The Dog Squad

by Vikki Petraitis

  ‘Nah, there’s something wrong.’ Matt could feel it in his bones.

  They pulled over next to the guy in the hoodie, and sure enough, the man turned out to be a crook with pockets full of jewellery, stolen from the house he’d just left.

  Another time, Matt was off duty at the local shopping centre with his wife, when he noticed a guy in his mid-twenties hanging around a Dimmeys store in the school uniform section. What’s a guy that age doing in the school uniform section? Matt wondered. He’s too old for school and too young to have kids at school . . .

  He saw the guy crouch down under a rack of uniforms for several moments, then stand up and walk off. Curious, Matt wandered over to the rack and bent down to see what had held the man’s attention. On the ground, he saw a woman’s purse. Matt picked it up and looked inside. It contained a woman’s driver’s licence, but was otherwise empty of cash and cards.

  Matt took off after the man, who was acting suspiciously enough to suggest he had stolen it. Meanwhile, his wife held on to the wallet and called the police to report what had happened. Matt followed the guy through the shopping centre, but when they got near the exit, the off-duty cop worried that his quarry would get away and decided to stop him. Matt pulled out his police identification, tapped the guy on the shoulder and told him he wanted to talk to him about a purse at Dimmeys.

  The man shoved Matt in the chest and the two began to scuffle right in the middle of the shopping centre. They both ended up on the ground as Matt tried to hold the offender down. ‘I’m a police officer!’ Matt yelled.

  A shopper hurried over while Matt struggled to hold the man down. ‘Can I help?’ she asked.

  ‘Hold his legs!’ yelled Matt. The woman lay down across the man’s legs while Matt tried to stop the flailing punches.

  After ringing for backup, Matt’s wife had quickly followed her husband through the mall. She watched the scene unfold as part of a growing crowd of onlookers. She glanced to the side and noticed another woman nearby. Matt’s wife looked at the licence photo in the purse and looked again at the woman. ‘Is this your purse?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh my god!’ said the woman. ‘Where did you find it?’

  Matt’s wife pointed to the man on the ground that her husband was struggling with. ‘He took it,’ she said. She explained how Matt had seen the guy with the purse acting suspiciously.

  ‘I was just in the supermarket and I had to leave my groceries behind because my purse was missing,’ said the woman. ‘I knew someone must have stolen it! I had just been to the bank to take out $800 in cash to pay our builder.’

  ‘He hasn’t had time to spend it,’ Matt’s wife assured her.

  Uniformed backup arrived and handcuffed the guy, who was found to have the woman’s $800 and her credit cards. Even so, the thief grumbled all the way to the police station, claiming that the $800 was his. Luckily no one believed him, and the woman got her cash and cards back straight away. She sent a huge gift basket to Matt and his wife to say thank you.

  Matt had always had a fascination with the Dog Squad handlers, and over the years he had seen them in action at various jobs. One time, he was on general duties in Moorabbin and was in pursuit of a joyrider who had crashed a stolen vehicle while being chased by police. By the time the police car screeched to a halt at the scene of the crash, the man was nowhere to be seen. While a bunch of local cops milled around the scene, a Dog Squad handler turned up with his dog. Matt watched in awe as the dog led them to a factory area about half a kilometre away. As they got closer to one of the buildings, the handler turned to Matt and said, ‘We’ve got him.’

  How can he know? Matt wondered. He hadn’t noticed any discernible indication from the dog.

  Suddenly, the dog started barking and pacing up and down next to a small trapdoor at the side of one of the factories. The handler opened the trapdoor and the dog went crazy. ‘Come out or I’m sending the dog in!’ yelled the handler over the frenzied barking.

  ‘I’m coming out,’ replied a man; terror evident in his voice. He scrambled out of the small cavity and stood with his hands in the air. Matt was in awe. There was no way on earth they would have found the man without the dog.

  Matt could see how dogs could make policing so much easier. He was the type of cop who mentally beat himself up if he lost a crook. If one slipped through the net at work, Matt would often lose sleep over it, wondering what he could have done differently. Once he saw that first dog in action, he knew dogs were the answer. Dogs were perfect crook catchers.

  For Matt, the second most impressive thing about the Dog Squad was their minimal amount of paperwork. While Matt had handcuffed the joyrider and taken him to the police station to spend the rest of the shift typing up statements, all the handler had to do was write down the name of the offender and the name of the arresting officer. Matt wasn’t a huge fan of paperwork, and he’d failed typing at the academy. Although he had graduated from two-fingered typing to a four-fingered style that resembled chickens pecking, paperwork was definitely not one of his favourite things.

  Matt could see that police dog handling had some very big pluses indeed.

  Vacancies at the Dog Squad were coveted; around forty police officers would apply for a single position. Interested officers could do a course in between vacancies, and if they were found eligible, their names were added to a list at the squad. Matt felt that he had the right qualities for the squad; he was fit and keen, but more than that, he had a good track record of self-motivation. Dog Squad members worked on their own – just them and their dogs – and Matt was very self-reliant. He had also shown his keenness by putting his hand up to do a lot of extra courses to expand his skill set. Anything that came up, he did it: defensive tactics, firearms, and critical incident management.

  When Matt enrolled in the course for potential Dog Squad candidates, one of the tasks he had to complete took place in the country. A farmer generously donated his farm for the task and agreed to a starring role in the scenario role-play in which each potential recruit had to excel. ‘Here’s the only information you have,’ said the interviewer, indicating the farmer who stood ready to deliver his lines.

  ‘Help, officer!’ said the farmer, a little woodenly. ‘I’ve just seen someone drive up the back of my property. He parked his car up there and he went into my shed.’ The farmer mopped his brow, then added, ‘And I think I saw him carrying a gun.’

  On this scant information, Matt had to say exactly how he would handle the situation. The scenario gave the examiners a good insight into how each candidate could absorb information and act on it. At the end of the course, when Matt was accepted onto the list of eligible candidates, the head of the squad told him that one of the reasons they chose him was his ability to handle the farm scenario.

  In 2005, a secondment came up in the squad for four operatives to train as explosives dog handlers for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in March 2006. The opportunity came at a bit of a crossroads for Matt; he had been asked to deploy to either Jordan or the Solomon Islands to train operatives in defensive tactics. While the overseas deployment offer included a considerable bonus payment, Matt really wanted to go to the Dog Squad. He figured that if he took the temporary position at the Dog Squad, he would be better placed to prove himself so that he might be in the running for the next permanent vacancy. In the end, he decided that money wasn’t everything. He chose the dogs.

  Matt was given a good-natured golden labrador called Tate, and the training started from scratch for both of them. Passive Alert Detection (PAD) training developed very particular skills in the dogs. Unlike their general duties counterparts, the PAD dogs didn’t alert by scratching at their quarry, which could be deadly, nor did they bark. They were trained to sit when they detected the presence of explosives.

  Matt didn’t have a background in dog obedience, but he figured it was probably easier to teach someone who knows nothing than someone who knows a little. He was like a sponge, taking in all the information.
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  Unlike their German shepherd colleagues in the squad who were motivated by play and toys, labs were trained primarily using food. Sniff, eat, sniff, eat – it was a labrador’s dream job. The squad’s trainers would set up dozens of jars of different substances with strong smells, such as Vegemite, coffee, cinnamon and pepper, as distractions. Despite the array of odours, the dogs would always pick the explosives out of all the distracting scents. The urban myth that things like pepper and coffee or even dog food would fool a detection dog was proven wrong time and time again. Nothing stood between these labs and their food rewards.

  During training, Matt constantly wondered how far he could push his dog. He loved testing Tate by hiding things in really remote places. Once, he took a single bullet and hid it in the middle of a footy oval. Matt sat back and watched his little lab sniff and search the whole oval in a methodical zigzag pattern, until he finally sat down – right where Matt had hidden the bullet.

  One of the training areas was the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where the handlers would hide a small amount of explosives putty under a seat and watch while the dogs went up and down the rows in the empty stadium to find it. Then the labs would sit patiently and wait for their handlers to come and give them a doggy treat. To raise the food motivation, the dogs were never fed unless they had found explosives. Even at night, Matt’s kids would hide a harmless detonator cable somewhere in the house while Tate waited outside; he would get his bowl of food as soon as he’d found it.

  The explosives training course was sixteen weeks long, and all of the dogs succeeded. They were all good pedigree dogs that had come from the Customs breeding program. The success rate was much higher than general purpose dog training because these dogs didn’t need the broader range of skills required of their general purpose counterparts. They didn’t need athleticism, they didn’t need aggression, and they didn’t need the same level of hunting drive; all they needed was a good nose and a steady supply of doggy treats.

  When the Commonwealth Games began, PAD dogs trained in explosives detection were used to clear all the athletes’ villages for occupation. The dogs and handlers also did building clearances on hotels where dignitaries were staying.

  During the Games, Tate was the only dog to smell explosives on someone. Matt was working one of the entrances to the MCG, checking everyone who went past. One man caught Tate’s attention, and he promptly sat beside the man’s leg.

  ‘Show me,’ said Matt to the dog, and Tate sniffed the man’s jeans. ‘My dog’s trained to detect explosives and ammunition,’ Matt told the man. ‘Can you give an explanation for why he might be indicating that he’s smelt something on you?’

  The man looked bemused. ‘I work in a mining company,’ he said. ‘I was handling a bag of explosives yesterday. Could that be it?’

  The man was carrying a backpack, and Matt searched it while the man looked on. Matt didn’t think the bag contained anything untoward, because Tate was totally focused on the man’s jeans. ‘Did you wear those yesterday?’ asked Matt, pointing to the jeans.

  The man nodded.

  ‘There’d be traces on your jeans,’ said Matt, who then passed the man on to be questioned by uniformed police at the scene. Matt was relieved that his dog’s training was working so well that Tate could detect a guy who’d handled explosives the day before. The rest of the Games passed without incident.

  After the Games secondment, a vacancy came up at the Dog Squad, and Matt was lucky enough to be chosen for it. He had a diverse background in the police force, and had the skill set required for a general duties dog handler.

  The difference between being a PAD handler and a general purpose handler was immediately apparent to Matt. Unlike the PAD dogs that all made it through training, the first four dogs that Matt was given didn’t make the grade. Then he got Bozo, a German shepherd that had been donated to the squad.

  Bozo was a distrustful dog, and Matt suspected that he had been mistreated at some point. It took Matt six weeks to form a bond with the dog; once he did, the bond was so strong that Bozo wouldn’t let anyone near Matt. Bozo was stubborn as a mule. For most dogs, a pull on the check chain would correct bad behaviour, but if Matt tried a correction, there would be a full-on fight. Other handlers joked that they needed to take out an intervention order between dog and handler. Through much trial and error, Matt found out that Bozo responded only to praise.

  Even so, the dog was hard work. Matt couldn’t even get Bozo out of a police car at jobs until he had been briefed by the other officers. If Bozo was by Matt’s side and other cops approached them, Bozo would bark his head off so loudly that Matt couldn’t hear them.

  The barking and aggression were great for the job though. One night, Matt tracked a huge violent man who was on the run after smashing another man’s head in with a hammer. They tracked him to a shed. As usual, Bozo went wild; he indicated some black weed matting on the ground, which began to move. The huge guy emerged from underneath it, hands in the air, saying, ‘Is your dog going to bite me, bro?’

  Later, the giant asked good-naturedly what the dog’s name was. When he heard it was Bozo, he said, ‘I’ve been taken down by a dog called Bozo!’ The man shook his head as if he’d never live it down.

  Matt admired Bozo and had developed a synchronicity with him. Because he had to work extra hard to develop trust, that trust seemed to be worth more. Nonetheless, Bozo was judged too unpredictable for general duties and was retired.

  A 50-kilogram Rottweiler called Nat was without a handler after his handler transferred out of the squad, so Matt’s bosses paired him with Nat. Matt fought the decision. He didn’t want to give up Bozo, and he also didn’t want to return to the squad for more training after it had taken so long to find a dog in the first place, not to mention the months it took to bond with Bozo. But one of the prisons wanted Bozo as a guard dog, so Matt let him go and took on Nat.

  Nat was nearly two years old when Matt got him. Bozo’s snapping and snarling had become such a big part of Matt’s life as a handler that Nat’s calm nature proved a stark contrast. Matt wondered whether this quiet, passive dog would be aggressive enough for the job. Nat was so placid that when Matt arrived at jobs, people would come up to the police car and ask if there was a dog inside.

  Nat was all business. Quiet, calm business – until he found a crook, that is. The dog would lie around like he was on holidays until it was time to chase down the bad guys. He could utter such a frightening guttural growl that he had many lawbreakers begging for mercy. Matt would come to call the phenomenon his ‘idling engine’.

  Nat was a natural crook catcher. His first pair of crooks was a couple of young car thieves. The lads had been breaking into cars up and down a street in Ringwood. Matt met up with a local cop at the scene of the latest theft to discuss which direction the crooks might have taken. Little did they know the crooks were hiding behind a nearby fence – probably listening to their conversation.

  Matt cast his dog down the street. Being new to the partnership, Matt hadn’t picked up all of Nat’s idiosyncrasies yet, but when the dog stopped in his tracks, lifted his head and turned towards a nearby tree, the handler figured he’d found something.

  Matt gave him the command to find the source of the scent. Nat took off on the 10-metre tracking line and then let out the loudest, deepest bark Matt had ever heard. It made him jump.

  ‘Come out!’ yelled Matt, ‘or I’m sending in the dog!’

  Seconds later, two scared-looking teenagers emerged. Matt told them both to sit down, and not to talk to each other. All the while, Nat maintained his continuous guttural growl (which Matt found out later was the Rottweiler’s version of a purr, and actually meant he was having a good time!). To the young crooks, it was terrifying.

  Matt handed the kids over to the local police, and this time, he was the one to hop in his car with very little paperwork. The only follow-up was a bit of rough-and-tumble play with his very pleased Rottweiler. Nat loved tug of war and his favourite
toy was an old tattered rope with a big knot tied in it. After catching the thieves, Matt got the rope out of the car and he and Nat had a couple of games of tug of war. Nat clamped his huge jaws around his slobbery end of the rope while Matt tried in vain to tug it from him. The dog shook his head, growled and wouldn’t let go. Until, of course, his handler told him to drop it, and then he let it go straight away.

  On one occasion, about a dozen blokes were making trouble in a pub car park in one of Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. A couple of uniformed officers had been called to move them on, but the mob, fuelled by bravado and chest beating, was too big for just two of them. Matt was in the area and arrived to help out. He jumped out of his station wagon and ran to the back of it to let Nat out. The thugs saw Matt run and all charged towards him. As the mob converged on Matt, his huge Rottweiler jumped from the back of the station wagon in full flight – barking his huge baritone bark, saliva flying, teeth bared. He knew what his job was: bark, bite, protect.

  As soon as the enormous dog appeared, the thugs stopped in their tracks. The other two cops ran over to support Matt and his ferocious sidekick.

  One huge tattooed guy, chest puffed out, tried to play hero. ‘I’ve got a couple of pit bulls!’ he hollered, with all the bravado of a drunken idiot. He raced towards Matt, arm raised.

  Nat launched at the man’s arm, and luckily Matt pulled back on the lead before the dog could sink his teeth in. It was enough for the guy to realise that Nat meant business. He jumped back to join his mates.

  ‘Keep away or he’ll bite!’ warned Matt.

  And suddenly the mob lost its appetite for blood, when they realised it might be their own blood spilt. It took around a minute from the time Nat jumped from the car to the mob’s retreat. The gang of thugs walked away, their departure peppered with expletives. One guy even got some way down the road, flung off his singlet and pounded on his chest, screaming: ‘I’m not scared of your dog!’ Of course, he yelled it from a really safe distance.