#foxydogteam

On a bitterly cold winters morning in 2005 I was coming to the end of a night shift. Chilled to the bone, I was patrolling with PD Ellie, looking for anything moving to investigate! It had been a really up and down shift for us and to be honest I was looking forward to heading off home, going off duty and getting some well earned shut eye! You always know it’s been a bleak shift when you can actually visualize yourself climbing into bed! That said though, still fairly new to the Police Dog Handling world, I was so keen to prove myself. I had had negative after negative result with Ellie in the early days. Looking back, some of the negatives were possibly down to me, with a learning curve near vertical! Some of the negative’s were down to circumstance but still, as a newbie, I was losing a bit of confidence in my own abilities and more worryingly that of my more than capable police dog. I had got a bit of ribbing from some colleagues and albeit light hearted, it still knocked my belief. I never have, and never will let that happen again.

I digress…!

It was about 4.30 in the morning when my radio crackled into life with a report of a road traffic collision on one of our major trunk roads. It was a report of a single vehicle crash which had rolled several times and had come to rest on its roof in the middle of the road. There was no-one with the car. I arrived on scene swiftly and was confronted with a vehicle which was devoid of any windows, with glass everywhere all over the road. The smell of a not so healthy clutch filled the air. The driver of this wrecked car had made off from the crash scene. Was the driver injured? Was the driver not the owner of the car, maybe a stolen car? Was the driver drunk? All these questions needed to be ascertained and even though the fire & rescue service were all around the car, making it safe, I still attempted to see if there was a track away from the car with my canine colleague.

I placed Ellie into her tracking harness and as I worked her around the car, her nose quickly hit the ground and she took off, with me hanging on for dear life! Tail up like a flag pole, Ellie tracked off alongside the road on the grass verge for over a quarter of a mile when she turned into a gateway and up to a five bar gate. She sniffed the top of the gate and without any encouragement, Ellie jumped the gate and I had to follow suit, and sharply! She wasn’t stopping for anyone! 
I glanced across the field and was immediately confronted with around 50 pairs of eyes staring at us! “Great a field full of sheep!” I muttered to myself! This probably should have caused me some difficulties but No… Ignoring the sheep, Ellie’s nose hit the ground again and she tracked up the side of the field which had a water filled ditch aligning. As we got about 200+ yards into the field Ellie suddenly stopped. Her head came up and I watched as the hackles on her back rose and she started growling. Her demeanour had completely changed. There was someone here but where? I shone my torch forward but nothing. Ellie started barking repeatedly, bouncing around and then, like a scene out of a film, the water erupted and I took a jump back it’s fair to say! A male stood before us, soaked to the bone and looking pretty cold! I remember him saying to me “Mate, that dog is effing awesome”! I detained the male and escorted him out of the field into the arms of awaiting response colleagues. He was the driver of the crashed car and later was charged with drink driving. Luckily no one else was injured as a result of his actions.

In the early hours of that morning back in 2005, my police dog had succeeded! I was so pleased, it’s a difficult emotion to explain but I am sure other dog handlers out there would relate to it. A colleague called up over the air and said “Well Done Foxy & Ellie”. That meant so much to me. That morning, I said to myself - I’m a dog handler! :)

This April 2013, I am running my 1st Marathon. I am still relatively new to the running scene having only got into it properly in September 2011. Since then I have run a few half marathons but this year I have joined a team of police officers and staff called Ironcoppers and I am running for Cancer Research UK.

If your able to spare anything at all, I’ll be so grateful. I’m sure you’ll agree the work Cancer Research UK do is amazing. Thanks very much for reading.

http://www.ironcoppers.com

It’s a veritable roller coaster being a dog handler. Non dog handler colleagues have often and historically taken the mick saying things like “You lot are always training”! The truth of the matter is that we do actively train with our dogs when time allows. We train to succeed. We train to create a bond between handler and dog. This bond and the training we do is what makes our police dogs track round a neighbourhood to someone hiding under a car who is concealing themselves, having just burgled a shed. It’s what makes these wonderful free thinking animals hunt out a missing elderly lady in the woods. It’s what enables you, as a dog team, to qualify for the next stages in regional and national police dog trials. My pal PC James Brotherhood will relate to that. He and PD Baxter head off to the Regional Trials next month to which I wish them best wishes. Go on my son!

When your training succeeds and you see the results, it is quite simply phenomenal. I’ve been a dog handler for over 8 years and it still makes me mighty happy when something you’ve taught your dog sinks in, works, and works well. Your dog finding somebody hiding from police having fled a crime scene. It’s a feeling that is hard to put across to you but as soon as I get back into my dog van, it’s fair to say I still punch the air and jump about in euphoria :) Love it!!

I was fortunate enough to compete in Police Dog Trials at Regional level with my first dog, Ellie. It was when Sussex Police hosted the competition and was open to the public at the Withdean Stadium in Brighton. It was a great time and a chance to show off my dog, the dog which I trained with the guidance of instructors. Proud Dog Man only slightly sums it up. My current dog Abbi won our Sussex Force trials with her former handler and I intend to emulate this with her in the future. This can be achieved through…. You guessed it, hard work and training!

Sometimes though, as you’d expect, things don’t go to plan. Lets not forget that these dogs are not robots and there are occasions when Lady Luck doesn’t assist you. Tracking after the car thief who has fled police and all the badgers and foxes in the whole of the UK decide to converge on that exact road to mess your night up!! It can be frustrating, so frustrating but why? It’s frustrating because of all the hard work, time, sweat and tears we spend training with our best friends, our dogs, we want success. We want them to shine. It may sound vain in some ways but lets remember that this is our job, we are passionate to succeed with our dogs and put a criminal or two behind bars. Fear not though, most of the time they do succeed!

This training relates to our specialist search dogs also, naturally. It’s the same concept of course. PD Neo and I regularly attend training days. He is an experienced search dog and I trust him completely to find what we’re there to find. He’s a great dog and has been a credit to the force.

This short blog sprung to mind on the back of a conversation I had recently and wanted to share my thoughts with you.