What the Dog Knows (17 page)

Mike Baker was still standing with his arms folded. Medium build, medium-brown short hair, medium Irish-English features—the kind of guy who might not stand out in a crowd of noisy dogs and macho cops. But as one handler who comes from another agency to train says, “Mike's magic.”

The Durham K9 unit, which boasts between ten and twelve dog-and-handler teams, isn't just for trotting out at city events and school show-and-tells. These dogs and officers work. I finally got used to the background sound of radio crackle; I could mostly ignore it when a patrol car would peel off to a callout: a short track for a burglary or assault, a search for a dropped gun, to sniff a car pulled over on I-85 for suspicion of drugs. Everyone listened intently if a call came in about a child who didn't return home as expected.

Not enough people go missing and are presumed dead for the police department to spend money and time training their dogs to do human-remains detection. It's all about resource allocation—Durham patrol dogs keep plenty busy with all the other calls. It's the same story everywhere: Most law enforcement departments have neither the
money nor the pressing need for a dedicated cadaver dog. However, if I could provide a competent cadaver dog, I might fill a gap. Andy Rebmann worked in the salad days of dogs and law enforcement. He started the first cadaver-dog program with the Connecticut State Police. That program has survived up through the present and now has half a dozen dogs and handlers. Programs that spun off from Andy's founder effect—Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine—all have law enforcement cadaver dogs. New York and Chicago also have cadaver dogs, as does Brevard County, Florida.

The majority of cadaver-dog work, though, falls to volunteer teams. It's not ideal, from the point of view of most serious law enforcement trainers and handlers. That's not snobbery; it's reality. If you do something for a living, you can spend more hours perfecting and applying your craft. I understood that, but there I was, right in line to try to be one of those not fully respected, jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none volunteers. The good news was that I was in line to learn a lot about dog training. I'd had little exposure to male trainers up to this point—women dominate the obedience world and, though to a lesser degree, the search-and-rescue seminar circuit; men dominate the law enforcement K9 world. That world tends to be a rougher place than the obedience world, where clickers and treats now rule. In the K9 world, square-chain choke collars are ubiquitous and unremarkable, liver treats rare. But woe be unto the handler who doesn't either take off the collar or put it on the dead ring if the dog is going to work, or who takes his temper out on the dog.

Working dogs need the same basic thing, whether from male or female trainers and handlers. Dogs need to hear high happy voices when they're being rewarded. They need to get their reward at the right moment. And they need gaiety.

“Make it fun for him,” Mike counseled a too-serious, alto-voiced handler. He modeled the behavior—“Pump him up. Atta boy, atta boy, atta boy!”—pitching his voice ever skyward in an escalating croon.

Solo and I got a chance to train at nine-thirty. The temperatures
outside had dropped into the low nineties, but it was about a hundred degrees inside the building. Finally, Mike turned to me and said the even, quiet words that would become so familiar: “Why don't you go get your dog?”

I could barely see Solo's bat-eared silhouette. He had fogged the inside windows of the car I had kept running to keep him cool. I remembered to walk him to let him pee before we entered the warehouse, but that was simply an opportunity for him to realize the threat he faced. Patrol-dog urine coated the weeds up and down the block. Solo walked into the voluminous dark warehouse, stiff-legged and hackled. The scent of all the hyped Malinois and Dutch shepherds permeated the air.

We performed abysmally. I didn't have a search pattern. I was trembling slightly. Solo finally stopped shooting glances over his shoulder to see whether dogs were stalking him and got down to work, moving down the long rows of stacked planks in the rear of the warehouse. He easily found the hides Mike had placed. I saw that from his behavior change. Mike saw it, too. Solo went to each hide, sniffed it, and then walked past it. No alert. Pathetic. I can't remember whether I made excuses. Probably. Mike was sympathetic, complimented Solo on his “work ethic,” but explained that he wanted a narcotic-dog alert: nose unerringly pointing to the hide, even if the dog's eyes were rolling up and backward wildly, anticipating the toy reward coming from the handler behind him. Solo, he said, was paying a bit too much attention to “Mom” during the search. That was unusual for Solo; my own fear smell must have been rolling off in waves, distracting him from his dog obsession.

It felt wonderful to put Solo back in the car and return to watch dogs find hidden handlers, fake suspects, perched in the warehouse's massive rafters. The dogs' deep warning barks rang out along with their handlers' standard warnings. “Suspect in the building. This is Durham K9. Come out with your hands up. This is your final warning. Come out with your hands up, or I will send the dog.”

The professional term for sending the dog after someone is “suspect apprehension.” The informal term is “bite work.” Released, the patrol dogs tracked the suspects, found the suspects, and barked harshly. Sometimes the suspect would throw the dog a toy reward, a Kong or tennis ball, and that was the end of the exercise. Other times the suspect would descend from the rafters in a jute bite sleeve, threatening. The dog would launch, mouth gaping, all four feet in the air, slamming into the hard sleeve. The dog would be encouraged to hang on while the suspect struggled, sweat mixing with dust and dog saliva.

“Praise him up,” Mike counseled a handler, who ran his hand approvingly over the muzzle of his biting dog, calming him down, getting him to hold hard and securely until he was told to let go, or until the decoy could safely shed the sleeve like a slipped skin, giving the dog the final reward for his work: a big chew toy.

I was fascinated, not horrified, to see so many teeth. It took guts, steady nerves, and perfect timing on the part of all three players: the dog, the handler, the decoy. I stayed well out of the way, high from adrenaline and from inhaling old tobacco dust rich with nicotine.

“Figured you'd have some nerves and that would rattle Solo a bit,” Nancy Hook said in her later e-mail to me. “It sounds like you did pretty darn good, though, and did well enough to let Mike know Solo is reliable. I know you can learn a lot from those guys.”

Mike was judicious in his critique. Break it down, he said in an e-mail. Worry about one building block at a time. Don't try to control everything. Let Solo initiate the game.

Of course I tried to control everything. I was a border collie in my prior life. Now I had two sources saying the same thing: Let go. I read and reread Mike's and Nancy's e-mails. Instead of having one mentor—Nancy—I had two. I had an entirely different set of dogs to watch. I had a big handful of experienced police K9 handlers and some not-so-experienced K9 handlers to observe. Even with the attendant anxiety, the ambivalence, and my obvious outlier status, it was a deep
pleasure to begin again. I could spend part of my time hanging back, studying. I was a student once more, known in the working-dog world as a “green” handler. It would be easy being green. Except when I had to work Solo in front of Mike. Or the other handlers. With their arms folded across their chests. Watching.

While I was at a huge disadvantage, I realized Solo had an advantage here that he didn't have at the local kennel club. Law enforcement handlers don't expect their dogs to get along. Most of their dogs have an edge. Every dog was on lead coming and going; each dog worked separately. The warehouse rang with another warning I would become accustomed to: “Dog in!” or “Dog out!”

For me, that warning was a comfort. A standardization of practice that would benefit me greatly. Working Solo, I wouldn't have to keep my eyes peeled for a shorthaired pointer to come bounding over off lead. Soon enough, Solo realized the same thing: With cops and Crown Vics around, he started to ignore sharp barks and growls and dog-permeated air. I didn't have to apologize for his personality. To the police K9 handlers, Solo wasn't a sociopath. He didn't even qualify as a jackass.

Most important of all, Mike's training philosophy fit Solo's king-of-everything attitude to a T. “Remember,” Mike wrote in his e-mail, “we are just anchors holding on to their leash.”

•  •  •

I've interviewed hundreds of suspects that have been confronted with a police service dog and they simply say the same thing over and over again: that is, “Hey, I was willing to fight the police, but I didn't want to fight that dog.”

—Terry Fleck, canine legal expert, 2012

I had been invited to watch the last three nights of the twelfth week of training three green dogs and three green handlers in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida. After that, the men and dogs would hit the streets. Ready or not. Steve Sprouse, the trainer for Broward County Sheriff's K9 patrol division, preferred them ready.

Steve said a version of the same thing, with a hint of melancholy, at the end of each exercise: “Remember, guys, it'll be different.” Training and actual deployment are separate worlds. He said it to the intense, eager handler who had the equivalent of a furry Mack truck on the end of a leash, to the handler with a dog who needed to develop more spine, and to the handler who seemingly had it all, a balanced dog and a balanced approach to handling.

Sandy and spare, with a slightly drooping mustache, Steve is simultaneously relaxed and wary, ardent and careful. In his late fifties, he's been handling dogs and training handlers for decades. He knew the dry admonitions he sent into the mild late-November night air were falling not on deaf but certainly on naive ears.

Steve and the three green handlers were preparing for the equivalent of a dog-and-pony show: In two days, the teams needed to demonstrate their newly acquired skills before a bunch of superior officers. Steve and the three handlers had discussed how to divvy up the performances. Each dog had his strengths.

One of the three German shepherds had a beautiful obedience routine. Broward Sheriff Deputy Pete Sepot's new dog, Diesel, was great at bark-box work. Pete faced the huge dog toward six human-sized boxes scattered on the training range, and Diesel flowed like sable mercury from one plywood box to the next until he smelled the hidden decoy. The flow stopped, and Diesel balled up at one of the boxes, giving fulsome warning barks, both front feet coming off the ground with the force of certainty. He's here. He's here. He's here. Diesel was just beyond adolescence but already a single muscle from head to tail; his bark sounded like that of a much older dog. It's an important warning: the prelude to more extreme action. The kind of bark that would make many suspects come out with their hands up. That's why patrol dogs
are trained to be noisy when they've found a suspect; the bark alert can prevent worse things from happening: Their bite is worse than their bark.

Lughar, another sable shepherd, and his handler, Dave Lopez, had been tagged to show what smooth apprehension work looked like—and as important—how a handler can call his dog off before the dog takes a bite. It's a standard training exercise: If the suspect gives up, or if the handler realizes the dog is headed full tilt toward the wrong person, the handler wants the dog to come back. If it's too late and the dog has already launched at the suspect, at the least, the handler wants to be able to tell the dog “Los!” (“Let go” in Dutch) and have the dog obey him. A dog with real drive has a hard time obeying either of those commands when he's flying toward a suspect; he's fighting his own instincts.

Lughar, though, made everything look easy. He had excelled at turning around and coming back to Dave, then, when he was released once again, going back toward the decoy, getting a solid bite, and coming off the bite on command. He had plenty of drive but was capable of listening. Dave, like Lughar, had everything he needed to succeed—except experience. He was a thoughtful, serious handler.

The problem tonight was that Dave's kids had the flu. They'd been up all night with high fevers. Everyone had been sick. Except the dog. But it always takes two—dog and handler—to make it work. Dave's exhaustion and nerves were running down the leash. “What happened to my perfect Lughar?” Sprouse said mournfully, watching his prize pupil fly down the field, backlit with sodium vapor lights, and dive into the shadows where Pete, playing the role of decoy, stood. It would have been beautiful if Dave hadn't been yelling harshly, in vain, for Lughar to return to his side and ignore Pete. Instead, Lughar ignored Dave: Pete's bite suit was too enticing. Lughar leaped, full-mouthed, at Pete's raised arm. Steve could envision the graduation demonstration, high-ranking officers watching as an open-jawed Lughar kept charging, Dave yelling futilely behind him.

•  •  •

No police K9 function is more misunderstood and more terrifying than the patrol-dog bite. Police K9 units have put a good distance between the civil rights–era protests when Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor turned fire hoses and snarling German shepherds on peaceful protesters. Warm and fuzzy now prevails when the comfortably middle class thinks about police canines. The media portrayals of police canines these days are “four-footed community police officers,” said Charlie Mesloh at Florida Gulf Coast University. A former police K9 handler, Charlie is now a criminology professor who researches the use of force, including the use of patrol dogs.

Although many dog lovers view police K9s as anthropomorphized heroes, catching bad guys, saving their human partners from armed and dangerous suspects, we don't like to think too much about exactly how dogs do that. They don't have opposable thumbs. They have speed. And teeth. Like other uses of force, dog bites can do serious damage. If a handler, or an entire unit, is overzealous, departments can be liable. That's true of any use of force, but a visceral fear arises from the misuse of dogs. Yet the “find and bite” or “bite and hold” patrol dog is the most common patrol dog in the country.