#pdellie

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! :)