During the Vietnam War in late 1969,Satan became David Juers’ lookout. For nearly a year, Juers, a resident of Ithaca, on Satan to alert him to the presence of the enemy.

“He was not as bad as his name implies,” said Juers about Satan, a laid-back mixed Shepherd breed.

Juers will be the featured speaker at the fourth annual Ithaca College Veterans’ Day Celebration, which will be held at noon today in Emerson Suites. The celebration will honor all college employees, students and alumni who are veterans of war, said Patricia Phelps, administrative assistant in the School of Music and co-chair of the Veterans’ Day Committee.

Past celebrations have featured veterans from World War II, the Korean War, and the war in Iraq, but this year’s celebration is the first with a speaker from the Vietnam war, Phelps said.

“The committee voted to find a Vietnam vet because Vietnam needed to be recognized,” she said. “So many Vietnam vets have been forgotten.”

The event will feature music by The Brass Belles, the faculty-staff chorus and the IC voICes. The ROTC of Ithaca College and Cornell University will also present.

Juers served in the Vietnam War as a scout dog handler in the United States Army for 10 months. He said scout dogs were trained to give early, silent warnings of the VietCong or anything belonging to them. According to Juers, the dogs had an acute sense of smell, recognizing human scents from 800 yards away.

“Any dog handler will tell you they have the best dog in the war,” Juers said. “They were all wrong. Satan really was. He wasn’t the smartest, but he could smell.”

The Army didn’t train the dogs with treats. They used positive reinforcement, he said.

The dogs each gave individual alerts for different scents. Juers said Satan had 18 distinct alerts, eight or nine of which he used all the time, Juers said. Once Juers and Satan were leading a unit, and the dog gave an alert �” head down, ears back. The unit panicked, thinking the enemy might be close. Juers told them not to worry.

“It’s just red ants, man,” he said.

Juers said being in a war takes years to cope with.

“It’s what the veteran has to deal with,” Juers said. “It’s that you’re in the occupation of killing. It’s war. They’ve done something that was necessary. They’ve given something, their lives, and it changed them.”

Upon returning to the states, Juers said, many Vietnam veterans were criticized for their service in a war that the majority of the American people no longer supported.

“There was no adjustment period,” Juers said. “No ‘We won the war!’ No rah-rah stuff,” he said.

As a scout dog handler, Juers “walked point.” The position required Juers to walk in front of the unit, meaning he would have been shot first.

“The level of fear is constant,” he said. “It gets to you.”

After his service in Vietnam, he returned to the U.S. to complete his graduate studies in zoology, with concentrations in ecology and limnology. He received his master’s degree from Rutgers University in 1973 and now works as an information technology manager for Claritas Incorporated, his employer since 1992.

In his spare time, Juers enjoys reading science fiction and finds ecology “intellectually satisfying.” Today, he lives in Ithaca and has two children: Eric, an eighth grader at DeWitt Middle School, and Elizabeth, a junior at Colgate University. Elizabeth said her father has a unique manner.

“When my roommate met him, she said he had a twinkle in his eye like Santa Claus,” she said.

Juers said most of his hobbies revolve around his children. He coached their elementary soccer teams, drove them to school and 4-H, and played catch.

“He cares a lot about his children,” said Elizabeth. “He doesn’t hesitate to talk about us, no matter how embarrassing it would be [for us].”

Juers said despite returning to the life he left days after returning from the war, he was greatly affected by his experiences in Vietnam.

“Just talking about it brings tears to my eyes,” he said, taking off his glasses. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”

Juers said he recognizes it must be difficult to understand what life is like for a veteran. He said he hopes that at the Veterans’ Day Celebration, he can tell students about his experience.

“Nobody owes any of us veterans anything. We just did our jobs,” Juers said. “It’s nice to be noticed. It’s nice to be recognized.”