Kind of a treat

[Guest guest]

Two adjacent Area K-9 units were working a special detail in our Areas today

(will be here all week, actually). We don't have any of our own agency K-9s in

this part of the Division - but they're sorely needed! Hence the task force

activities this week....

Anyway, the units gassed up at our office and brought in their four-legged

partners to greet us, separately. Both dogs are Belgian Malinois, one male and

one female. They're drug dogs, not " general purpose, " and they're friendly as

all get-out; happy tail-waggers.

One officer-handler let his partner off leash and said, " Find the drugs! " and

adding something in... Dutch, I guess... and she went looking everywhere,

finally " hitting " on a dispatcher's rather large purse on top of a console. It

turns out the English command was for our benefit, but the real command had been

to " find goodies. "

For the moment or two before the officer let us in on the joke, the expressions

on the faces of the dispatchers were priceless. <grin> The owner of the suspect

purse blurted out, " I've got my chicken sandwich in there, could that be

it?!??!? "

Of course, that's exactly the situation. And the dog got to have official

" goodies " for her excellent work. One dispatcher asked, " Is she allowed to get

patted? " and he said, " She'll go to anyone in here that asks her to come for a

hug. " So, of course, she then made the rounds to each console to collect a

friendly pat or two. She would run back to her partner and make a brief bark

after each dispatcher expressed appreciation for what a good dog she was.. then

after he'd pat her himself and make a gesture, she'd trot over to the next

person who called her. (I believe a few transmissions to the field carried some

extra noises, because she was a talkative dog. Not loud, but a bark is a very

distinctive sound!) Then it was back to the patrol unit.

When the second dog came in a few minutes later (we asked the officers to bring

their partners in, by the way, they didn't just barge in on us), one of the

other dispatchers announced, " I've got prescription drugs in MY purse, will he

find those? "

That officer laughed and said, " Our dogs don't care about those - we use

dispatchers' purses to train them to ignore tranquilizers. " As some human

bristling occurred in response to the comment, he added, " I'm teasing! God, I

don't know how you guys DO this job; I'd need tranks to handle the sh*t calls

you take! "

He said sometimes the best part of his job was rolling down the road with the

windows open so they could BOTH hang their heads out into the wind. <grin>

Anyway, it was a pretty cool few minutes (minus those two awkward moments) with

'em in here.

And we got K-9 trading cards, too!

Happy to be here, proud to serve.