Interview with K9 Police Officers

I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing two K9 Officers from the Castle Rock Police Department. Officer Matt Fellows and Officer JR Gondeck spoke with me for over two hours, generously answering all my questions. When my husband and I first arrived at the Castle Rock Court House, we met the K9 officers and they gave us a tour of the police department. We peeked in on dispatch, saw the gym, the briefing room, and met several other officers.

K9 police officers have their dogs with them both at work and at home. These hard-working dogs get the very best treatment. Top grade food, and a roomy indoor/outdoor kennel with heat and air conditioning. But they’re not fully integrated into the family’s home life, nor are they allowed to play with the family dogs. Officer Gondeck explains “They don’t sleep in our beds; they don’t run around the house or anything like that.” Officer Fellows agrees—their K9s are working dogs for now, but when they retire, they’ll live like kings.

The officers feed their dogs Diamond High Energy. They highly regulate the dogs’ food and water intake to prevent bloat and maximize their energy. Bloat is a scary condition that can happen when dogs wolf down too much food. Both Fellows and Gondeck’s dogs are having their stomachs stapled to prevent GDV (gastric dilation and volvulus) or twisted gut. The dog handlers manage their K9’s extreme energy by challenging their minds with training. Officers even use mealtime as a training event.

There are many breeds of dogs used in police work. Officer Fellows’s dog, Shogun, is a short-hair Dutch Shepherd and Officer Gondeck works with Maverick, a Belgian Malinois.

These dogs are incredible. Their physical capabilities and mental acuity are unmatched in the canine world. Officer Fellows told me many people he talks with tell him they want to own a Belgian Malinois because they’ve seen movies like Max, and realize what magnificent animals they are. “And they are. They are phenomenal,” Fellows agrees, but then assures folks they don’t really want one as a family dog. These dogs are inexhaustible and extremely smart, so boredom can be problematic. K9 officers train constantly. It’s impossible to physically exhaust these dogs, so they focus on exhausting their mind with training challenges instead.

The Castle Rock Police Department also has a fluffy little therapy dog named Buttercup. She works with victim advocates to soothe people who’ve been through trauma and help them feel more comfortable while going through the police interview process. Dogs make terrific partners for cops and the people they serve.

The Castle Rock K9 Unit drives specially adapted Ford Explorers. The dogs stay inside the vehicle during their entire work shift, unless they are being deployed. The police department fits the cars with a two-thirds/one-third kennel that allows the officers’ room to transport one prisoner in a single seat by the back right door. The dog enters through the back left door into a kennel big enough for him to lie down, stand up, spin around, and stretch.

The cars have thermometers that communicate the K9 vehicle’s inner temperature at all times and send an alarm to the officer if the temperature gets too high. If the temperature climbs to over 90, the windows roll down just far enough so the dogs can’t get out, the air conditioning turns on, the horn honks, and all the lights turn on. There is also an exhaust fan that draws the hot air out of the car.

K9 officers have door poppers that open the dog’s door automatically. They can use these if they are out on their own and find themselves in a situation that warrants the deployment of a dog. They can also release the dogs from inside the car without ever having to get out.

The regulations for deploying police K9s are all based on Graham vs Conner case law. Dogs are the highest level of force besides lethal firearms. Deployment must meet high standards. These include felony level crime, typically a persons crime that involves some sort of violence, such as 1^st degree assaults, and people with weapons. Police K9 handlers use a three-prong test every time before unleashing their dogs. Is the suspect armed? Or is there a high likelihood that he’s armed? And what is the severity of the crime? Dogs are the highest level of non-lethal force used by cops. Dogs are considered “less lethal” than firearms, but they can still kill.

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Shogun and Maverick are both find and bite dogs, so we could not meet them up close and personal. If we tried to pet them, they would bite. However, we did get to see them on the other side of a glass door. Both dogs are beautiful animals, but I sure wouldn’t want one of them chasing me. Since the public cannot pet or interact with the dogs, the police department has printed trading cards with their photos to hand out. Their photos are included in the image attached to this post.

I am so grateful to Officers Fellows and Gondeck for answering all my questions and teaching me the inner workings of a police K9 unit. I, for one, feel safer knowing such dedicated and disciplined human/dog teams are out in the community working to keep us all safe.

Jodi: We have here today, Officer Matt Fellows and Officer JR Gondeck. Officer Fellows dog is a Dutch Shepherd named Shogun and Officer Gondeck handles a Belgian Malinois named Maverick.

Tell us about A Day in the Life of a K9 Officer and his dog. Your dogs live at home with you, so they wake you up in the morning wanting to go out and be fed. Go from there.

JR: We both have a similar home set up. We have a kennel that is inside our garage. So whenever we come home, the kennel door pops open, and they can basically go straight from our patrol car to their indoor kennel and those are both heated and air-conditioned so they have a warmth or a cool place in the summer to stay. Typically, Matt likes to use moving blankets because the dogs are nuts and like to destroy everything we give them. We buy them nice fancy dog beds and they tear them up so we settle for the nice cheap moving blankets.

Jodi: Roughly, what are the dimensions of the kennels?

Matt: Mine is a 5 x 6-foot square inside my garage. Then it has a 7’ x 2’ long tunnel, basically, and that’s the length of the garage and at the end of the tunnel is a hole cut in the wall that leads outside to a 6-foot x 20-foot predator cage kennel that is Astro turfed. Basically, both of us have a very similar setup.

JR: The outside portion is artificial turf, which makes it a little easier for us to maintain, and they’re not digging up dirt or anything like that.

Matt: There are different philosophies that different handlers have. You know you can take four different K9 units from four different parts of the United States and they’ll have four different answers. However, what we like to do is to point to the dog and really look at what is this dog? What will we do with him? He’s a worker—Okay, then everything we do for him will be for his job—to make his job easier and more productive. We want him to be the most productive animal possible, because that’s why we have him. If we wanted a house dog, we would go get one and he would be in our house.

Jodi: He’d be a therapy dog. That’s what Buttercup (Department’s Therapy dog) is right?

Matt: Exactly.

JR: Buttercup is a therapy dog and we treat those dogs completely different. I have house dogs, he (Matt) has house dogs and they don’t interact with our police dogs.

Jodi: They don’t? Ever?

Matt: No, we don’t like that. It can be very bad.

Chris: Are there specific policies regarding that? Because obviously if the dogs fight or they don’t interact well together, you know, with the high value dog you have…

JR: There’s no direct policy from the Police Department. It’s more of a handler preference kind of thing, and our mindset is we don’t want our dogs interacting with other dogs in a playful manner and wanting to engage with them in that way because when we deploy into a house or a setting where there are other dogs, we don’t want them to be distracted by those other animals. We don’t want them to go from “I’m at work” to “I want to play with this other dog” instead of doing my work. We want to keep that completely separate and have them be completely neutral to the presence of other animals.

Matt: And mainly because their job is so critical. Officer’s lives are on the line when we are deploying dogs. We don’t just deploy dogs just because. Like “Oh, there’s a building that is open. Let’s just run our dogs through.” No, no. That’s not how it works. Dogs can hurt people very badly. There are some severe injuries that can come from a dog bite.

We don’t deploy them lightly because we value human life over all other life. These animals have such a phenomenal way of searching and finding humans and ultimately if someone was laying an ambush, we humans are safe. It’s the dog’s job is to keep us safe and other officers safe, and when we deploy them I don’t want them getting distracted. His job is critical. His job was to keep us safe. We go home because he does a good job. We don’t want to compromise that at all. So that’s why we draw a really firm line in the sand. Yep, you’re a working dog and when you retire, you can be a King. But you’re a working dog right now and I depend on you and so do my partners.

JR: That mindset also carries over into us not inviting them into our home. They don’t sleep in our beds; they don’t run around the house or anything like that. Everything that they do they work for, so their food or any treats… anything like that is all work related.

Jodi: So, for their meal, do you have them do some sort of training?

JR: Yes, so typically before a meal, we do some sort of obedience training like put them in a heel or change their position to a sit or down, whatever it is.

Jodi: Okay, so you got up, and you put them in some sort of training situation, and then you feed them. What do you feed them?

JR: We both use Diamond High Energy.

Matt: There’s a lot of science behind dog food. The three best brands, in my opinion, are Victor, Royal Canine and then Diamond. There’s a lot of food out there like Blue, Wild Yonder that say “we’re going to bring the dog back to its roots”. They have no idea what they’re talking about. They change the formula on their customers pretty often without telling them.

You don’t really know what’s in it. There’s been blind studies where they take dog food and actually do scientific studies and what they’re claiming is in their food is not dog food. Dog food is very unregulated. It’s really bad. So you have to be picky and choosy, specifically with dogs that burn so much energy we need a really good food. But we don’t want to load them up because we don’t want bloat. Bloat is a really scary condition with dogs. Both of our dogs are going to get their stomach stapled so it doesn’t bloat on them.

Arapahoe County just lost a dog not too long ago to bloat, so we don’t want to load their stomachs. We want as little food as possible their stomach to keep them as energized as possible and Diamond High-energy is one of the better ones. Royal Canine has a high energy that you can get from the vet, and then Victor is really good too. Those are my three favorites. We just picked Diamond because Tractor Supply has it and they’re close. (laughter)

Jodi: Speaking of high-energy, both of those breeds are high, high-energy dogs. When they’re not running around chasing something, how are you attending to their energy level?

JR: When we’re at work, but not on a call, we’re able to do pretty much whatever we want. So, we’ll occasionally go to our training center and do some training over there, inside. That way, it’s safe and away from anybody out wandering around us. I don’t want to have to worry about anybody walking up on us or anything. We work in a secured building. We actually have narcotics reserves supplied to us by the DEA, and those are our training aides. So we’ll take those and put them out throughout the building and then have the dogs search for those. That will take some of his energy down and it’s also great training and keeps him active.

Matt: People will say, “Oh, I want a Belgian Malinois because I’ve seen these movies called Max, and they’re such great animals.” They are. They’re phenomenal.

Jodi: They’re fantastic, but I tell everybody, “You don’t want one.”

Matt: Right. And then they make this mistake. They say, okay, the dog has too much energy, let’s go for a run. I’m going to get into running. Cool, I’ll go for a two-mile run. Dog’s tired—I’m tired. We do that for three weeks and the dog is no longer tired. So, now you have to go three or four miles. Now you’re tired after three or four and then after a week or two the dog’s not tired again.

Dogs can go 30 miles an hour for 10 miles. I can’t do that. Usain Bolt does not run 30 miles an hour, and he certainly doesn’t do it for ten miles. You can train a dog to be the most conditioned animal possible. The 10th Group (Army Special Forces at Ft. Carson) uses forerunners and they’ll go zipping along by their dogs and that’s how they’ll run their dogs. Because the dogs even outrun The 10^th Group.

So we’re really focused on training their minds. I can exhaust his brain. That’s why we put the illegal drugs out while we’re doing obedience training. I’m not able to exhaust my dog physically by throwing a ball a million times, or running around in a circle.

JR: I do run with my dog.

Matt: I run with my dog as well, but to really push them, it’s mental. Mental exhaustion is how you manage their energy and excitement. You can make a dog run 100 miles and then you’re in trouble, because what about tomorrow? He’s not going to be tired tomorrow. But are you going to run a hundred miles tomorrow? No—that would be terrible.

This is literally me getting home. (Matt shows a video of Shogun getting his supper food.) This is the police car. That’s his bowl. He’s just in a down.

JR: He’s in a down/stay.

Matt: He’s waiting and I’m actually taking all my gear off. So, if I’m just at home, I’m making him work. He can see me put food in his bowl and I’m going to take his food and put it right on top of him. I no longer have my belt on or anything.

JR: He’s making him work.

Matt: Making him work to have it. This is basically rewarding him. It’s one of the many things that we do. We don’t just feed him, it’s a routine, you have to make him work for it.

Jodi: Do you use toys to reward them, or are they basically purely food motivated?

JR: So, when we’re talking about the narcotic detection, we use toy rewards pretty frequently. Basically, anytime he locates a hidden drug, we’ll use a toy. We want him to think the reward is coming from the narcotics and not from us, so we like to have them focused on the drug—staring right at it. Then we’ll drop the toy from overhead. That way, he’s looking at the drugs when his reward appears.

Matt: And similar in the training I showed you, a lot of people make the mistake of telling their dog to wait and then saying “Okay, you can get it.” Then the dog will run to get his toy or food or whatever. That’s not what we want to do. I picked up his food and brought to him. Because as soon as you say, “Okay, you can get up.” You’re rewarding your dog for movement.

Jodi: I work with horses and you have to reward their intention even more than what they do in order to teach them.

Matt: Exactly. You have to get into their brain. It’s a different language. They think differently than we do.

Jodi: Okay… now you arrive at work. Where do you keep your dogs while you’re working?

JR: In the car.

Jodi: Oh—they stay in the car?

JR: They’re both in the cars right now.

Jodi: Nice! Now you have to tell us about the cool K9 vehicles. (laughter)

JR: We are both in Ford Explorers, and we have what’s called a two-thirds/one-third kennel. And those allow for us to transport prisoners or anybody else that we need to transport in the back. So the back right of the car is a single seat by the back right door. And if you open the back left door, that’s the dog kennel and that takes up 2/3 of the car. It partially goes into the rear cargo area of the vehicle. There is enough room for them to lie down, stand up, spin around, and stretch a little bit. We both have un-spillable water bowls.

Jodi: I was going to ask if you have automatic waterers.

JR: No. It’s basically a container that’s got a lid—an inward cone shape that prevents the water from splashing out. Then there’s a slider partition door between the driving area and the dog kennel that we can slide open to pet him and check him out—make sure he’s doing alright. So, while we’re driving around, he usually has his head through hanging out with us.

Chris: You mentioned that you have an area where you can transport a suspect or a prisoner. Is there an access for you to release the dog?

JR: No. There’s no holes for them to stick their fingers in or anything.

Matt: They would get bit. So there is a sliding panel between the dog and bad guys area. But the only reason why you would open that is if you got into a rollover crash and the car is ending up on the driver side doors and you need to get the dog out. That slider can be accessed, but is not easy. It’s not like you push a button and it slides over. There is no situation ever that I can see where we would release a dog on a person contained in handcuffs inside of the vehicle. That would be excessive force.

Chris: That’s Hollywood stuff. Don’t write that, honey. (laughter)

Matt: Yeah, that would be really bad. And the other thing, the reason we don’t have automatic water is we control everything- how much water they have, and when they have it is critical because of bloat. I don’t want them bloating up on water drinking 3 gallons of water and then us going on a run and then their stomach flipping upside down. I also don’t want them without any water because of a wet nose is an odor attracting nose. Odor likes wet objects. Water and odor are really good friends. It’s why we shower with water. Even if you don’t have so soap, you can just do a quick swizzle—or a quick rinse – and you will inherently smell a lot better than before you started. Because water loves odor. So the same thing – keep the nose wet and he’ll be able to track more clearly.

Jodi: How about the air-conditioning and heat?

Matt: It’s all controlled.

Jodi: Controlled by you? Do you have a device on your person and keep an eye on them?

JR: Yep. So, we have two thermometers in the car that have a panel that tells us what the current temperature in the vehicle is at all times. It’s way more accurate than the little dash thing. And then we have alarms on us at all times. We can preset these. Mine is set at 90 degrees. If the average temperature climbs over 90, we get an alert on our device on our person that the car is too hot and the windows roll down just far enough that they can’t get out. The AC pops on and an SOS on the horn starts and all the lights kick on.

Matt: And there’s an exhaust fan.

JR: The exhaust fan kicks on, and it’s an industrial exhaust fan. It rips the air out of there. So we take a lot of effort to keep our dogs cool. Too many dogs have died that way.

Jodi: Oh, sure! So, 90 is the top temperature. What is your low-temperature?

JR: We don’t really have one in Colorado, because again, we’re not in Alaska and the dogs are comfortable. We keep our cars anywhere between 55 and 60. That’s about right. Which really stinks when it’s like this (gestures to snowy day outside) because you’re outside dealing with negative whatever temperatures and your buddy’s car is a hundred and five degrees and he’s been cranking it up the whole time. And I get into a 55-degree car because that’s what the dog needs.

Jodi: (Laughing) But you get sick a lot less often.

JR: Yeah. (Laughs) We also have door poppers, so if we’re out on a call—say it’s just me by myself and someone starts fighting me or they take off running and they’ve committed a crime to the level that we are allowed to release the dog, we have a little button right here. Mine’s on my belt. You hold that down and the door automatically pops open, and the dog comes right out.

Matt: And the same thing in the car, the thing that has the temperature gauge on. Push two buttons, the up arrow and the down arrow, and the door will open as well. So you can stay in your car and deploy the dog without ever stepping outside the vehicle.

Jodi: What are the regulations on releasing your dog?

Matt: It’s all Graham vs Conner. That’s the case law.

JR: Our policy here is that the dog is the highest level of force that we have besides a lethal firearm. So you have to meet some pretty high standards.

Matt: For us as a minimum, it has to be a felony level crime and typically it’s going to be a persons crime. Some sort of violence has been used before. We must articulate that the public is in danger because that person is still outstanding. We’re talking about 1^st degree assaults, people with weapons, those sorts of things. We just recently did a track of some suspects with a stolen vehicle. Just really, you have to articulate why those people are a danger to the public.

When we think of people who have stolen vehicles, people that we take to jail for stolen vehicles, they may have firearms or warrants for committing other crimes. Those people that are in the stolen vehicles aren’t just committing those property crimes, like stolen vehicles and breaking into property. They have a history of doing other things. And that’s how you really have to be able to articulate it as a danger to the public.

Jodi: If you’re searching for narcotics or something like that, are the dogs are on lead?

Matt: Yes, if they’re off leash, they are what we call deployed. And that’s when you have to meet that criteria. Like I was saying, Graham vs Conner is basically that criteria. It’s a three-prong test. It involves, is he resisting or actively fighting arrest, or attempting to get away? You have to ask that question of yourself. Is he armed or is there a high likelihood that he’s armed, and what is the severity of the crime? So those are your three prongs that you need to ask yourself every time before you cut the dog off leash. What kind of crime are we dealing with? Is this a shoplifting or is this an aggravated assault or menacing? That’s a totally different world.

JR: We’re not going to deploy our dogs on a 14-year-old that stole some gum and is running away from the police. I mean, who cares? And that’s not what we have dogs for. Are they armed? That’s what it comes down to. Is the risk to the bad guy worth it? Is he causing our risk level to go up? Will we have to utilize the dog to bring it down? We’re trying to balance the scales.

Matt: Or is it just like a fleeing felon like Tennessee vs Gardner says? We don’t shoot fleeing felons anymore. We use to… in the 70s we were allowed to. When police officers had a bad guy running away from them that committed a felony- a persons crime – and they said stop and he didn’t, they shot him. Well, we don’t do that anymore. It is not okay. He wasn’t armed, he wasn’t a danger to the public in the immediate area. So why dog and why shoot? In that case, it’s unacceptable.

Chris: Do any of your calls involve executing warrants—when you’re picking up somebody—and if that felon has an aggravated assault charge or armed robbery type charge, are you automatically into a deployable situation with your dog?

Matt: Absolutely.

JR: We basically just had that same scenario.

Matt: It was menacing with a weapon and robbery.

JR: He was a local Castle Rock resident, and he moved away. When he got in trouble, he found out he had all these warrants in Nebraska, or wherever he was. We got information that he came back and was staying at his parents’ house, and we coordinated an approach with the parents. They wanted him to get arrested. Matt was on one side of the house ready for him to scurry out the back and I was at the front of the house waiting for him to come out and run. That was certainly a deployable situation.

Matt: Because, again, we have a crime that’s a felony persons crime because he pointed a gun at somebody and threatened to kill him. That’s what the warrant was for. He had a history of armed robbery and we never recovered the pistol, so it was possible that he was armed. And he stole a firearm out of a vehicle, so we have confirmed two of our three-prongs. If he starts running or fighting from us, we now deploy dog. We set up on him, but he didn’t run. He decided he was completely surrounded, and the gig was up. So, he came out with his hands up and we didn’t have the third prong. We need all three, so we didn’t deploy our dogs. If he had run from us though, instantaneously, we have all three prongs and we can dog him.

Jodi: When you guys are on patrol, and you pull someone over, do you leave the dog in the car?

Matt: Yes. Mind you, the dogs are trained to bite people. All the time. Especially our dogs, they are pretty high drive. You wouldn’t want to just say hello to these dogs. You can’t pet these dogs. They will not like that. They are not pets. Our handlers are signed off on the dogs. They don’t do anything else but dog. His full world is just dog. He is a living, breathing creature, so we don’t bring him out, unless it’s about time to either search for dope or bite someone.

If we’re looking for drugs, we clean up the scene. “Hey you (to the suspect) sit over here. Officer X, you’re going to sit on this guy and make sure he doesn’t come near us-let us work. The dogs are on leash when we go around the vehicle. The dog is in a very controlled environment. The regulations are really high. Dogs are considered “less lethal” than firearms, but they can still kill.

In one case, a dog actually killed somebody. He was deployed under a van and bit the guy in the neck—that was the only thing that was available for him to bite. Unfortunately, the man died, and the family sued. But in that case, the court said, no, a well-trained dog is a less lethal tool. It doesn’t mean it’s not lethal, just less lethal. It can happen.

JR: Like he said, it is the highest level of non-lethal force we can utilize. Just because you can taze someone does not mean you can dog them. It is a totally different world. Dog bites can cause serious bodily injury 100% of the time and tazing is little probes. You pull those out and you might bleed a little, but you’re fine, so to speak.

Matt: It’s (K9 work) a totally different world. That’s why we get called to different kinds of calls. For example, I walked by an undercover unit that’s downstairs and he said, “Hey are you guys in town today? Cool. I’ll give you a call if we have anything.”

We’re the tip of the spear, so we don’t usually go to civil disputes. We could, but that’s not our main role. Our main role is to go to the real bad calls. We have the dog, and we have totally different gear in our vehicles. There are night vision and thermals in our vehicles. We have a totally different plethora of tools. We train with S.W.A.T. and with our undercover unit because we are the tip of the spear. So even if the dog is not getting out of the vehicle, the officer has additional training to take care of serious crimes.

JR: If we both are called to a dog-worthy situation, only one of us would deploy our dog, and not the other. But, me being a K9 handler and knowing how all the things work; it makes it easier for me to be a backup to him than a regular officer, to help facilitate whatever is going on. We do have trainings with regular officers. We schedule in-service trainings or demonstrations for the department to give them a basic understanding of how things operate, but it is not hands-on training.

Chris: What does that training look like? How do you integrate the dog in that?

JR: Each month is a theme. For instance, this is our month, so we’ll give a PowerPoint presentation. This is what we do, how and when we do it. And this is what we want you guys to do while we’re deploying our dogs. Then later, we do a mock scenario. For example, our dogs do article searches. So we’ll have officers toss articles out in a field and then our dogs will search for them.

We can also do actual training scenarios. Say there’s a suspect in a building, we’ll get a team of 4-5 officers. We do these trainings, typically in the day shift. Say we’re using the fire department’s training building. We say there was a forced entry. We’re going to set up a perimeter, we’re going to send a dog in, and then play out the whole scenario. That helps the regular officers get accustomed to working around the dogs and know what their roles are when a dog is deployed and when a dog is engaged in a bite, because that scares a lot of people.

Matt: Yeah, being around a man-eating machine… when you’re a man…

JR: We will handcuff the person while the dog is still engaged. We want physical control of the person before the dog is released. If Maverick bites somebody, let’s say in the leg. I’ll go up and gain control of Maverick by the collar, and the other officers will gain physical control of the suspect before I take Maverick off.

In a forced entry, we must make an announcement at the door stating we are the police, we do have a dog and we are going to release the dog and the dog will bite you if you do not come out. We give three announcements and in between each we give time for the suspect to come out. Say you go to Home Depot front doors and you’re yelling “Police K9, come out or we will release our dog.” You have to give them time to walk across the store.

Matt: So, again, the Senate Bill of Colorado 217 says that we must warn when feasible. We must give warnings and how that works is it’s four parts: You have to identify who you are, what you want, what the consequence is if they don’t do it, and give them time to respond. Police K9. Come out with your hands up and announce yourself. If you do not, a police dog will be released. He will find you and bite you. And then we wait. So, I’ve covered my bases and now I have to wait.

JR: A lot of k9s will recognize when the announcements are given because we practice them in training. So they recognize it’s time to go to work. So they understand that order as a cue and they get excited and start barking. But when we’re yelling and trying to give commands, it’s pretty hard for people to hear over that. So we give them a quiet command. Then let them bark to announce that they really are there. We’re not joking around.

Matt: Also, sometimes people have said in court, “I didn’t believe you guys actually had a dog.” There are situations where people bluff and say they have a K9 when they don’t. So having a dog bark once or twice after a set of commands is actually really good.

JR: Once those announcements are given, if there is no response, we cut them off lead. We hold the area of the forced entry and let the dog go in and do his work.

Jodi: You wait until he finds them?

JR: Basically, you wait until you hear some sort of verbal cue that they’ve been found or if they’re hiding behind a closed door, the dog will ram against the door and scratch, sometimes bark to show where they are. Then we, as a contact team, will start to move to that location. We move quickly and don’t have time to clear the full building.

Jodi: But that’s dangerous. Someone could be hiding behind you.

Matt: It’s extremely dangerous. People say, “be safe” (Jodi laughs because she said this to Matt on the phone.) And, I appreciate that. However, when people say that, I think, I really can’t be.

Jodi: It’s our desire for you.

Matt: (Smiles) When you hear bad things on the other side of town, gunshots in the air, and everybody is fleeing and you’re driving as fast as you can into that situation, it is not inherently safe. So we know that and as handlers, we know that. That is why we have to train very vigilantly. And why we stay vigilant… so my dad now says “Stay vigilant.” Also to answer one of the reasons why we don’t take dog off a suspect until they’re cuffed, is there’s a reason why we’re biting him. This is a bad dude. Right? It’s not grandma who shoplifted lipstick… This is potentially a murder suspect. This guy hurts people for a living. I’m not going to take the dog off. He’s the only thing that is making him comply right now until he’s otherwise compelled to behave.

Chris: Given all the criteria, you’ve released your dog and your dog has alerted you to the suspect, and you’re approaching that area as fast as possible, and the suspect is assaulting the dog. Is that like someone assaulting another police officer? Can you use deadly force in that situation?

JR: No. Not in Colorado. The dog is not technically a police officer. There are very few states that still hold that belief.

Matt: It would be considered animal cruelty. That’s about it. Even killing the dog isn’t considered a reason to use deadly force. But if the suspect has a gun, and he’s shooting the dog, that’s a whole different can of worms. Because that could very easily become deadly force aimed toward me. But that would be jeopardy against me, not the dog. Unfortunately, the dog’s job is to not only alert us to the presence of bad guys, but the presence of their ill will to do us harm. And if that is the end of the dog’s life, bless be him. Unfortunately, that is his role. I would much rather get another dog than not go home.

JR: That’s a good segue into how our dogs operate. We have Find and Bite dogs. There is a school of thought behind Bark and Hold. What I mean by Find and Bite, is if we let our dogs off the leash and he finds a suspect—if the suspect is available, the dog will bite him. No doubt about it. If I’m standing here and you’re standing there and I let my dog go—he will bite you. 100%.

Bark and hold, is when you release a dog, he goes and finds a person and sits and barks at their feet. We’re moving away from that because when your dog is in bark and hold, he’s the one making the decision if they’re a threat or not. And dogs are intelligent animals, sure, but they’re dogs. I could be holding a gun and not be a threat, but if an officer walked by, in a second, I could raise the gun and bang. And the dog is sitting right here barking. So, threat assessment is on us and protects us from liability of the dog. If we release a dog, we’ve already made the decision the suspect is dangerous enough to be bitten.

Chris: I noticed your body cam. Do dogs have anything like that?

Matt: No. They’ve tried to come up with something, but no matter where a camera is mounted, it bounces too much to see anything.

Jodi: Do you always keep your dogs on leash?

JR: Unless we deploy them. We have different length leashes. We have a 30-foot tracking leash. When tracking, the handler must watch the dog closely. They move in and out of odor in a serpentine fashion. The tighter the serpentine, the closer you are to the target. You have to keep the dog from getting distracted. The environment plays a big role in ability to track. Temperature: when it’s hot, the scent dissipates. Odor loves moisture, so when it’s moist it sucks in the odor. Wind blows the scent away.

Jodi: Do you ever do K9 demonstrations for the community?

JR: Once a year on National Night Out. But we don’t like to. It is inherently dangerous. There are kids and distractions. It’s not good for training. So our dogs have trading cards.

Jodi: Where does your unit get your dogs?

JR: Johnson Brothers in Colorado Springs. There are a lot of places you can go. Alderhorst or Gold Coast K9 in California, Shallow Creek, Pennsylvania. They cost about 20k.

Jodi: How much training do your dogs have when you get them?

Matt: None. We test their natural pack, prey, and hunt drives, but we prefer to train them ourselves.

Jodi: What is the process for pairing officers with dogs?

Matt: The Johnson Brothers are great at matching personalities.

Jodi: Tell us your most memorable moment with your dog.

JR: Maverick’s first track. I was in my own neighborhood, and we were called in. Maverick (Belgian Malinois) chases the guy, but he jumps a fence. Mav pulled hard trying to get over the fence, but we couldn’t. When we finally got over, we had lost the guy, but Maverick tracked him to under a bush. We lit it up, and the guy was under there. He went out the other side and ran again. I released Maverick, and he bit the guy and took him down. Most memorable because it was our first.

Matt: We were called to a car break in. The guy stole a gun, and we chased him for 45 minutes. We ended up at a park and the track was now old. There were several footprints, and the suspect only left one of them, but Shogun (a Dutch shepherd) tracked him down through several yards. I think that might have been our first track as well.

Jodi: What one word would you use to describe your dog?

JR: Possessive. (laughs) Quirky.

Jodi: What type of quirks?

JR: He head shakes, can’t pass a clump of snow without biting it, and he doesn’t like doorways.

Matt: Strong-willed. If I give him something, I have to gain trust (work at it) to get it back. He won’t bark when he’s working—no matter how hard I try to get him to.

Jodi: That’s about all I have. Thank you so much for hanging with us and answering all our questions. We appreciate you so much.

After the interview, we got to see the dogs from behind a closed glass door. Then we received the dog’s trading cards and took a picture with the officers. What a fantastic day!