, she now noticed her place in America clearly, not as their caretaker, however as their accomplice.
The trail earlier than her appeared easy: she would change into the primary member of her household, a primary technology Mexican-American, to hitch the navy and she or he would spend her life working with the animals she cherished.
At 15 she rode in police vehicles whereas shadowing Okay-9 handlers on shift and through coaching.
Davie, a western-themed suburb of over 100,000 which lies close to the jap fringe of the Florida Everglades, could be vulnerable to flooding. Okay-9 items can play an important function in rescue efforts, narcotics detection, constructing searches, and lacking individual instances.
The sense of household, conventional in most Mexican households, by no means left her. She seen her buddies within the canine neighborhood as considered one of her personal, simply as she noticed the canines as her personal. “After getting her friendship, she treats you want household,” Peek mentioned.
She revered the sacrifices the canines made and their grace and energy. The earliest navy working canines utilized in fight could be traced again to 600 B.C. by the Greek and Roman armies. Historically the U.S. navy purchases canines from Germany the place the canines are bred from beginning to develop the traits crucial for the pains of navy and police operations.
Army working canines danger their lives in serving to detect explosives, seek for lacking Troopers and even goal enemies with their patrol capabilities.
In 2011, a navy working canine named Cairo reportedly helped U.S. Navy Seals seize Osama Bin Laden.
On deployments she took measures to guarantee younger handler’s had entry to veterinarian care. Lavalle adopted a number of navy working canines through the years, together with Zony, a protecting German shepherd that specialised as a patrol drug detection.
Blazing her personal path
Lavalle swore into the Army in August 2001 simply weeks earlier than planes struck the World Commerce Middle towers, spurring America into conflict. And just like the canines of Rin Tin Tin’s technology, canines would once more play a important function in a significant battle. “The ops tempo was extraordinarily tough for handlers throughout that point interval,” Lavalle mentioned.
U.S. forces despatched the primary 30 MWD groups to Iraq within the spring of 2004. MWD Detachments additionally help with counter improvised explosive units measures in a deployed setting, performing important, doubtlessly life-saving duties. The MWD groups work with U.S. Particular Operations, infantry items, and fight engineers.
Lavalle graduated as a Army Working Canine handler in 2003 from the 341st Coaching Squadron, Lackland Air Drive Base, San Antonio, Texas. As typically the lone feminine throughout MWD coaching, Lavalle needed to regularly show herself amongst her male counterparts, a few of whom doubted her skills.
“It was difficult,” mentioned Lavalle, who would later deploy to Iraq three years later as a protecting companies agent for the commander of U.S. Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid. “It undoubtedly motivated me to work that a lot more durable, in order that I may show myself as a Soldier and as a canine handler to earn the respect of different canine handlers and canine trainers.”
Her friends noticed the outcomes of her work. Now retired Command Sgt. Maj. Jeremy Peek led certifications for canine handlers at Fort Stewart, Georgia the place Lavalle skilled new MWD handlers and non-commissioned officers. When considered one of Lavalle’s Troopers ran the impediment course, they outperformed different MWD groups, Peek mentioned.
Throughout reside hearth coaching the place Troopers and their canines should run an impediment course with the sound of gunfire, just like what they’d face towards hostiles.
Lavalle confirmed trainers learn how to preserve the canines calm amidst the cadence of reside rounds.
“They have been phenomenal,” Peek mentioned. “She’s the most effective handlers that the Army has. She’s extremely educated. She outworked everyone.”
Peek a Michigan native, joined the Army within the early 90s to pursue a profession in legislation enforcement and to observe within the footsteps of his father, an ex-Texas State Trooper.
He mentioned within the small, male-dominated subject of navy working canine handlers, Lavalle needed to overcome harsh scrutiny from her friends.
Throughout her profession, Lavalle returned to South Florida as a member of protecting companies in U.S. Southern Command to supply private safety for senior navy commanders. Lavalle additionally frolicked as a member of the Army’s Particular Response Groups or SRT, the Army’s model of SWAT.
Nonetheless, Lavalle she spent the vast majority of her years in Okay-9 items. At Joint Base Myer-Henderson Corridor, Lavalle carried out U.S. Secret Service and United Nation missions working as Patrol Explosive Detector Canine Handler.
In 20 years as a canine handler and coach, Lavalle has labored with 1000’s of canines. Her place because the Army’s most senior canine handler has taken her away from working with canines to an workplace within the Pentagon, so she will oversee and assist the profession subject evolve.
Vargus mentioned he admired Lavalle’s potential to see the 31K subject from a holistic perspective.
For canines deployed in Afghanistan Lavalle seemed for options to assist canines keep cool within the sweltering noon warmth. For canines stationed throughout the Eighth Army MWD program she considered learn how to shelter them from the tough Korean winters.
“She’s a full spectrum thinker,” Vargus mentioned. “Most kennel masters are involved with the immediacy of the operational mission. SGM Lavalle is all the time considering quick and lengthy vary encompassing the operational and strategic mission.”
Lavalle typically would work into the evening growing plans to enhance the coaching and processes for the Army’s 500 navy working canines.
The sergeant main didn’t lead from a distance. She has travelled 1000’s of miles to Army installations to satisfy with Okay-9 items and observe coaching.
She’d wake early and arrange coaching websites hours earlier than contributors arrived, Vargus mentioned.
“Main from the entrance is her mantra,” he mentioned. “She would be sure there was mission success.”
This was clearly demonstrated when she labored diligently to help the adoption strategy of TEDD’s to former handlers and legislation enforcement when CENTCOM drew down this system.
“She was a miracle employee,” Vargus mentioned.
Vargus recalled sooner or later at Fort Stewart when Lavalle lectured junior Troopers about learn how to correctly put on the chew swimsuit, a protecting outfit used to coach MWDs to take down perpetrators.
With out hesitation, Lavalle pulled herself into the puffy orange garment and fearlessly let a canine dash towards her with nice drive, knocking her physique to the bottom.
In June, Lavalle created the Army Working Canine Symposium, the primary in-person occasion of its variety, on the Muscatatuck City Coaching Middle in Southern Indiana. She contacted trade leaders and consultants to host classes in obedience coaching, bodily conditioning, and different abilities. She plans on making the symposium an annual occasion, encouraging larger cooperation among the many navy and authorities businesses.
She additionally met with veterinarians to assist higher take care of canines’ well being together with educating handlers learn how to deal with canines for fight wounds.
Vargus, mentioned the friends who judged her harshly now respect her.
“When she speaks everyone stops and listens,” Vargus mentioned. “They know she’s not talking simply to rattle any individual … She will clarify and articulate the wants of navy working canines in any respect ranges of command, she understands and is nicely versed within the operational, tactical, and strategic utilization of navy working canines. ”
Associated hyperlinks:
MWD Symposium encourages larger collaboration amongst leaders and handlers
