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All paws on deck

CRTC goes to the dogs for K9 training

News Photo by Julie Riddle Major, a German shepherd security dog participating in training at the Alpena Combat Readiness Center this week, alerts his handler to explosives materials found during a training exercise Monday.

ALPENA–A police car came wailing to a stop.

The officer jumped out, focus trained on the parked sedan in front of him. Emerging from the back seat of the police car, a muscular black and brown dog bounded to the officer’s side and froze, ears up, big paws splayed, nose pointed at the sedan.

At the officer’s command, the dog raced forward and leapt into the sedan’s open door. Moments later, squeals erupted from the back seat, where a man in full-body protective gear had crouched, waiting for the police-dog-in-training to find him.

At the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center this week, 320-plus canine units are learning new techniques, practicing skills, and networking with other units from around the country at the annual training conference for the National Association of Professional Canine Handlers.

The training, the largest of its kind in the country, reinforces the work of security dogs and their handlers, making communities nationwide safer by helping its four-legged officers do their best work to protect and connect with the humans around them, organizers said.

News Photo by Julie Riddle A K9 police dog waits eagerly for his handler’s attack command during a traffic stop exercise at the Alpena Combat Readiness Center Monday.

Chief, the German shepherd who elicited alarming — albeit counterfeit — squeals from the back seat, leapt from the sedan at his trainer’s command, in an instant transformed from attack dog to a puppy, eager for a pat and a word of praise.

“Good boy, buddy!” trainer Kenny Hickman cooed, giving the dog’s ruff a tousle.

“He’s a big baby,” Hickman said affectionately, as the dog that had moments before been all intimidating teeth lolled his tongue to one side, reveling in the attention of an onlooker.

The training, held at multiple sites on CRTC’s expansive campus, is an incongruous blend of intense police work and tough-looking officers talking in baby talk to their canine companions.

The dogs, association president Terry Foley said, don’t see their police duties as a chore. To them, it’s all a game, one they win when they’ve made their trainer happy.

“Dogs work cheap,” Foley said.

While the canines may work for nothing more than the pleasure of pleasing, they do, most certainly, work. The dogs’ keen noses sniff out bombs and drugs and missing people. Their teeth are ready to grasp an arm or a leg of a fleeing suspect or to defend their trainer when danger lurks.

A gentle-eyed brown and black dog with huggable fur curled contentedly in the back of a police car, unconcernedly gazing at his owner as visitors fussed over him.

“Dad, are you talking about me again?” trainer Gerald Chomos of St. Claire Shores voiced on the dog’s behalf as he told stories about his partner’s exploits. A mentally handicapped man who had wandered off, found. Bad guys taken down.

Perhaps the greatest impact of Wylie, the placid German shepherd from the Czeck Republic, and other police dogs like him, is providing a way for the police and the community to connect, Chomos said, producing a boxful of Wylie’s baseball-style trading cards that are handed out to young collectors.

Taylor (not named after Taylor Swift, his handler was quick to say), a canine on the Beaumont hospital security staff, swept a back lot at the CRTC with his nose, quickly locating two spots where training explosives had been secreted.

While working dogs are a familiar sight in police departments, more recently, the dogs have been added to the security teams at hospitals, Foley said. Considered by the FBI to be the third-highest terrorist risk in the country, hospitals have added trained dogs to their departments, the canines a source of comfort to patients and trained to assist in de-escalating aggressive situations, but also ready to sniff out explosives or find illegal substances.

At airports, too, working dogs stop crime, catching traffickers attempting to transport narcotics.

At another training site on the CRTC campus Monday, Major crouched in a doorway as his trainer shouted warnings into a warehouse. I have a dog, the trainer cautioned. He will bite you. This is your last chance to surrender.

Released by a command, the dog raced into the building, within seconds finding a hidden decoy in a space that would have taken human searchers half an hour to clear.

The National Association of Professional Canine Handlers, which boasts 1,600 members from around the country and Canada, has conducted trainings at CRTC for 15 years. The facility provides a wide variety of training scenarios, Foley said, and allows the dogs to experience the sounds and sensations of actual gunfire and “flash-bang” explosives, situations not safely recreated in a city. The dogs need to get accustomed to a wide variety of scenarios, training them to block out everything except the work they need to do.

The training, which began Sunday afternoon and will continue through Wednesday, includes new situations for both dogs and handlers, including the use of a rappelling wall to accustom dogs to being lifted off the ground by ropes — a maneuver that could save their lives in an emergency — and a smoke house, simulating a fiery environment where dogs may need to know how to help others as well as exit safely, themselves.

Sunday morning’s opening ceremony included the honoring of K9 Axe, the first dog in the association to be killed in the line of duty. Axe was fatally shot last November while pursuing a fleeing subject in St. Claire Shores.

The week’s training spilled off the base, extending into Alpena as police units used the city and its wooded areas to conduct tracking exercises, giving residents a surprise as scores of police cars from sheriff and city departments all over the country cruised city streets and worked with their leashed canine partners.

On the base, dogs lunged at leather-armed trainers, raced through buildings, froze in eager anticipation as they listened for a command, and growled happily as they tugged at the leather of their leashes with white teeth, ready to do it all again.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.

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