Line of Duty Death

Ronny (RONY) HPD K-9 Line of Duty

 

I was thinking about working dogs that I have worked with over the years. Each had their own distinctive personality. I’m trying not to anthropomorphize but if I stray into human traits please, realize what I mean is that they display these human traits within the context of a dog’s understanding. Houston Police Department lost one of their K-9’s early Wednesday morning so it seems like a fitting topic; Houston-police-dog-dies-after-nabbing-suspect.

Like their human counterparts, they had good days and bad days but they didn’t call in sick. Monty was my K-9 partner. Before I left the house in the morning, he knew whether or not I was going to work. If work, it was, I wasn’t going to leave the house without him. According to the other handlers, that just the way it was. They were a team.

The K-9’s I worked with had a job and they were proud to do it. Sure, they were looking for the pat on the head, high praise, their toy or joy of joy the bite. They knew that if they cheated none of that would be forthcoming. We would go out singly or in pairs to assigned tasks. Oftentimes we would be called together at a remote parking lot, rally point, to prepare for a search warrant. Five, six, ten narcs standing together was no cause for comment among the K-9 contingent until the first narc reached for a raid jacket or raid vest and then all hell would break loose. The dogs would be up on their toes, dancing from side to side in their kennels and barking up a storm. They weren’t going to be left behind. Once the team headed out to the search warrant location, the dogs quieted down.

The commander, at the time, had a Bassett Hound. Festus came to the office every day. His job was to help the boss maintain his sanity. When we went out on operations, Festus went too. There we were in the front seat of the boss’s pickup, with Festus in line with us, back feet on the back seat and front feet on the console staring ahead just as intently.

Don’t bother me I’ve got a raid to run!

We=re suiting up, while seated in the front seat when Ken pulled out a heavy-duty knee pad, a little fiddling and Festus was suited up with his very own helmet. He wore it during every operation from that point forward. He would remind us if we forgot it.

Later on, we got some new K-9’s, both of these guys were Belgian Malinois. They were dope and patrol trained. Patrol means that they could track suspects and detain them (Bite) if need be. This added a new dimension to training as we now incorporated a bite sleeve and bite suit into the training.

I am not sure that you can instill a sense of duty into a dog. I think that you can teach him a skill and once he understands that that skill has value to the pack, then the sense of duty comes from within the animal. Police dogs bite because it is fun, it is part of a game they have been taught.

Watch puppies as the gnaw and chew on each other and members of their human pack. At some point in time, they are taught not to chew on humans and that removes an intimacy that they had previously enjoyed. The K-9 trainer tries to teach the dog that under certain circumstances and under the direction of the handler, it is okay to bite. So they may growl, and slobber and exert tremendous bite pressure, it is all in fun.

I played bite dummy several times. I found out that dogs watched each other and I guess compared notes. It wasn’t unusual when a K-9 made a particularly good bite and was then called off, as he walked by me to throw a hip check into my knee as if to say, “how did you like that one?” It never failed, at the end of the session, both of our patrol K-9’s would make their way around to the bite dummies. What followed would be a headbutt, a slobbery nuzzle, a scratch behind the ear. I always took it to mean, Gee, that was fun! Let’s do it again, no hard feelings?”

I always went back. I figured anybody that could bite like that be it girlfriend or beast I wanted to keep sweet and have them thinking they owed me one.

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