Picture a sprawling grape field, row after row of low-leaning mud walls blanketed with dry leaves. It’s winter in Helmand, Afghanistan. In the middle of the field are 20 U.S. soldiers crouching for cover; they’ve just endured an insurgent attack. Now that the gunfire has quieted, K-9 handler Staff Sgt. Justin Kitts and his working dog, Dyngo, are clearing the area for explosives. Kitts watches his dog sniffing the ground and quickly sees the dog’s quick pace become slow and deliberate, the telltale change — Dyngo has found an IED. And a short time later, when the two of them search the road on the other side of the field, they find another. Each bomb, made of roughly 50 pounds of home-made explosives and buried two feet underground, is attached to a pressure plate hidden along these roads. The insurgents had used their gunfire to box the unit into an-IED trap.
