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There’s an old saying that goes something like this…”if you lie with dogs, you'll get hair on you,” or something close. Food for thought…

It is important, if not critical to keep our personal integrity in the forefront of our minds as we conduct and perform our roles as police officers…or in our case, K9 officers. As police officers, we are always in the “fishbowl” because we stand out in public. As K9 officers, we stand out even more thanks to our handsome four-footed partners. There is no argument that people pay more attention to us when we’re in uniform as opposed to when we’re not. Add Fluffy to that equation and the spotlight becomes brighter.

So what’s your point Ron? My point is that it is vital that we constantly keep what we do, how we do it and who we do it with in perspective and focus. There are few professions that hang as much on reputation as ours and likely none that do more so than law enforcement. Betraying our integrity and thereby betraying our reputation serves only to destroy our credibility…with our peers, our colleagues, our families, our communities and the courts.

Because of the “spotlight,” many times we are approached by people with ulterior motives far different than what they claim—both on the street as well as professionally. We need to be ever-vigilant and cognizant of this and be sure of whom it is we are getting involved with—no matter on what level. Many times people are not what they portray and sometimes it can have disastrous consequences on our integrity.

There is a poem that includes the line that a police officer must know where every sin is…and not partake. We must hold ourselves to a higher standard which will oftentimes be judged by the company we keep. Again, it boils down to integrity and credibility.

Jealousy is often expressed through contempt. It is not unusual for those who are envious of us to try to take away from us on a professional level. Remaining on guard against these types of people serves to maintain our professionalism as well as our dignity.

The last four days my friend K9-officer Will Fernandez of the Savannah-Chatham Metro Police visited our country and we were able to give him an insideview of several K9-units and disciplines. On monday he spent the whole day with KLPD's Sgt. Dick Staal, specialized in working with puppies and tracking. The dogs he is working now are at the age of 8 months and track on a daily basis, both hard surface and other surfaces. For those who want to see more about this training with puppies, go to www.dickstaal.com.

On tuesday Will joined a searchwarrant and saw te work of our moneydogs, followed by some training with new and unexperienced patroldoghandlers of the Dutch railwaypolice. The evening was used for a ride along with a fellow K9-officer.

On wednesday we went to the K9-unit of the South Holland South PD for certification- and scenariotraining. Ofcourse Will had to catch a lot of dogs during this training to make sure he is going to bring back the traditional brooses to the US.

Its always hard to show as much as possible what Dutch K9-work means in just a few days. For sure we all had a great time and I hope Will saw some things that are usefull for him in his daily work.

The "break-stick" or "release-stick" as a piece of equipment for the Dutch police K9-handler is as common in Holland as cheese and tulips are and every time I introduce it in the US during seminars some of the worst releasing dogs on a "hard out" release the suit or sleeve in a split second. In Holland we train the verbal out (mandatory for certification) as much as the hard out (or tactical out) and the use of the stick has proven itself for many years on the streets. The stick will prevent you from using multiple commands that are ignored by a dog in fightingmode on the streets or from choking off you dog, wich will take sometimes half a minute and on top of that the dog can loose contious. With the right use of the stick the dog will out the suspect in a split second because you use the gag-reflex. The use of the gag-reflex doesn't hurt the dog and the dog will be focussed on the suspect after the out constantelly. Its a safe, fast and animalfriendly methode of using a hard out during streetworthyness training or real streetwork.
People sometimes say that we "jam a screwdriver in the dog's mouth", but onfortunatelly these people never saw, experienced or attend a training of us, using the "release-stick". Believe me, we would never use this piece of equipment in Holland when we would hurt our dogs with it in the mouth, after the nose the most important part of our dogs.

One thing most of us can agree on is the importance of a good decoy in the development and maintenance of a patrol dog. As we all know, decoying is a lot more than just taking bites. To be a good decoy requires communication skills along with timing, balance and other physical and mental attributes. It seems that there are always people to take bites but there are never enough good decoys. With regard to this important resource, I'm concerned by a trend I think I'm seeing - namely a divergence between the number of dog teams and the number of good decoys. I don't have actual statistics on this but it feels like the number of K9 teams is increasing and the number of good decoys is not keeping pace with them. It seems that we have fewer good decoys at a time when we have a growing number of dog teams. Hopefully I'm wrong, but if this is actually happening, it will soon be a problem for our industry.

So we should either 1) determine that no problem exists; or 2) turn our attention to the  topic and create solutions. I'm wondering what other people think about this.

Last time we were talking about trends. The next trend worth mentioning is that of new handlers expecting to get a near perfect dog and thinking that the department is going to pay for everything. This is a characteristic of what is known as the “entitlement generation” which is having a profound effect on the K9 industry. People of this new generation were raised to think that they are entitled to have everything they need provided for them. Young handlers are no longer grateful when they get a quality dog; they expect it. They are not grateful when they are assigned a good vehicle with a nice insert for the dog; they expect it. They don’t feel grateful when the department sends them to training seminars; they expect that too. If the dog needs extra work and the department won’t pay overtime, the extra work doesn’t get done. If the dog needs certain equipment and the department doesn’t pay for it the dog goes without.

This last item came to light at a recent seminar where I asked 15 handlers to go to their vehicles and see what kind of equipment we had between us to work with. They came up with 1 tennis ball, a couple of Kongs, 1 tug, no hidden sleeves, 1 external sleeve, no scratch pants, 1 stake line and 3 decent muzzles. This was all they had to train 15 patrol dogs. They all had long lines but those were probably for tracking. At a major seminar each dog should have had several of its favorite toys, tugs, its favorite sleeve and its own muzzle. When I questioned them, most of the handlers said they didn’t have more because the department didn’t fund such things. This is a problem because many times the safety and efficiency of the team is determined by how well it is trained, which in turn is limited by the equipment available. For example, the dog in the photo above is being trained to ignore distractions like balls, chew sticks, tugs, extra sleeves and bite jackets and to focus on what the handler and decoy are doing. This kind of proofing is very beneficial for many dogs but is quite difficult to accomplish when you don’t even have the necessary items. It doesn’t matter who should have paid for them; if they are not there you can’t do the training.

This entitlement attitude is somewhat irritating to older handlers and instructors who remember the early days of their careers when you were fortunate to get a dog that would work at all, least of all a good one. There were no inserts for vehicles and in many cases the K9 vehicle was not dedicated to dogs, it had to be shared with non K9 personnel. In most cases it was the old clunker no one else wanted and the handler had to take out the back seat himself and make a platform for the dog to ride safely on. Rarely did the department pay for seminars or fancy equipment, most of that came out of the handler’s pocket. Overtime pay for extra work was unheard of. Compared to those who went before them, many present day handlers act like spoiled brats.

Naturally we would like the department to provide everything, but we need to understand that this is not a perfect world and that will not always happen. When it does not, we find out who the real K9 people are. They are the ones who understand that life in K9 is not one of entitlement, but of sacrifice. Like those who went before them, they know that the only entitlements you have are:

1) You are entitled to get an imperfect dog and to do the best you can with it.

2) You are entitled to sacrifice your image and look stupid in public because of said dog.

3) You are entitled to start at the bottom and work hard for many years before you look good or become truly proficient at anything.

4) You are entitled to sacrifice financially when the department won’t fund everything.

5) You are entitled to sacrifice your free time to put extra work into your dog when needed; even when the department doesn’t pay for it.

The list goes on but this will do for starters. If you would like to add to the list, by all means leave a comment below. Remember that it is a privilege to follow in the footsteps of those who went before us; and none of us are entitled to a free ride. Welcome to K9. See you next time.