Police Dogs Really do Help Take a Bite out of Crime

K-9 Deputy Jim Frost has the only canine partner on his county department in Arizona. His name was changed to protect him from his county’s policy of not allowing their law enforcement personnel to talk to reporters. For the sake of this article, to protect Frost’s identity, we’ll call his dog Nightmare.

“This is my fourth K-9 partner over my law enforcement career,” Frost said. “I don’t get why the administration can’t see the value in these animals – can’t see all the good they bring to the job. In my opinion every officer who is qualified for a dog and knows how to treat the dog should have one.”

Nightmare is a trained police take-down dog. He is a purebred German Shepherd whose mother was imported from Germany when she was pregnant.

“I got him when he was 18 months old,” Frost said. “He was already imprinted socially and had no problem accepting me as his alpha. He was doing preliminary bite work when he came to me and had some search training for both articles and people.”

“I got Nightmare from a breeder I researched. The lines of the dog were important to me because I’ve had German Shepherds before and their intelligence and ability to reason has always impressed me. I wanted a dog who was raised healthy and that had never been abused. The dog I found was from German Schutzhund lines and to me this says their ancestors had the ability to learn, to bite, to search and to out. If you ever have to send your dog after someone, he has got to know when to out,” Frost stressed.

Frost is referring to the common command given to the dog which means to stop. “Mare is trained in English, German and with hand signals for everything he does.”

Frost’s first police dog was rescued from the humane shelter and was a German Shepherd. “He was a great police dog but there must have been issues of abuse in his past that we could never get around. He learned to do building searches and find drugs and he was amazing as a partner.”

“Phreaz (pronounced “Freeze”) was still on probation one time when I stopped a group of bikers in Arizona who were wearing their colors so I left him inside the vehicle. They didn’t have a cage in my vehicle and I had the driver’s window down. It was out in the middle of nowhere; not a cop available for backup in probably 50 square miles in the middle of the night. I was only giving them a warning, and wanted a contact card because they were flying their colors which meant they were probably up to something. I’ll never forget – I was talking to three of them when I caught one reaching in his jacket out of the corner of my eye and my hand went instinctively to my gun but before I could even unsnap it, the biker said ‘Officer, please don’t let your dog bite me!’”

“I glanced down and there was Phreaz snarling, teeth bared at the biker but not making a sound.”

I asked Frost what are the most important qualities in a police dog.

“When I’m looking for a new dog, I have to be able to trace its lines, know who the breeders are, know who has the dog now. It’s all important because while my first dog, Phreaz, was a great police dog, he could not be trusted around my children. When you get a police dog, you need to make sure he hasn’t been abused and doesn’t have any health problems that might cause him pain. You can’t take a dog into a classroom to meet a bunch of little kids with a dog you don’t trust.”

As a police partner, how does Frost depend on Mare?

“Mare has mostly been used as a drug dog. When we have a suspicious vehicle I’m called to the scene with him and the dog goes over that car. He saves me having to chase anyone because no one wants to be chased by a dog.”

I asked Frost where the most unusual place was that Mare had found drugs. “He hit on a car door and there were bags of cocaine inside that door. He’d already gone completely around the vehicle and had started on the driver’s side and lingered on that door before he did the total search. Then when he’d made it around the car, he went back to the driver’s door and signaled.” Frost explained Mare signaled in two ways; he pawed at the door and then barked 8 times.

Has the dog ever been wrong? “No he has never let me down but that’s because I trust him. If he finds nothing, I don’t try to force him and he gets the same reward for a search that turns up nothing as he does for a search that yields drugs. I knew the way he lingered at that door that he was going to hit on it because I know my dog but it’s important to me that he does the search off leash on his own so I don’t accidentally key him.”

How much obedience training does Nightmare have? “He has the basics. He was trained completely with positive reinforcement in everything he does. I have seen other dogs working and they sometimes look at their handlers and literally wait for a signal or something. One of the greatest things about Mare is he knows he is allowed to reason and to think for himself. Like on that car, he didn’t check it out, turn to me, check it out, turn to me over and over. He just did his job and I just watched him. Like I said before the only truly important command is the ‘out.’

What would happen if Frost became hurt in a volatile situation and needed his dog to work? “Mare is handler friendly; I can hand him off to another officer and he understands. If I got hurt and was on the ground, he would do everything he could to protect me including taking a bullet. He has been trained to hand off to other officers and work in teaching scenarios when I pretend to be out of commission.”

Frost said the ability to be able to trust a canine partner cannot be stressed enough.

“When I take him to a search scene, for example, I don’t have to tell everyone to scatter; he knows he’s not looking for anyone we can all see. He may run around and have a sniff here and there and I watch him and I can tell when he hits on a smell that is not present. You can literally see his eyes shift and his body language turns all business and off he goes.”

What is Frost’s favorite breed to work with? “It is the German Shepherd though I’ve seen some great working dogs that are Malinois, Dobermans and Rotweillers.”

Why does he like the German Shepherd “It’s probably my favorite for its ability to reason, and its intelligence and strength. My dog loves to work and is a high energy dog but when I tell him it’s time to ‘settle’ he knows it’s time to calm down.” He laughs “It’s not a put down but so far I haven’t seen a Malinois that would know how to settle down. One of the best drug dogs I’ve seen though was a Malinois.”

“I have worked in extreme hot weather and extreme cold weather and of the four dog breeds, only the German Shepherd adapts quickly to severe temperature changes. The heat is really unkind to darker dogs too but the shepherd has three coats; that undercoat actually helps with both the heat and the cold.”

What about health problems in the German Shepherd? “You are talking mostly about hip dysplasia. Did you know some small dogs are also prone to this? More and more the thinking is that part of it is genetics and part of it is nutrition. That’s why you need to research your dog and its parents and check the hips and elbows. I have seen with my own eyes people working their dogs and not just shepherds, on debris piles and jumping before they are two years old and this will hurt any dog of any breed because their bones are not all the way solidified yet. So it’s my responsibility and the breeder’s responsibility to make sure my dog is healthy. Every breed has its problems and I know I’ve heard people say that’s what happens when you have pure blood dogs. I’ll tell you a lot of law enforcement people use mixed breeds that are rescued that work out perfectly for specific things like drug detection for example. You still will have breed specific health problems to watch out for. If your dog is half German Shepherd and it is a rescue you need to know what to watch out for in the German Shepherd and whatever other breed is in the dog you got. Mixing the breeds does not get rid of genetic health issues.”

Frost may be on his last police dog as he is retiring soon. “Mare won’t come with me. He’ll stay with the department. Soon I’ll be checking out breeders and puppies for sale or even older dogs for sale to find my own dog. I would kind of like to get a pup I can imprint on my own so I know its entire background.”