“Have your helper tease your dog with a toy and run away to a place the dog can’t see. Start the dog on an item the helper dropped, like a sweaty hat, then have the dog find him. As you progress, you want the dog to start using his nose, not his eyes, to identify the person who has his toy. So you remove the part where the dog sees the helper run away and just start him on the sweaty hat that was dropped. You make the tracks longer and longer with different types of ground and obstacles, and eventually you have an amazing tracking dog. The key to this one is, again, to flip out with excitement when the dog finds the helper and make it the most amazing time in the world.”
Source: A Dog Named Mattis: 12 Lessons for Living Courageously, Serving Selflessly, and Building Bridges from a Heroic K9 Officer
“I asked the decoy what happened. He told me he heard Mattis go down a row in the distance and then jump up onto a shelf. He said he then jumped from shelf to shelf (in the dark) straight toward him at about head level. The decoy said, “I know I was supposed to be still, but he was coming at me head level, so I threw my arm up to intercept him.”
The other handlers, the decoy, and I were all astounded. This was not what I had planned. This was not the lesson | wanted to teach Mattis. I laughed because he’d solved it in a manner I hadn’t considered, and in a more efficient way. This type of Mattis solution became commonplace at every training session. Throw a complex problem at him and just watch him with wonder as he comes up with a solution. We never knew what it was going to be, but we knew it was going to be grounded in determination, athleticism, and efficiency.”
Source: A Dog Named Mattis: 12 Lessons for Living Courageously, Serving Selflessly, and Building Bridges from a Heroic K9 Officer
“The New York police-dogs are not as finely trained as those of Ghent and other European cities. Not as much is asked of them. But they are expected to stick to their official masters, to recognize men in uniforms as friends and all others as possible enemies, to answer at once to the police-whistle or the rap of a night-stick, to hurl themselves upon a man attacking a policeman, to lie still and watch when commanded, to pursue and throw a fleeing criminal, to search around buildings at night, and to give notice by barking of the presence of persons lurking in the shadows. Pete showed not the slightest inclination to do any of these things.”
Source: Many Dogs There Be
“Watch him!’ screeched Joe, more urgently than Cass had ever heard before and, glory be, that dog turned on a sixpence, roared back to the bewildered and besodden thieves, slid to a halt in a shower of sand and gravel and bouncing on his paws, showed his charges once more what he would do to them if they tried anything.”
Source: Cassius - The True Story of a Courageous Police Dog
“Then another very tall policeman arrived with a huge hairy hound that took one look at the assembled and noisy throng, decided that he had better go for the nearest one and bit him in the hand. Pity of it was, the nearest one was the sergeant.”
Source: Cassius - The True Story of a Courageous Police Dog
“Operational dogs very often experienced failure. A track would lead nowhere, a search would find nothing, a quarry pursued would escape, and no matter how much the handler tried to compensate with fun exercises out of hours, any failure left a small mark and repeated failures accumulated. Success at new challenges, new games, was an unbeatable tonic for a dog and handler.”
Source: Cassius - The True Story of a Courageous Police Dog
“In a police K-9 team, the human is always the weak link. We are forgetful and our enthusiasm waxes and wanes. Dogs love to work and they forget nothing.”
Source: Werewolf: The True Story of an Extraordinary Police Dog
“The longer I work with Brag, the less I see him the way I used to see a dog. He doesn’t feel like a dog at all, more like some creature that possesses entirely unique behaviors and motivations; a werewolf. I suppose. I trust him, some of the time. When I release him to do his job and I’ve done my job to try to limit the possible outcomes (biting another police officer, biting an innocent civilian, biting anyone he’s not supposed to bite, whether they are innocent or not). I’m confident he won’t fail.”
Source: Werewolf: The True Story of an Extraordinary Police Dog
“In the ten-year period of 2004 to 2014, at least 101 police K-9’s died in the line of duty. Two were killed by other animals, two were killed by assault, two were drowned, one died of exposure to toxins, seven died in falls, six in auto accidents, five died due to duty-related illnesses or injury, fourteen were struck and killed by vehicles, sixteen died from heat exhaustion, three were stabbed to death, six were killed by intentional vehicular assaults, three died in training accidents, and thirty-four were killed by gunfire.”
Source: Werewolf: The True Story of an Extraordinary Police Dog
“As I start up the steep hillside, I hear a man screaming. It’s Reck, shrieking in the darkness somewhere. Brag has him.
“GOOD BOY!” I shout, scrambling up the dusty trail on all fours. But there’s no need to go any farther because Brag is bringing Reck to me.
They appear in a surreal cloud of flash-light-beam illuminating dust. Brag is dragging the man by his lower leg, thrashing his head like a shark, digging his paws into the dusty earth.”
Source: Werewolf: The True Story of an Extraordinary Police Dog