CLYDE, N.C. – Part of the Labrador retriever’s training was to sense when the demons of war had invaded Wade Baker’s dreams.
“I was having a nightmare, a flashback,” Baker, a Gulf War veteran, once told an interviewer. “And I woke up with Honor standing on my chest, licking my face.”
He tried to push his service dog away, but Honor persisted. “He was stopping the nightmare for me,” Baker said.
And so, this summer when he saw his master lying in the flag-draped casket, Honor pushed through the clutch of weeping family members, reared up, placed his paws on the edge and tried to climb in. Unable to comfort Baker, the lanky black dog in the camouflage-patterned vest curled up underneath. For Baker, the long nightmare was finally over. But Honor was still on duty.
Baker’s quarter-century battle with post-traumatic stress disorder ended on Aug. 19 at a little church in the western North Carolina mountains. Police responding to an alleged hostage situation there did not know it at the time, but it was Baker who’d made the 911 call.
He was both gunman and hostage, and, as he told a friend who was trying desperately to make him surrender, it was time for him to be “put down.” When he fired at the officers, they returned fire, striking him nine times.
‘Tip of the spear’
Baker, a State Center, Iowa, native, enlisted in the Army on Nov. 21, 1988 – nine days after his 18th birthday. Stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, with his new wife Diane, Baker learned that his unit would be deployed for Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait from Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Part of the 1st Infantry Division, they would be “the tip of the spear.”
Baker, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle driver, made it through “the 100-hour war” with barely a scratch. But the invisible injuries inside were massive.
A few days after his return to Fort Riley, Diane called his sister, Laura Thomas, to say that he was having nightmares. He said a dead man was chasing after him, trying to talk to him. Baker told his sister that, while in the desert, he’d stumbled across an Iraqi soldier and shot him when he reached into his uniform. The man, he later realized, was reaching for photos of his children.
When Thomas told her brother that he needed professional help, he said that wasn’t an option. He planned to make the Army a career and feared they would “bounce me out of the military for being a nut job.” Besides, seeking help was a sign of weakness, he thought. Suffering in silence was the “manly” thing to do – even if that meant “drinking it away” or “drugging it away.”
Then things began to unravel. He attacked a higher-ranking non-commissioned officer and received a letter of reprimand for an incident involving his company commander.
Marriage ends, another begins
Moving back to Iowa, Baker got a job as a corrections officer with the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department. But he was becoming more distant from Diane and their two girls. He fell in love with a jail co-worker, Michelle, who was also married and had two sons of her own. They divorced their spouses and married, eventually having two sets of twins of their own.
Finally, Baker reached out to the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2007 but was told it would be several months before he could be seen. He began to see suicide as the only way out.
After a high-speed chase with police, Baker landed in a psychiatric unit. A doctor got him into the Iowa City VA. Baker was finally diagnosed with PTSD. But it would be 2009 before the VA would declare him 100 percent disabled.
‘Military litter’
On Aug. 23, 2010, at a kennel in Indianola, Iowa, a chocolate Labrador retriever named Bittersweet Formaro whelped a litter of six – four males and two females. Nicole Shumate took the whole bunch, plus one more from another litter.
As executive director of Paws & Effect, Shumate has spent nearly a decade training dogs for service with disabled children and combat veterans. She dubbed this latest group the “military litter” – Anthem, Hero, Justice, Liberty, Merit and Valor. And, of course, Honor.
Honor had a bit more drive than his siblings. In addition to the standard obedience training, Shumate enrolled him in agility classes to burn off some of that excess energy. “Honor was always a clown,” she says.
Honor was about halfway through his training when the Bakers’ dog was hit by a car and killed. When Baker met Honor at Paws & Effects’ Des Moines office, the dog was aloof and Baker was stuttering. But Shumate was confident the two would complement each other.
In March 2012, Baker and about a half dozen other veterans reported for training at a military base outside Des Moines. After two days, Baker was agitated and ready to quit. Then the men and dogs paired up for real-world training. During a mall outing, Baker became anxious. Honor began rubbing against his legs, then climbed up into his lap and let out a big yawn – a calming trick he’d learned.
“And that’s when I realized: ‘Oh. You’re training me,”’ Baker said.
Honor “graduated” along with his siblings. Baker said he’d already slept more in the two weeks of training than he had in years.
A buddy who’d served with him in the Balkans was living near Asheville, North Carolina. Assuring Baker that the VA hospital there was great, he opened his home to his troubled friend and, in December 2013, Baker made the move. By the following May, things were going well enough that Michelle and the boys decided to follow.
Once again, Baker left the inpatient treatment – saying his family needed him at home. Crowe, the VA psychologist, says the dropout rate for veterans in psychotherapy is 20 percent. Michelle became so concerned for the boys’ safety and her own that they moved out this past July – making sure to take all the guns. She and the kids found a small house, overlooking a pasture with lowing cows. Wade and Honor moved into a single-wide trailer about a mile away.
They still saw or talked to each other every day.
‘It’s a bad day’
August 19 was the boys’ first day of school. That afternoon, Michelle picked Jack and Kobi up, and went to Wade’s to get some of their things. As soon as he came to the door, she could tell something was wrong.
“It’s a bad day,” he told her.
As Honor tailed the boys around the trailer, Baker told his wife that he hadn’t slept in days. He began arguing with her, asking why they couldn’t all be together.
When she and the boys went to meet the older twins’ bus, Baker continued his argument by text. Michelle decided not to engage him.
At 3 p.m., he sent a final note.
“I love you,” he wrote. “Always will. Tell the boys I am sorry and that I was weak. I will always be watching them, every touchdown every test every night.”
Armed with a .20-gauge shotgun, Baker had driven a couple of miles into the mountains above Clyde to the Maple Grove Baptist Church. He kicked in the front door and called 911.
“There’s somebody here with a gun,” he told the dispatcher in an oddly calm voice. “They’re shooting up everything.”
“Do you know who it is or anything like that?” the dispatcher asked.
“Ah, some crazy son of a bitch,” Baker said, irritated. “I think he’s shot four people already.”
The line went dead.
Officers from four agencies converged on the church. One radioed that he’d been in touch with the crisis hotline, and that Baker had vowed “he would die by law enforcement. Today.”
His shotgun raised, the veteran walked toward the officers.
Honor left behind
Officers found Honor at Baker’s trailer – unharmed.
Michelle believes Baker left him behind because he didn’t want him to get hurt – or to try to stop his master. If one of the boys becomes emotional, Michelle said, Honor will rear up and gently press his front paws into his chest. “And they just melt and embrace him.”
She watched on a recent afternoon as the older twins, Mason and Nick, took turns calling the dog, each trying to prove he’s Honor’s new favorite.
She kept some of her husband’s ashes. He had asked that they be scattered at favorite waterfalls and other spots they’d visited. When the boys are ready, she plans to take them to fulfill his last wishes.
And when they do, it will be with Honor.
