1
From Puppy to Police Dog—Drive and Determination
I fly to Calgary in May, and then ride the bus for an hour and a half to Red Deer, the murder capital of Canada. I’m not used to such a flat landscape. It feels too open, too exposed upon the earth. There are no looming mountains, no canyons—just the spring green of the grass, the magpies in their tuxedos scolding from budding trees, strip malls jammed with jacked-up trucks. I pass what I take to be a small mountain of topsoil, but as I roll by I see it is actually snow, dirtied by rocks and grime, still unmelted. Spring will soften Red Deer as best spring can, but this is a hard, open landscape, unfamiliar and unforgiving. The land is so flat that my eyes grow tired of looking for the horizon line.
The next morning, I meet Senior Police Dog Trainer Tom Smith in the lobby of the Sandman Hotel at six thirty a.m. so he can drive us to the kennels. I’m right on time, dressed in hiking boots and jeans, with layers that I can strip off if it gets too hot. Tom Smith is a man of medium build with salt-and-pepper hair. Most of the time, he’s soft-spoken and easygoing. It’s only when he is telling me some of his past experiences as a K9 cop that a hardness enters his eyes. Tom is not someone to be messed with. Beneath that mellow exterior is a tough and opinionated survivor.
A few months earlier, I spent my first week working with Tom as he validated police dog teams in the Lower Mainland, near Vancouver. Each team that graduates from the RCMP kennels program is required to be validated annually to ensure that they continue to meet or exceed standards. Tom tells me that if he can’t pass a team, they have a maximum of fifteen remedial training days. If they still are unsuccessful, trainers have to make a decision as to which part of the team is at fault. If the dog is the problem, he will be retired, and the handler will go back to the kennels to be rematched with a new dog. If the handler is the problem, he will be removed from the program and his dog will be reteamed with a new handler. Validation is taken extremely seriously, and it means that dog and handler must stay at the top of their game.
That time with Tom and the teams was a great introduction in learning to read police dogs’ body language. I got to see the precise moment when the dogs hit the scent and set off on a scent track, and when they were closing in on their quarry. To me it never got old.
After one of those long days out with Tom, I sat in the kitchen, talking with Isabelle after dinner. Maybe it was just the change of routine, but some of the tension between us had lessened.
“So today Tom was talking about how anxious the new dog handlers get when it’s testing time. He said, ‘They’re always saying, “My dog never did this before, he must be sick, he might have hurt himself over that last fence,” one excuse after another. The last one was complaining about his dog’s tracking and I said to him, “This is what you should do. You go to your dog, lift up his tail, and kiss his ass, because he’s been working great for you all week.”’”
Our daughter popped her head into the room, where she’d been quietly eavesdropping. “And did he do it? Did he actually lift up his dog’s tail and kiss his ass, Mom?”
How long had it been since we’d laughed together until we had to lean on each other? I couldn’t remember the last time.
* * *
I know Tom well enough to call him Tom and to ask him any question that pops into my mind, but being in Alberta now, on his home turf, feels different than the time we spent together in British Columbia. For the rest of the week, I will be in the company of Tom, the dogs, and the other police dog handlers of the RCMP.
In Celtic, Innisfail means Isle of Destiny, and this is where every RCMP police dog in Canada (and many that end up as K9s in the United States) is bred, born, and raised. Police dogs for the RCMP used to come from anywhere and everywhere. Some of those dogs worked out wonderfully, but in other cases the results were uneven. Because of the unreliability, dog trainers and veterinarians took over the responsibility of breeding all the dogs, ensuring complete control over the bloodlines and every aspect of puppy and young dog training. The science behind the breeding program at the RCMP is carefully monitored at all levels.
Innisfail is where a pup will meet his or her destiny. Few will succeed. Out of all the litters born, many of these purebred German shepherd dogs don’t have what it takes. The tests to become a police dog are challenging, and begin when the pups are just seven weeks old. Every new level presents another opportunity to fail.
Innisfail is also where cops who want to become police dog handlers come to meet their destiny. By the time these police officers make it to Innisfail, they have already proven both their dedication and their skill. Most of the time, dog handlers are cops who have already put in up to five or six years of voluntary, daily, unpaid training and dog care on top of their regular duties as police officers. They sign up to volunteer as quarries. They raise and imprint young police pups in their homes, passing them on to experienced handlers when the dogs are old enough to work. They do all this in hopes of one day being chosen to go to Innisfail themselves. Most of them never will. Many drop out along the way, as the demands of a police dog on top of life, family, and career become too much, or as they realize that there is no end to this work. There are no guarantees and no rewards but the work itself.
I will be meeting those who have made the cut. This remote training ground in Alberta is the place where the chosen few come to make their dreams a reality. By the end of it, with a little luck and months of hard work, they will earn the right to call themselves police dog handlers.
This is where it all happens. Tom and his wife Roxanne are based in Innisfail, Alberta, but live in Red Deer. As a police dog trainer, Tom spends months away from home, living out of a suitcase in a hotel. Over the years, he has worked with most every dog and handler in the country to make sure they remain capable, competent, and prepared to face whatever comes their way. Roxanne has worked for many years as a 911 dispatcher, so she’d understood better than most what Tom was signing up for when he went to work as a canine cop.
“That must have been nice for you, having your wife really get what your work was like,” I said.
“I tell you what, it could be a real pain in the ass,” says Tom, grinning. “If she was on call while I was out after a suspect, she’d be checking in on my radio every thirty seconds, requesting my location and coordinates, making sure I was safe.”
I laugh. That’s one way to keep track of your husband while he’s out facing unknown dangers: be his dispatcher. But in fact, the 911 dispatchers can easily be traumatized by what they hear when they are miles away and can’t do anything to help. I don’t envy Roxanne what she’s had to listen to over the years.
Tom continues: “Once you are on a track you don’t want to be talking on the radio. It’s like, ‘Leave us alone, let us get to work.’ You don’t want to be calling to update them. It’s just different when it’s your wife and she’s worried.”
“Do you think she called you more than others?”
“No, probably not, they worried about everybody, but it’s just you don’t need them to call all the time. You’re just trying to focus on the track.”
We head to Innisfail with a full truck—four new police dog recruits and their dogs. I try to prepare mentally for the long day ahead of me, but short of training for the Ironman, there’s no way to be ready. Luckily, I don’t know this at the time.
Once we arrive at the kennels, Tom puts me in the very capable hands of another police dog trainer, Eric Stebenne, for the week. Stebenne knows dogs like only a trainer can. He’s just the kind of guy you want leading your team, because he wants all his recruits to succeed, and he wants all his dogs to make it, too. He is friendly and patient with any cop who is going through challenges with his dog. Stebenne must be a good decade older than I am, but over the two weeks I spend in Innisfail, I get to know his back and shoulders better than his face, because it’s his back end I’m constantly following as I run after him.
These are the things I learn while out with the dog teams: no matter what kind of shape you are in, nothing prepares you for tracking. Running in hiking boots through uneven, boggy pasture, jumping from one clump of grass to another, is tough work. You may think toxic mosquito repellant should be banned until you’ve run through the clouds of mosquitoes in Alberta. After that, you will happily spray yourself until you gleam all over and green poison drips from your earlobes like shiny earrings.
I know the handlers work much harder than I do. They have to circle around for the scent, not taking any shortcuts, keeping up with their dogs the whole time (but, on the other hand, the dogs pull them along). They have to make the decision to crawl after their dogs under barbed wire fences, or to heave their dogs over the fences and then follow, but whatever their dog does, they must do too, or risk having their long lines become hopelessly, hazardously tangled. When they lose a scent, the team has to loop back, running concentrically growing circles until they find their trail again. At all times, handlers have to be reading their dogs’ behavior, trusting them, but also thinking ahead.
All I have to do is follow Stebenne’s backside, but this is almost more than I can do. My knee twinges in pain, the screws holding the bone together protesting long and loud, but I know one of the handlers, Kent MacInnis, is running with all kinds of hardware in his body. Kent MacInnis’s dog was killed, and he nearly died in a terrible car accident; he’s here to be matched with a new dog. I grit my teeth and push on.
After three tracks, though, I can barely stumble back to the truck, and I’m so far behind that I hear, rather than see, that moment where the dog finds the quarry and attacks, growling and barking. A fug of sweat and mosquito repellant drips down my face as I struggle to speak.
“I don’t know how you guys do it,” I gasp, leaning against the truck. One of the guys laughs and takes off his belt, containing gun, flashlight, radio, and a whole bunch of other gear. He straps it around my hips, and steps back. I can barely stand erect with the extra twenty-four pounds pulling me down. But I like the feeling of the harness cutting into my hips above my jeans.
What would I do with a Taser, a gun, and a heavy flashlight? I have no business wearing these things, but I like knowing what it feels like to carry this weight. It feels heavy, but good.
“Do you really run with all this? I guess I have to shut up now,” I say, and the guys laugh again.
We are out in stunning countryside, with an endless sky and fields and plains so open it feels like you could run forever. The long days pass in a blur. As I run along, I learn how to read police dogs’ body language, how to tell when a dog is aimlessly searching, and that sweet moment when he hits the scent and becomes totally focused. I learn how it feels to pee in a ditch in a landscape so flat there is no shelter, while six male cops pretend not to look in my direction. I learn how to keep going and keep going. I fall into bed at the end of every day dog tired.
At one point, I’ve stayed behind with a couple of guys while Stebenne and two other handlers lay a track. This involves planning a route that the quarry will take to really challenge the dogs, a route that crisscrosses roads and fences and ditches of still water. I’m happy to be sitting this one out. From far off I hear a sound like thunder. Dozens of horses gallop over a ridge, coming to see what we’re doing here. They run to the fence and I can’t help myself. I grew up with horses, love horses—I crawl under the barbed wire and try to meet them, holding new grass in my hands. But this herd of beauties is shy, or uninterested; they watch me but don’t let me get close enough to touch. The guys wait for me, good-natured, but I know I’m holding them up, following the horses. Reluctantly I crawl back under the fence again.
I spend some afternoons hanging out at the kennels. I am in the capable hands of the two Louises who are core staff, Louise Paquet and Louise Falk. The breeding program at Innisfail couldn’t operate without them. Physically, they couldn’t look more different. Louise Falk is a trim, even-featured young woman with a blond bob. Louise Paquet is a solid, comfortable older woman, well weathered and talkative. But both the Louises know dogs like nobody’s business. Both of them have dedicated their lives to raising and training police dogs.
It goes without saying that Louise Paquet loves dogs, but she lets me know it anyway. “My oldest boy found this mutt. We named him Jesus Murphy. I have Thea and Deenna at home, too. Deena belongs to the RCMP.”
Deena is one of the RCMP’s breeding mothers. Like the other mothers, she lives with families when she is not in the kennels with a new litter.
While I was in Alberta, I visited the rural home of John and Sue Charles, who have been providing a foster home for RCMP mother dogs since 2000. John and Sue are salt of the earth people, friendly and welcoming. They call themselves brood keepers. While the RCMP pays them to care for the mother dogs, they clearly consider it an honor. The dog I meet who lives with them, Dea, is a big, restless female. Dea remains in nearly constant motion for the duration of our visit. Sue tells me that she had Dea’s grandmother and Dea’s mother as well. As we talk, Dea runs laps around the property, patrolling but also running for the pure joy of it, bounding up to meet us and to greet her foster parents, then bounding away. I’m glad that Dea spends most of her life here with John and Sue, who obviously adore her, glad that she lives in a place where she has room to run.
The mothers like Dea are not pets, but neither are they police service dogs. They perform an essential service, though. Five days before a brood dog is due to whelp, she leaves her foster family and comes back into the kennels, where she stays under the watchful eye of the Louises and the other staff until the pups are weaned. It’s a tough job, especially if she has a big litter of twelve or thirteen pups. By the time a mother dog like Dea’s been on full-time puppy duty for six or eight weeks, she is more than ready to wean and go back to her foster family.
Louise tells me that she makes sure the mothers get their rest and recreation, even at the kennels, even with a new litter of puppies. Every day, she lets the mothers at the kennels out to run, under supervision. “Rain or shine, those dogs get to run,” she says.
As I follow Louise Paquet through the kennels, some of the brood mothers stand outside, leaving their pups in the brood boxes in which they were whelped. I watch the mothers sniff the spring air, basking in the thin May sunshine for a few moments, before they return with a sigh to their whimpering puppies. I feel for these long-suffering bitches; who wouldn’t be ready to wean, to get out of the kennel and back to the farms and their foster families, especially when part of your duty as den mother includes licking bottoms so the little ones defecate in your mouth, not in the den?
It’s a big job the Louises have. Along with the other kennel staff, they do the early socializing of every litter of puppies and take care of all the adult dogs as well. The puppies start their training on their first day of life, when the kennel staff begin getting them used to human touch. They are each marked with a dab of nail polish on their rumps or their necks to identify their gender.
At fifteen days, the pups are started on a socialization regimen that involves removing them from the nest and getting the pads of their little paws used to feeling a variety of surfaces underfoot. Every dog’s features are distinct, if you look closely enough and get to know them well enough. Still, with the limited contact I have, it is almost impossible for me to keep track of them or tell the dogs apart.
When I walk the rows of kennels where the dogs are caged, they run to the fence, barking furiously, jumping on the wire that separates us. They scratch and whine, begging to be released, to go out and do something, anything. Their kennels are two little rooms with bare cement floors, open to the outside, easy to hose down and clean, but neither cozy nor stimulating. It is here, when the dogs are housed between assignments, that I pity them the most. No animal wants to live like that. I wish they didn’t have to. But these animals are not pets; they are soldiers. They live in barracks as devoid of color or comfort as any army post.
By some whim of fate, we each are born into our stations in life, and dogs are no exception. Helpless puppies may be born in a trash heap in Guatemala, or a breeder’s pen in Palo Alto. They may roam the streets of Taipei, dying an early death of rabies, or follow a homeless man through Brooklyn as he pushes his shopping cart to the doorway they’ll share for the night, an outlaw pack of two. They may be kept in the purse of a movie star in Beverly Hills, or become the playmate for an autistic boy. The odds are likely that most dogs in this beautiful, broken world will have a rough go of it. Even in developed countries, one trip to a shelter, where rows of dogs await possible adoption or probable death, is enough to break your heart.
In comparison, police dogs have enviable lives. Dogs as intelligent as these thrive with a job to do. They follow tracks and search for suspects with skill and zest. They take their responsibilities seriously. These dogs have the good luck to be out on the road with their handlers most of the time, unlike the average dog, who spends hours alone in an empty house while his owners are working.
But none of this reconciles me to the rows of mournful canines at the kennels in Innisfail. These dogs bide their time, waiting to be released. It’s hard for me to walk down these smelly aisles of dogs, each of them barking deafeningly, scrabbling with desperate paws at the wire mesh separating us, begging with whimpers and cocked ears to be set free. A few of the dogs lunge aggressively, growling and barking, but most of them approach pleadingly, looking at me with their dark, soulful eyes, hoping that I might be the one with the key who will let them out.
Luckily, dogs don’t spend long at the kennels. They are a holding station, not a place where dogs live long-term. Police dogs might go to the kennels while their handlers are recovering from an injury, or while they are waiting to be rematched with a new handler. But the work these dogs do is valuable, and they are in demand. Most of the police dog handlers go to great lengths to avoid leaving their dogs at the kennels. They like to keep their animals close. They are so connected, so used to each other’s company, that it feels strange for a handler to be without his trusty sidekick. And, even though the dogs are turned out daily and have access to runs, there is nobody training them. It doesn’t take long for a police dog to become rusty. Handlers work so hard to make their dogs successful police dogs. Any setback to this routine is something they avoid. Vacations with a police dog handler tend to be camping trips out in the bush where the dogs can come along. Anyone who marries into a police dog family knows, or quickly learns, that it’s a package deal: the bonus is the big German shepherd who will be part of the family until the day he dies.
The kennels are built so that they can be cleaned and each dog fed without having to make contact, but staff still have to move dogs around and exercise them. I wonder what you are supposed to do if a dog goes after you. I know how unlikely this would be, but once I imagine it, I can’t get the scenario out of my head.
“Louise, what should I do if a dog is trying to attack me?”
“Turn and walk away,” she says, without missing a beat. “Cross your arms over your chest, or put your hands in your pockets and do a one-eighty. And you have to look at your dog. Nine times out of ten, if it’s regarding the dogs I know and work with, it’s just bad manners. If he’s right in your face, barking, that’s fear. If it’s aggression, he’ll go right after you, just run for you—you won’t see it coming.”
I shiver, thinking of ride-alongs I’ve done with Cade at night, his black form disappearing into the blackness around me. I can never see him, except for a gleam from the moon or streetlights that illuminates his eyes. I can hear him, though—or rather, I feel him as he rushes me. If I didn’t trust Moores to handle Cade, I would be down on the ground, begging for mercy every time. I know Cade is not a vicious dog by nature. Edgy, yes, but not vicious. I also know with every step of my still-aching knee and shoulder the kind of damage he can do, that any of these dogs could do. It’s taken me months of physio just to get back to where I was before Cade’s attacks.
“More dangerous are the fear biters,” Louise continues, “because it’s unpredictable how they’ll react.”
I can’t imagine walking away, hands in my pockets, with a dog savaging my body, ripping into my flesh; I can’t imagine not breaking into a screaming run. I file Louise’s advice in the big box of things I hope I’ll never be tested on.
“Come see the puppies,” she says, taking me to the nursery. We scrub up like surgeons, and I promise not to touch any of the babies. It’s a hard promise to keep. They are asleep, of course, squished against each other, squeaking. Every now and then one crawls away from his siblings, searching blindly for his mother and for milk. Pups in the first litter I see still have their eyes sealed shut, but the next is full of babies with storm-blue eyes. They look at me, unfocused and solemn, before cuddling back to sleep.
Louise Paquet passes me off to Louise Falk, who is doing a puppy demonstration for a TV show. Louise Falk comes running out of the kennels, wearing a dark uniform and a bright big smile. She is followed by six black and brown tumble-bumble puppies, trotting hot on her heels.
Louise Falk runs fast enough that the pups have to really hustle to keep up with her. They follow her into the puppy-training arena, where she leads them through the gate and shuts it behind her. Already, at only seven weeks old, the pups know how to follow her through various obstacles. That doesn’t mean they are happy about working. As soon as they are separated from Louise by the wire fence, they start a series of sharp, whining protests that don’t let up. She leads them around the ring from the outside, and they follow eagerly through the obstacles. Even though they are still babies, tripping over their big paws, they work a puppy course that is a replica of what the big dogs must master, complete with tunnels and steps, mazes and bridges and wobbly balance boards.
The pups do very well, protesting all the while—Yip, yip, yip! Yip, yip, yip!—but then one little fellow goes into a maze and can’t find his way out. He goes ballistic, yodeling and yipping, as the other pups whimper encouragement and dread, running after Louise but looking over their shoulders at their slow sibling. Louise gives him a minute to figure it out. When he doesn’t, she circles her whole pack back and guides the lost pup back to the pack. He quiets at once. When she’s done, she enters the arena and praises the puppies for a job well done.
At Innisfail, I also get to see the puppies tested. I am one of very few civilians ever permitted to witness the first test that the puppies must take. The handlers warn me beforehand not to interfere in any way. There are four trainers to administer the test. One handles the pups, and three observe and score. These tests are critical in determining whether these roly-poly pups will become someone’s pet or elite members of the police dog force.
The first test the pups take is at seven weeks. This litter is a distinct group of six fuzzy puppies, some brown with black markings, and some solid black, all of them rotund, bumbling, driven to explore.
First, each pup is separated from its siblings and brought in a crate to the entrance of a strange room. Will they enter the room boldly, or will they hang back, fearful and whimpering? The first pup on deck is a black female, strong and solid on her oversize paws. She trots into the room, curious but unafraid. Already, she moves like a winner.
“Look at her ears and tail,” says one of the trainers. “The ears and tail are the barometer for a dog’s emotions.”
I look. This girl’s ears are perked, her tail up, alert, wagging—she frisks around, tugging at the kennel attendant’s trouser leg. I would love to hold out a hand, to pet her, but this test is serious business. I put my hands behind my back, just to keep them out of petting range.
The first pup passes the next round of tests beautifully. At this point in her life, she has no name, just a number she was assigned at birth. All puppies are given a number for tracking. They will receive a regimental number later on, if they pass and become police dogs. The regimental numbers are like an officer’s badge number, and those stay with the dogs for their working career. They will also be given names, of course. Twelve of the pups born this year will be named through the national Name the Puppy contest, where school children in Canada send in names that are then selected for the new police dogs. Other pups receive names directly from the kennel staff.
The next test is to see again how this first puppy responds to stress. The handler picks her up and holds her off the ground, making no eye contact with her. Does she struggle, or does she submit? The RCMP wants a dog that is not submissive, and this little girl struggles valiantly, paws churning the air as she fights for purchase. Next she is flipped on her back and held down for thirty seconds. Again, the test is whether she will fight to regain her footing, or just give up.
This girl’s a fighter. She scrabbles and whines and licks the trainer’s hand frantically, not giving up for the whole thirty seconds. When the pup is released, she’s scored on how quickly she recovers. Will she sulk or avoid the handler, which would indicate a loner personality, one that is hard to train? Or will she return to the man that pinned her, tail wagging, jumping on him, showing she’s not cowed, that she’s ready to rumble?
Immediately, this puppy jumps right up, shakes herself off, and trots over to the trainer for more. She licks his hand and jumps on his arm. She’s clearly recovered and ready to interact again; although she didn’t appreciate being pinned, she doesn’t hold a grudge. “Let’s go!” she seems to be saying. “What’s next?”
The tests continue: the trainer blows up a paper bag and pops it, testing the pup’s fear response to unexpected loud noises. She looks up, but doesn’t lose her cool, and when he crumples the bag and throws it, she follows and fetches. This is an important skill for a future police dog, perhaps the most important skill of all. How a dog fetches and chases, how much hunting drive she has, is the best barometer of how she will do as a tracking animal, and police dogs at the RCMP are prized above all for their ability to track.
The puppy has to chase a rope on a stick. The test measures how long she will pursue the rope. How fiercely will she shake her head and fight when she gets it? Does she give up easily when she can’t get what she wants? Not this pup. Once again she passes with flying colors. Her drive is intense and relentless. She’s only seven weeks old, but she has every sign of becoming a police dog.
“Females tend to score better at first,” the trainer tells me. “They mature faster and test better, but then around adolescence that advantage drops off.”
This echoes what other trainers have told me. While fewer female dogs make the cut, those that do are exceptionally good.
Out of the six pups, two pass with flying colors, and two pass with reservations, while the final two don’t make the cut at all. This just doesn’t seem fair. How can one test at seven weeks determine their whole future?
Whether I like it or not, though, these tests have proven remarkably accurate in predicting which pups will become successful police dogs. The pups that don’t pass will quickly be adopted by members of the public; there is a waiting list for every single one of these talented puppies, even those who aren’t quite up to being police dogs. Those puppies that do pass will soon be sent to live and work with police officers across Canada who have taken the puppy training course, and who want to become police dog handlers. These police officers prove their dedication by volunteering to raise, train, and love these puppies for a year. After that, they have to say good-bye and send the pups back to Innisfail to be matched with their new handlers. It is a lot of work and sometimes a lot of heartache for the volunteer puppy handlers, who have to practice loving and letting go.
Tom coaches me about what goes into the art of matching a specific dog to an individual handler. “It is of the utmost importance that the dog and handler like each other,” he says. Trainers like Tom Smith and Eric Stebenne try to match canine and human personalities, and avoid putting a very dominant dog in the care of a soft handler, or vice versa. If a trainer identifies a team that is not bonding, they can be rematched during their time at Innisfail. A solid bond is the essential base upon which everything else is built.
* * *
My week is done. I’m eager to go home to my comfortable life, eager to see my family. I’ve had too many meals at the Red Deer Buffet, all you can eat Chinese and Western food, and I’m ready to get back to Vancouver. But I’m sad to be leaving, sad I won’t get to follow the teams for their entire training period. As Tom drives me to the bus station in Red Deer, I write notes madly, trying to get every detail I can about the training program. “How many handlers drop out once they get to Innisfail?” I ask.
“Not many drop out. It’s rare. Those who leave usually have been injured during training. But we’ve had guys complete the course on a sprained ankle or a stress fracture. They just grit their teeth and pull through, because the alternative is coming back a year from now,” says Tom. “The course takes approximately eighty-five days, so that’s a setback they will avoid.”
Eighty-five days of living in a hotel. Eighty-five days away from home and family. Eighty-five days in pursuit of a dream. Whether dogs are raised in Washington State by trainers like Suzanne Eviston of Von Grunheide Shepherds, in Indiana at Vohne Liche Kennels, or in Alberta at Innisfail by the Louises and Eric Stebenne and Tom Smith, they will have a similar start in life. Most of the processes and much of the philosophy behind shaping a puppy into a police dog are similar. Whether they are called Police Dog Services members, as they are in the RCMP, or K9 teams, as they are in most of the USA, they are part of a network that transcends borders. (Interestingly, the abbreviation K9 has been used since at least 1876 in London, though it was popularized by Secretary of War Robert Patterson during WWII.1) Working dogs tend to move all over North America, and sometimes across the world, with dogs born in Germany, Poland, or Canada ending up in law enforcement in the U.S. or Paris. Passports don’t matter to a police dog. Raising and training these dogs is both a science and an art, a dance between animal instinct, human intelligence, and the bond between humans and canines. Innisfail gives me that solid base of understanding that informs every future interaction I will have with police dogs.
* * *
The young dogs and recruits at Innisfail are the chosen few. But before they ever are selected, potential dog handlers for the RCMP must prove their dedication and drive through volunteering for years as puppy trainers. Constable Nathalie Cuvele is one of those volunteers. With dark brown hair, serious eyes, and just the hint of a French accent, Nathalie embodies a quiet confidence. She lives on Vancouver Island with her wife, Michelle, and their baby daughter, and is raising police dog in training Eryx. Although Constable Cuvele is a police officer, she is not yet a dog handler. That’s the dream, and she pursues it single-mindedly. She knows it will take time to make this dream a reality, and she is willing to give it all the time it takes.
Constable Nathalie Cuvele and Eryx in training. (Rachel Rose)
When Nathalie was a little girl, there were always police dogs in the yard; her father, Corporal Didier Cuvele, was a police dog handler. Nathalie’s goal is to follow in her father’s footsteps and be a police dog handler herself. At almost a year old, young Eryx has passed every test so far, but he’s not a police dog. Both dog and officer have many hurdles to pass before they can claim their respective titles.
It’s mid-winter when I take the ferry to Vancouver Island. I drive from Victoria to Nanaimo across a twisting highway. The cliffs on the side of the road are shot through with frozen waterfalls. At the hotel, I check in, fortify myself with black coffee, and stuff a chocolate bar in my bag. At eight o’clock, Nathalie calls me to tell me she is waiting outside. I don’t know what the heavily pregnant desk attendant thinks when I smile, wave good-bye, and step into a full-sized police van, but I hope she notices that I am going willingly.
Nat drives me back to the Nanaimo detachment, where I sign a waiver saying I’ll behave myself, and identify my next of kin in case I get killed that night. I look up hesitantly, my pen hovering over that section, thinking of the kids at home, brushing their teeth. Nat sees my hesitation and smiles warmly. “Don’t worry, Rachel, I won’t let anything happen to you,” she says, holding my eyes.
I sign and head for the washroom, through the women’s lockers. One wall is covered by female police officers’ heavy black boots. Taped on many of the lockers are the photos of their babies and children, watching over Nathalie’s mothers, as they go about their duties. The contrast is striking: combat boots and laughing babies. I see two different pictures of Nathalie’s daughter, one on Nathalie’s locker and one on her wife Michelle’s. Michelle is also a police officer, but she has no intention of going into the dog section. They have arranged their work so that their daughter doesn’t need to go to daycare, so that one of them can always be with her. No matter how tired they may be after a night shift, they are there for her.
I will never know what it feels like to be up all day with my baby and then up all night on the road with my dog, wearing the uniform and the badge, cruising around looking to prevent trouble and keep the peace. I’ve been tired as a mother before, but that must be a whole different level of exhausted.
Nathalie shows me what she carries on her belt. I’ve never closely examined a Taser before.
“You get Tasered, don’t you, as part of training?”
“Yes. And it hurts.”
I had just recently learned that police recruits often get Tasered on their initial RCMP training course in Canada. Although it was optional, Nathalie took it upon herself to get Tasered during her training. I don’t think I would have. I’ve been shocked by enough electric fences during my childhood that I have no desire to be Tasered.
We step outside and get Eryx from Nathalie’s truck. He leaps around in the cold, clear night, frisky and full of energy, but when Nat opens the van he hops easily into his kennel in the back. Eryx is nearly full size, but still a puppy at heart. When he came to Nat at eight weeks old, he cried for two nights solid in his outdoor kennel. He wanted to come in and curl up by the fire with their family dog. But Eryx is not a pet. He is a police dog in training, and standard training policy for RCMP police dogs is that they sleep in kennels when they aren’t working. If he passes, he won’t be curling up by the fire until his working days are through, in another decade or so.
I peer into the van. There are two holding compartments in the back, both of which have reinforced steel seats. I climb in shotgun and Nathalie takes the van out on the road. We circle the town. The hills are bright with a thin layer of snow. A call comes in from the dispatcher about a man who had taken speed the night before. “He’s concerned now,” says dispatch. “He says, ‘Poison is coming out the end of my fingers!’ That’s what he says.” Another patrol takes the call, with an ambulance in attendance, but we mosey on by to check all is well.
“This is a building known to police,” Nathalie tells me. “We get lots of calls here.”
I see a couple of officers heading to the waiting ambulance, but even though I want to, I do not see the man or his poison-leaking fingers.
Our next stop, I’m relieved to find out, will be Starbucks. “Please, let me buy you a coffee,” I say. But at the window, when I hand over my twenty dollars, the cashier says, “Oh my goodness, I almost forgot, the person in front of you paid for your drinks.”
Wow, I think. I wonder if this happens often.
“Only the second time in seven years this has happened to me,” says Nathalie, as if she’s been reading my mind. We sip our coffees in silence as she drives. I don’t know how she can read the computer that is bolted on the dash between her seat and mine, listen to the dispatcher, and steer a full-sized van over icy roads while typing in license plates and drinking coffee. But she does it all effortlessly.
We drive slowly down the street, and a tall, thin female wearing a very short skirt, very high heels, and bare legs despite the icy night, gestures for Nathalie to pull over. She pulls the van to the curb, rolls down the window and asks, “Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” says the woman, as she stumbles toward the van through the snow. She puts her hand in the window, in my space. She must be freezing. It’s clear she’s not fine.
“Do you have a card or anything?” asks the woman. “In case I need help?”
Nathalie hands her one. “There’s my number, right there,” she says. “Thank you, thank you so much,” says the woman, and Nathalie smiles.
We drive out to an elementary school and let Eryx run. As soon as we hit the frozen ground, he has his nose in Nathalie’s pocket, rooting for his favorite orange ball.
“This one knows how to unzip my pocket to get what he wants,” Nathalie tells me. Nat throws the ball about ten times farther than I’ve ever thrown anything in my life. Eryx runs full tilt into the darkness to retrieve it. He streaks up the hill toward the dark trees like a joyful wolf. The parking lot shimmers, the street lights illuminating its crust of snow. I’m shivering and happy.
The next day, I visit Michelle and Nathalie at their house to see where Eryx lives. He has a big kennel in the back, with a cozy doghouse lined with straw for him to sleep in. Eryx barks when I arrive, but settles down right away. I come in for coffee while their daughter naps.
“All my time raising Eryx is volunteer time,” says Nathalie. “I don’t get paid. For me, it’s play time, not even work—I go outside, I just have fun. I love the outdoors and I love animals. My status now is as a quarry with the police dog section. I started as a quarry in 2010. I approached the handlers. I said, ‘I’m interested, and I would like my career to go toward dogs.’ I did two years of volunteering with the handlers. In April I went through the puppy course. I got Ev, my first puppy, in May. We have to do at least twenty-four months with a puppy in the yard. Ev didn’t make the program. She was kicked out early. I knew she didn’t have what it takes. She was sold as a pet.
“Now every Wednesday I help the police service dogs train. I lay tracks for them. I put a scenario in place. Maybe a home invasion, I’m the bad guy. I reenact that I left in that direction. Half an hour prior, I start. It’s a planned track, maybe I run through town for two or three kilometers. Then the dog comes and sniffs out the track, sniffs out the human scent. The dog will eventually find me, then there’s a bite at the end.”
“I don’t know how she does it,” says Michelle, joining the conversation. “Sometimes I call Nat and she’s out hiding. She says, ‘I can’t talk for long, the dog is going to be here in a few minutes.’ She’s so calm!”
It’s definitely not a situation where I would be calm, crouched in a ditch somewhere, waiting for a dog to find me, attack me and shake the stuffing out of me. But the police dog handlers I know have a different relationship with adrenaline than I do.
“As a quarry, you’re probably going to get bit once for real,” says Nat. “For me it’s just adrenaline. It just takes that type of personality to go out there and hide and be a big chew toy. I think it’s the best job in the RCMP. There’s a big board in Alberta somewhere with all the names of the quarries across Canada. I’m now at the bottom. Slowly you’ll creep up the list, and you’ll eventually get picked. It can take four years, seven years. There’s no magic number.”
“How about Eryx? How long will he be with you?”
“You never know when he gets called. To know I’ve raised him from eight weeks to where he’s out fighting crime on the streets, I’ll be proud. I grew up as a kid from very young having huge police dogs in the yard. To me they were never scary. I knew what the dog did, what the dog’s responsibilities were. As a teenager I put on the arm”—the protective arm pad made of jute—“and my dad set the dog on me. I was part of it all. I’ve always admired my dad for doing that job. To me, my dad was the coolest guy around. I’d go out with him, put out some tracks, it was just the coolest feeling.”
* * *
“My older brother is a paramedic and a firefighter. Mum was a stay-at-home mum, we got to have her all those years. Then she was a teacher for special-needs kids when we went to school.”
“How did you decide to go into the RCMP?”
“The summer I was graduating from university, I was in Idaho, doing my whitewater program”—for river guides. “I thought, I’m just going to put my name in and see what happens. I was having fun in school. Dad was in the RCMP, his career was great, so I thought, I’ll just see. In 2006, I got the call saying ‘Okay, you’re going to Depot.’”
Depot Division is where all the RCMP cadets go to become police officers.
“I spent six months in Regina with thirty-two other people. Until you do it, you have no idea. I played competitive hockey. All my life I’ve played structured team sports. Depot was very structured. They get you ready for the streets. You learn to march. You learn everything from firearms to basic file work to discipline to commitment, ground fighting to boxing. You learn to drive emergency vehicles. I learned how to push myself. Sometimes you think, ‘this is my limit!’ but really it’s not. Depot pushes you almost to your extreme, because if I’m in the middle of an alley fighting someone twice my size who is drunk or high, I want to know that I can keep going, and that I’m coming home at the end of the night.”
“So what’s a typical day for you with Eryx?”
“Usually around six thirty, I get him out, run him for a good twenty minutes. He just plays, that’s his fun time, and he does his business. I throw the ball and play tug-of-war with him. Then we do some stress-free exercise in the airport, jumping on chairs and counters, getting him comfortable. I also do alley walks on a twenty-foot-long leash, past cats and other dogs. You want the dog to get familiarized so he’ll just blow by smells. I walk him through with a ball and toy and just make it fun.”
“How would you describe Eryx, personality-wise?”
“Eryx, he’s independent. He’s like, ‘You’re cool, but I’ve got better things to do.’ He’s not focused just on people. You can definitely tell how smart they are at a very young age. They know more than you think, and they are capable of more than you think. He’s still young, but learning very quickly.”
Eryx is not a big dog, and he’s kind of skinny. If he doesn’t start gaining mass, he’s at risk of being cut from the program. Nathalie has spent a lot of time researching how best to help him put on some muscle.
“I’m feeding him three times a day so he can catch up a little bit. Feeding these dogs is a science in itself.”
“What do you think people don’t understand about police dogs?”
“A lot of people ask how we train the dogs, if we use a lot of discipline, a lot of force. When I took the puppy course, everything was built around love. If you love your dog and your dog loves you, they’ll do pretty much anything for you. People worry, ‘Oh, are you sure the dog’s happy?’ They get a whole lot of care from us, and they learn. It’s so different from raising a pet: you don’t want to be overpowering a police dog. It’s a balance: they have to be Alpha. Your dog is your partner for life. If someone’s going to save you, it’s going to be your dog. You’re usually ten to fifteen feet behind your dog, who is running after somebody dangerous. He’s going to do whatever it takes to save you. He’s gotta know you’ve got his back, too—that you feed him and love him, that you are there for him.”
The last time I see Eryx is on a wintery day. Again, I take the ferry from the mainland and drive to Nanaimo. There is a dusting of snow, and it’s very, very cold. Nathalie and Michelle meet me at the small Nanaimo airport where they train Eryx. Michelle is carrying their bundled-up baby daughter in a sling. Retired police dog handler Corporal Didier Cuvele, Nathalie’s father, is there as well.
While Didier’s wife and Nathalie’s wife stand near the van, talking and keeping the little one warm, Nathalie and Didier run Eryx through his paces. Again and again, Didier challenges Eryx, lunging toward him, shouting and waving his arms at the young dog. Again and again, Nat sends Eryx in for the attack. Although he’s young, and not yet full grown, Eryx is still intimidating. I stand close to Nat, hoping that Eryx will know which of us to attack when she gives the command. When Eryx catapults himself across the frozen field, I repress the urge to point at Didier and shout, “Not me! Him! Get him!” But I don’t need to bother. Eryx is completely focused on the corporal. I might as well be invisible. Even with the wind blowing the snow around, I can hear the solid impact of Eryx’s body striking Didier. I notice with some relief that he lets go immediately when Nat commands him to.
Nat is an attentive, thorough trainer. As Eryx does his attack scenarios, the cold sinks into my bones. It is a relief when training is moved into the warm airport. This is one of Nat’s regular training grounds, a place where Eryx can get used to working with different challenges. A police dog must be able to address any environment, whether it’s searching an airport locker or navigating slippery counters.
Eryx responds well to everything Nathalie asks him to do, except jumping up and climbing onto bathroom counters. It’s comical to see him scrabbling all over the slippery counters, like a dog on ice. Nat praises him for overcoming his fears, takes him away to do something easier, and then brings him back to the dreaded bathroom counters again. Nat asks a lot of this young dog, and Eryx is willing to give it.
Even though I only visit a few times, I get to know Eryx and Nathalie and her family pretty well. Nathalie’s parents seem to live at a different energy level than most people. Although they are retired, they are about to leave on a six-month backpacking trip through India. The rest of the time, they live on a boat, fishing, sailing up and down the coast, and generally grabbing life and shaking it like a bear shakes a salmon. When Didier retired, it was only so the full-time adventures could begin.
“There was never a gender role with my parents,” Nathalie tells me. “How we were brought up was, ‘you are brother and sister, now go do what you want to do.’ We were always outdoors. My brother got a fishing rod and I got one too. It was never I got a butterfly net.”
It is a bittersweet day for Nathalie. Eryx, the dog she’d had since he was only eight weeks old, is leaving soon to be matched with his new handler. He’s put on the weight and growth he needs and he’s working well in all that will be required of him as a police dog—even dealing with slippery counters. “On the one hand, I’m happy, because this is what it’s all about for him, this is what we’ve been working toward, and on the other, I know it’s going to leave a hole.” It is even harder because just the week before she’d been told Eryx would probably be with her until the spring. But then a handler needed a new dog, and Eryx was that dog. It’s hard, the loving and letting go.
“He’s doing really well in his training. There’s nothing holding him back,” she says. “His tracking abilities are very good, he does really, really well in that. His aggression is not a weak spot, but there’s a few quirks that need to be worked out.”
I am glad to be there on what is supposed to be the last day Eryx will ever train with Nathalie. He does a great job. First he runs some trails, trying to find a scent he’s been told to follow. He crosses the bare pavement, losing the scent briefly, but picking it up again. All around us, the wind lifts little sparkling puffs of snow. We are all focused on Eryx, and Eryx is entirely focused on his task. “If he sticks close around,” says Nat, “I’ll see him again, but if he’s shipped off to Nova Scotia, who knows? You’re just preparing yourself for letting go: seeing him leave and me getting another one just brings me closer to my goal of having my own, and it’s heartbreaking but good at the same time.”
Nat has only a little more time with the dog she loves. I learn that he will go back to Innisfail, to be matched with a new recruit. As the months go by, Eryx will become a police dog, passing all his levels. Nathalie and Michelle will have another baby, a little boy. She will bring home a new little police dog puppy, Hemi. And with Michelle’s support, Nat will submit her name once again and follow her dream—to go to Innisfail for eighty-five days, leaving her family behind so she can immerse herself in the world of dog training. There is no doubt in my mind that Nathalie’s unwavering drive and determination will pay off. She’s been around police dogs all her life, and done a great job raising Eryx from a fuzzy puppy into a successful police dog. It’s only a matter of time before Nathalie Cuvele will become a police dog handler, with a dog of her own.
Copyright © 2017 by Rachel Rose
