{"id":4523,"date":"2013-02-14T12:04:22","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T17:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/?p=4523"},"modified":"2013-02-14T19:32:22","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T00:32:22","slug":"the-right-k9-tool-for-the-right-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/?p=4523","title":{"rendered":"The Right K9 Tool for the Right Job"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

One of my K9 partners who was Patrol and Narcotics trained.\u00a0 Not a Bomb Dog.<\/p><\/div>\n

We responded to a bomb threat last week.\u00a0 Having an explosives detector dog at the scene reminded me of a call years ago when I was a K9 handler.<\/p>\n

It was the early 1990’s.\u00a0 I was working a dual-purpose Patrol and Narcotics K9 on the Midnight Shift.\u00a0 A woman called 911 to report that she was having a domestic with her boyfriend.\u00a0 During the argument, he threatened to blow her and her whole family up.\u00a0 Prior to our arrival, she told the dispatcher that he had left their…wait for it…mobile home with something under his shirt.<\/p>\n

Officers arrived on scene and she disgorged that he had previously served in the Marine Corps and knew something about explosives.\u00a0 While we were speaking to the woman, the male arrived back at the trailer.\u00a0 He consented to a pat down.\u00a0 Nothing on him.\u00a0 We questioned him about her assertions.\u00a0 Of course, he did not know what we were talking about.<\/p>\n

I turned to the sergeant on scene.\u00a0 I had a brilliant idea.\u00a0 No, my dog isn’t a bomb detector, but if the man hid something in the darkened mobile home park, I could follow his track with the dog and find anything he might have secreted that had human scent on it.\u00a0 The sergeant was skeptical.\u00a0 Seriously, I told him, I’ll be careful and keep the dog on a short leash, as it were.<\/p>\n

Back in the day, K9 Narcotics Detectors such as mine were “aggressive alert” dogs, meaning that they were trained to scratch and bite at the source of the narcotic scent and alert the handler to its presence.\u00a0 Nowadays, Narcotics and Explosive Detector Dogs are taught to “passively” alert by sitting upon finding the source of their respective target odors.<\/p>\n

Midnight Shift has a way of sometimes distorting the lens through which common sense is clearly seen.\u00a0 Sure, said Sarge, give it a shot!\u00a0 Off I went to the truck to get the dog.\u00a0 I hooked him up to a 6′ lead on the dead ring of his choke chain and took him to the rear of the trailer.<\/p>\n

Presumably, the man had gone on an “out and back” path to hide his burden, since he was not gone long.\u00a0 Down went the dog’s nose and he began casting back and forth along the trail.\u00a0 I normally deployed the dog for man-tracking on a 15′ heavy nylon lead.\u00a0 This time, I stayed close behind on the much shorter obedience leash.<\/p>\n

That first K9 of mine was easy to read when he was on task.\u00a0 I knew we were solidly on this guy’s track.\u00a0 So much so, I kinda forgot what I was doing.\u00a0 As we navigated between the trailers and across a small courtyard, I let the dog get all the way out on the lead.<\/p>\n

The dog’s head quickly swung to the left behind a pine tree and he cocked back his right paw.\u00a0\u00a0 Neinnnnn!\u00a0 He jabbed.\u00a0 I saw something fly through the air, so I pulled the dog back.\u00a0 He looked proud to have won the game and found the toy.\u00a0 It lay in the grass.\u00a0 A Tupperware container.\u00a0 Faded red lid, clear plastic lower.\u00a0 It had rectangular blocks of something in it.\u00a0 They were wrapped individually and said C4.\u00a0 Ohhh, Sergeant!<\/p>\n

The Sarge sauntered up.\u00a0 I looked a little green.\u00a0 He examined the container from a distance, then moved slowly forward.\u00a0 He let out a big belly laugh.\u00a0 “Its training<\/em> C4!” he chuckled.\u00a0 Sarge was an old Vietnam vet and 20 year copper.\u00a0 He’d learned a thing or two.\u00a0 He suddenly stared sharply at me.\u00a0 I shrank down a bit, making myself a smaller target.\u00a0 He just shook his head.\u00a0 I scurried off to the truck with the dog.<\/p>\n

For my “bright idea,” I took a well deserved beating at Roll Call the next night…<\/p>\n

Randall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We responded to a bomb threat last week.\u00a0 Having an explosives detector dog at the scene reminded me of a call years ago when I was a K9 handler. It was the early 1990’s.\u00a0 I was working a dual-purpose Patrol and Narcotics K9 on the Midnight Shift.\u00a0 A woman called 911 to report that she was having a domestic with her boyfriend.\u00a0 During the argument, he threatened to blow her and her whole family up.\u00a0 Prior to our arrival, she told the dispatcher that he had left their…wait for it…mobile home with something under his shirt. Officers arrived on scene and she disgorged that he had previously served in the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,9],"tags":[648,649,650,330],"class_list":["post-4523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-k9","tag-k9-explosives-detector-dog","tag-k9-police-dog","tag-narcotics-detector-dog","tag-police-k9"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28xkp-1aX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4523"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4550,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4523\/revisions\/4550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}