The Dog Squad

by Vikki Petraitis

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Introduction

  1.  From Vietnam to the Dog Squad

  2.  Mick Bream and PD Kendo

  3.  Dog handler down

  4.  On the track of escaped criminals

  5.  A police dog catches a cat burglar

  6.  The bravery award

  7.  A German shepherd named Renko

  8.  Nat the crook catcher

  9.  Bob and Blitz

  10. General purpose work to drug detecting

  11. Teaching a new dog new tricks

  12. Claude, Rex and Kruze

  13. Looking for drugs in unlikely places

  14. Biting the hand that pats you

  15. The newest member

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Vikki Petraitis is a bestselling author with twenty years’ experience. Her book about Frankston serial killer Paul Denyer has become a classic in the true-crime genre. She has written: The Phillip Island Murder; Victims, Crimes and Investigators; The Frankston Murders; The Great John Coleman; Rockspider; Cops: True Stories from Australian Police; Forensics: True Stories from Australian Police Files; Crime Scene Investigations: More Stories from the Australian Police Files and Salvation – The True Story of Rod Braybon’s Fight for Justice. She has had stories published in six antholo­gies. Vikki works as a writing consultant and ghostwriter, helping others to tell their stories.

  To my mum, Helen Burke, whose unwavering support means that she is not only an amazing proofreader, but she is also a constant source of encouragement and a great unpaid publicist.

  And to my little grandson Archie, who was delighted to learn that he shared a name with a courageous police dog.

  FOREWORD

  Every dog handler will say:

  ‘This is the best job in the world.’

  ‘I couldn’t see me doing anything else.’

  ‘I would almost do this for nothing.’

  The men and women who come to the dog squad are not necessarily dog lovers, but once they have completed a course of instruction and are qualified as an operational police dog handler, they certainly appreciate and respect the qualities and abilities of their new-found working partners.

  Len Taylor, who features in chapter one: ‘From Vietnam to the Dog Squad’, was my mentor and my trainer back in 1983. His passion, drive and excited nature made for a very interesting and rewarding training course. Handlers receive their very own dog handler number, sequential to their order of qualification. Len was number 4. I am number 47.

  Since that training course with Len, I have worked all facets of police dog work including general purpose, narcotics and explosives detection. I have an appreciation of the inherent nature of those duties, from the dangers to the excitement and certainly the frustrations.

  I met Vikki Petraitis a couple of times during the writing of this book. Her enthusiasm and love for dogs was evident from the start. She was certainly excited to write about the Victoria Police Dog Squad, and has gained a personal insight into the workings and experiences of dog handlers. From life at their respective homes to the early morning starts, and the long cold and wet nights searching for offenders who simply don’t want to be found, Vikki has captured their stories and emotions.

  Members of the Victoria Police Dog Squad are extremely passionate and driven individuals. They work tirelessly to better themselves and their dogs, and to provide a unique and essential support to other police members and to the community.

  As the officer in charge of the Dog Squad, it is my job now to ensure all Dog Squad members have the training, equipment and support they need to do their job safely and without obstacles in their way.

  Senior Sergeant Shaun McGovern

  Officer in Charge, Victoria Police Dog Squad

  INTRODUCTION

  It only took one meeting with the senior sergeant in charge of the Dog Squad, Shaun McGovern, to dispel most of my beliefs about police dogs. In the movies, police dogs take down the bad guys by pushing them over and then standing majestically, paws on their chests, while the bad guys give up. Being susceptible to what I see on TV, I was a little surprised to learn that, in real life, there is more biting involved.

  In that very first meeting, I learnt that Victoria Police dogs are not trained to sniff the jumper of a missing child and then find that particular scent. They simply follow the most recent human scent. Quelle horreur! My TV knowledge did not stand up at all. It would be the first of many alterations to my brain’s filing cabinet of police dog information.

  Coming from a nation of dog lovers – I have two fluffballs of my own – I needed to change my perspective to write about police dogs. When I learnt that police dogs wait in their cages for hours in between jobs, the fluffball-owner in me wondered why they weren’t sleeping on down scatter pillows. But, as Shaun McGovern patiently pointed out, if police dogs lounged around all day on feather pillows, they would quickly lose their incentive to work. They would become like my dogs, raising their nicely groomed heads from their throw rug on the couch as if to say, ‘You’d better be offering something pretty good, like a trip to the park, or we ain’t moving.’

  When police dogs are released from their cages, which are boring, they bound out excitedly: ‘What do you want me to do, Boss? Anything! I’ll do anything! Just say the word.’

  As a novice in the world of highly trained dogs, I asked these expert dog handlers for their tips and training advice to put at the end of their stories. I figured that this would help people like me get a bit more out of their pooches. The handlers’ advice was grounded in consistency and boundary setting.

  I followed the advice of one handler, who said that I shouldn’t let my dog sniff every tree and take wee-stops every ten seconds when we went walking. I didn’t think my dog would respond; she is 5 kilograms of stubbornness. Sure enough, though, when I kept the lead firm on our next morning walk, she trotted happily by my side. It was like magic.

  Collecting stories for months, I heard all about casting a dog (putting it on a 10-metre lead so that it can move in sweeping arcs to try and pick up a scent), air scenting (when a dog lifts its head to indicate the quarry is close) and lots of other tracking techniques. Then I got the chance to see some of these in a training exercise. I was in awe at the majesty of the police dogs; not only were they beautiful to look at (or rather, handsome), they were also fast and agile and clearly loved their work. The most amazing thing was the way they looked at their handlers with such intensity, ready to read the smallest signals and react straight away.

  Dog handler Matt Steele told me that as much as police dogs are highly trained, they are still dogs. And then he borrowed a line from the fabulous movie Up, which featured dogs that wore collars that translated their barks into speech. In the movie, the dogs spoke intelligently, but every now and again they would all look to the side and shout, ‘Squirrel!’

  Matt said: ‘They are highly trained animals, but sometimes it’s just, “Squirrel!”’

  I hope these stories will show both sides – the crook-catching side, and the ‘Squirrel!’ side – of these incredible dogs. And I hope that, through these dogs, the public might better understand the amazing, perilous, muddy, nerve-racking life of those on the other end of the lead – the police dog handlers.

  Vikki Petraitis

  CHAPTER 1

  From Vietnam to the Dog Squad

  Len Taylor always had three or four dogs as a child. He’d grown up in 1950s Healesville, around an hour’s drive north-east of Melbourne, and the family home was surrounded by bush and grasslands. Dogs were part of the landscape. The Taylors’ dogs were all of the ‘bitza’ variety: crossbreeds with bits of blue heeler, collie and wha
tever else was roaming the neighbourhood at the time. Local dogs would wander around – few were fixed in those days, or indeed ever saw the inside of a vet’s surgery – and spread their genes far and wide. Someone at school would have a dog that produced a litter, and there were always a couple of willing classmates who would carry home a tiny creature with puppy-dog eyes and plead with their parents, ‘Can we keep him?’

  Some of Len’s dogs were simply strays that followed him home. His family’s large block was a dog haven. The dogs lived on family food scraps or sometimes, after an excited chase through the bush, they would come home with a rabbit.

  Len Taylor turned seventeen years old in 1967, and he joined the army. Both his parents had served in World War II and his dad happily signed the papers for the keen young lad to follow in their footsteps. Life was quiet in Healesville, and Len wanted adventure. The war in Vietnam was in full swing and he wanted to serve his country and see the world.

  He had no idea the world would turn out to be very different from what he had imagined.

  Because Len joined so young, after infantry and basic training he still wasn’t nineteen, the age required for armed combat. There were several options for a lad not old enough to fight: he could join the army band, train as a field medic, help with demonstrations for new recruits, or be trained to handle tracker dogs in the infantry tracking wing.

  The dog-tracking wing was in the same part of the base as the infantry training centre, and Len had seen the dogs and the dog handlers at work. After training, army dog handlers were allocated to an overseas battalion. Because he was still too young to fight, Len knew that whatever area he chose, he would be stuck there for at least a year and a half until he was old enough to head off overseas. He figured the dogs were his most adventurous option.

  All army dogs were named after Roman emperors, and as soon as Len signed up he was given a playful black labrador called Maximus. Len had expected the dogs to be fierce, but they were all good-natured and playful. Because they were trackers, not attack dogs, fierceness wasn’t required. Boisterous boofheads was how he came to think of those army dogs.

  The first part of the training process was to form a bond between dog and handler. The young men in the tracking unit were separated from the others in the compound. The dogs slept in a row of kennels, then spent most of the day with their handlers. Every part of the training required the dogs to find and play with something. The puppies that were chosen were the playful ones that rumbled with each other and loved toys. Dogs that were quiet and withdrawn didn’t make it through training.

  Maximus was around eighteen months old by the time Len got him. The bond between the two began slowly. Morning and afternoon walks formed part of this process. Len was told right from the beginning that the relationship was the key. Dogs have personalities, and people have personalities, so it was important that they suited each other. Maximus had another handler before Len, but it had been decided that they weren’t a good match. A bad match between handler and dog was usually quite obvious.

  However, Len soon learnt that even though it was important to bond with your dog, there was a profound difference between being a regular dog lover and an army dog handler. The army dog handler must always be willing to send his dog into a combat situation. If you love the dog, that can be a very difficult thing to do. Of course, Len was fond of Maximus, but if it came down to a life-and-death situation between him and the dog, he couldn’t choose the dog.

  It wasn’t just the dogs that needed to be playful. The handlers had to be able to play along with their dogs, roll on the ground with them and tease them with their favourite toys. Some soldiers just couldn’t let go of the rigid nature of army life, and found they weren’t cut out for the unit. Len, on the other hand, took to the dogs like a duck to water.

  Training a dog is about positive reinforcement; it must fully outweigh the small amount of negative reinforcement needed. ‘Play and praise’ became the mantra.

  Each dog had a favourite toy. Every afternoon, another soldier would take the dog’s favourite toy and walk off with it. The handler would goad the dog: ‘He’s got your toy! He’s got your toy, buddy!’ When the dog’s excitement was at its peak, the handler would say, ‘Seek, seek!’ and point to the ground for the dog to sniff. This directed the dog to use its nose, rather than its eyes, to track the soldier fleeing with their toy. The dogs had to learn how to follow scent – dogs that looked rather than sniffed were rejected as trackers.

  As the dogs got better at tracking, their toys would be carried over longer and longer distances. On TV, dogs are always pictured sniffing an object or an item of clothing to pick up the scent of the owner; in reality, the dogs follow the most recent scent. In fact, if a dog tires after following a recent scent for kilometres, another dog can be brought in to take over.

  Every time Maximus successfully tracked the soldier with his toy, Len would grab the toy and give it to Maximus as a reward. The two would then play a game of tug of war, which the dog loved. A good tracking dog could track for hours just for the reward of play. Conversely, it was important that play was rationed as a reward. The dogs weren’t silly; if they could play any time, why bother with all the hard tracking work? The handlers only played with them after they had done something to earn it.

  Maximus was a relatively good tracker, but after about six months it was obvious that he wasn’t enjoying the work. Dogs are very individual creatures; some get immense enjoyment from being told ‘good boy!’ while others need different reinforcement. So Maximus left the tracking unit, and was given to a family who would appreciate a highly trained dog that didn’t quite enjoy tracking.

  As much as losing a dog was a wrench, handlers and their dogs were being sent straight to combat situations in Vietnam, and Len knew that he had to have the right dog or his own life could be in danger. He got another dog straight away – a handler without a dog was a wasted resource. Brutus was a solid black lab – another boofhead – a big strong dog that wasn’t as fast or as sharp-witted as Maximus, but was absolutely keen to track.

  With his second dog, Len began to appreciate the individuality of dogs. He also began to see that identifying their individual quirks was vital. Finding out your dog loved a tummy scratch might be the key to training success. Some loved being groomed while others preferred verbal praise. Some loved patting, and others enjoyed rolling around with their handlers. Some loved being chased. Brutus loved rolling around on the ground and playing tug of war with Len.

  Len had signed up for a three-year stint in the army and, as he drew closer to the combat age of nineteen, he realised that his chances of going to Vietnam with Brutus were slim. By the time Len was old enough to fight, all three Australian infantry battalions had already reached their quota of two dogs and two handlers. As a lad who’d joined the army for the excitement, the thought that he might miss out on his chance to serve was a huge disappointment.

  Len’s only chance of getting to Vietnam was as a general duties soldier. Once he realised this, he sadly transferred out of the tracking wing – and left Brutus behind.

  A couple of weeks after his nineteenth birthday, Len boarded a Qantas flight filled with army reinforcements and made the day-long trip from Melbourne to Saigon, stopping to refuel in Darwin and Singapore.

  Stepping down onto the tarmac in Saigon, Len felt the humidity wrap around him like a blanket. Despite being at the airport, the whole place smelt like jungle. He knew he wasn’t in Melbourne any more.

  The smell, the heat, the seriousness of it all hit the nineteen-year-old like a slap in the face. No matter how much he had trained and prepared for it, being in Vietnam brought a sense of foreboding that seemed to ripple through all the reinforcements.

  Len’s world suddenly got a whole lot bigger. One plane trip had taken him from a country boy’s life to war-torn South-East Asia. His first glimpse of reality came when he saw the hundreds of soldiers waiting at the airport to fly out. As Len walked past the men waiting to
leave he took in their haunted thousand-yard stares.

  Uh oh, he thought.

  Len knew the other Aussie soldiers had seen it too, but the camaraderie and the Aussie spirit quickly took over, and all the young blokes gathered their enthusiasm along with their kit bags and made their way to the connecting flight. The second flight was on an army-green Hercules transport plane to the small city of Vng Tàu. From there, they flew to Nui Dat for a couple of weeks of acclimatisation and jungle training.

  At the training camp, the first thing Len noticed was the noise: machine gun fire, the boom of cannons, the thump-thump of military helicopters and planes roaring ominously overhead. Night and day, the noise never stopped. At first, these constant reminders of the war on their doorstep were nerve-racking, but Len soon developed a sort of tolerance to it and it became more like background noise.

  Even though he had come to Vietnam as an infantryman, two weeks into the acclimatisation period Len was assigned to a tracking unit. He was surprised, because he hadn’t heard there was a vacancy. Ironically, the tracking soldier he replaced had probably been at the airport waiting to leave on the day Len arrived.

  Len was happy that all of his training with the dogs could be put to use. He was assigned a black labrador-cross called Julian. Len was Julian’s fourth handler. In Vietnam, the dogs stayed and the soldiers were replaced. The soldiers had a one-year tour of duty but, due to Australia’s strict quarantine laws, the dogs could never return home. Julian was an older dog that quickly bonded with Len and enjoyed his company. After a couple of weeks in the camp at Nui Dat, Len took Julian on patrol into the surrounding jungle on a collar and lead.

  ‘You don’t need to have him on a lead, mate,’ said one of the other handlers. ‘He’ll stick to you like glue.’