Lance Cpl. Fidel E. Rodriguez said he’s confident his military working dog has his back. Rodriguez, a dog handler with the Marine Corps Bases Japan Military Provost Marshal’s Office, shares the same bond many handlers have with their K-9 partners, a bond handlers say is not easily broken.

“You’re a team,” said Rodriguez. “You share the same bond you do as Marines. That’s how I view them. They’re Marines with four legs.”

Dogs and their handlers spend most of their time together and rely on each other not only to accomplish the mission but also to stay alive, according to Cpl. Anthony Brecht, a handler with PMO.

The same applies in a combat environment, Brecht added.

“You spend almost every waking moment with your dog in a deployed situation,” said Brecht who is partnered with Jent, a 7-year-old German Shepherd and a combat veteran. “You live together, eat together and, in most shelters, even sleep next to each other.”

The bond is essential to combat the danger the team’s job entails, Brecht said.

“We’ve been with infantry battalions and Navy Seals, usually to find weapons caches, (improvised explosive devices) or IED triggers,” Brecht said. “If I didn’t have him, there were a lot of situations where people could have been hurt.”

According to Brecht, dogs are capable of detecting explosives most technology cannot.

“There’s no equipment available that will do what a dog can do,” Brecht said. “They’re very instrumental in maintaining stability in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

While the dogs are instrumental, their abilities are useless if they don’t work well with their handler, according to Brecht.

“If a K-9 and its handler are conflicting all the time, they will not work well together,” said Brecht. “We match handlers and dogs based on their personality. We wouldn’t put a timid Marine with an aggressive dog. It just wouldn’t work.”

To ensure the handlers and dogs match well, they’re given a trial period to work and train together.

“It was really awkward at first,” Rodriguez said of Miester, his 7-year-old K-9 partner. “He didn’t really listen to me. He still had a bond with his former handler and would pull away from me.”

After months of training with Miester, Rodriguez formed that necessary bond, and the two were designated an official K-9 team with PMO.

“You have to let him know that you’ll feed him, clean him and take care of him,” Rodriguez said. “He needs to know he can rely on you and you have to be able to rely on him.”

Rodriguez likens the relationship of dog and handler to that of a father and son. Others, like Brecht, feel it is a more equal partnership.

“He’s not my subordinate,” Brecht said. “He’s more like my partner. One can’t work without the other.”