LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas — It can be a terrifying thing to see a dog streaking toward you across a field, fast and low to the ground, lips peeled back from a mouth filled with huge white teeth. But for the son of a Natchez woman, all he can think about, as the 80-pound animal leaps toward his arm, is making sure the dog gets a good bite.

Army Staff Sgt. Cartrell Fleming, son of Clara Lewis, of Highland Oak Drive, Natchez, is a is a student specialized search dog handler with the 341st Training Squadron, the largest canine training center of its kind in the world.

The Department of Defense Military Working Dog Center has courses that train both new dogs and new handlers to work together as sentries and bomb and drug sniffers. The human students spend 11 weeks working with veteran dogs learning how to control and understand their future canine partners. The new dogs work with veteran handlers to learn patrol work and to recognize the scents of drugs and explosives and the behaviors that will tell their handlers they’ve found something.

“I’m training to work with a special kind of military working dog,” said the 1995 Natchez High School graduate.

“We don’t do any patrol work or controlled aggression, just searching for explosives. We can send the dog into a search area — off leash — and they will be able to find what or indicate explosives.

“Unlike other military working dog handlers, we keep the dogs we are assigned in training until either the human or the dog leaves the military,” he said.

The four-footed students at the center learn to identify the scents of a wide variety of explosives and drugs, many of which are odorless to humans.

“It’s exciting to work with a dog on a daily basis,” said Fleming. “I love how it feels when we find something and all of the hard work pays off.”

Human students at the school learn the basics of their future partners including safety procedures, managing health, the gear they will be using, general record keeping for the animals and the principles of behavioral conditioning.

Then they learn basic obedience commands for the animals, how to control the animals, procedures for patrolling and searching an area and how to perform as a decoy to keep a working dog in top form.

“These dogs save lives on a daily basis,” said the 14 year Army veteran, including service in the war zones of Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.

“Every time one of these dogs goes out and finds something, that’s one more danger off the streets.”