WAR DOGS

The facility lies two miles away from the main terminals but within the grounds of the airport, at the end of a service road that skirts a pond where geese flock during their migrations.

- PAUL YOON

It's in the shape of an enormous U, and equipped with stalls, bathing areas, runs, a paddock out back, and rooms that are advertised online as suites.

Currently being boarded are: five dogs and two cats in quarantine before they move on to their final destination; three horses, including a polo pony who has finished a competition in England and will eventually head to his home, in Maryland; and ten birds in cages who by the end of the week will relocate to a renovated room that, at a certain hour of the morning, when the sun hits a wall newly papered in forest prints, has the serenity of a spa.

The day so far an afternoon in early June has been a quiet one. There are fifteen employees on shift, including a team of veterinarians, janitors, trainers, a driver who has gone to meet an airplane from Germany that is on approach, and two childhood friends, named Brian (twenty-two, living with his mother) and Tess (twenty, on summer break from college and staying with her parents), who are sitting together on the steps inside the delivery entrance.

Brian, who works with the dogs, is rubbing the side of his face and waiting for the driver. Tess, who works with the horses, will be two minutes late for her shift at the stables and is trying not to think about cigarettes. They're in the middle of a discussion about whether a "war dog" is, by definition, a dog who works for the military, or if the term can be used for any dog who is in a war.

They'd look it up, but the Wi-Fi is spotty out here.

Today, Brian has been assigned to one of two dogs coming in from a military base outside Berlin. He knows they're originally from Afghanistan and that the one he isn't responsible for is severely dehydrated. He pins his tablet between his sneakers and keeps checking his phone for service.