Best friends, best tools

Police dogs train

hard, perform

incredible tasks

BY SCOTT FUSARO

Citizen Staff

Hunter, a 20-month old black sable German shepherd, stuck his nose in empty chairs, under tables and behind stereo speakers before calmly and quietly sitting on his haunches, signaling his find.

Seconds later his powerful jaws clamped happily down on a little blue ball with which his handler, Key West police officer Gary Celcer, rewarded him for finding the black powder, commonly used in explosives, that was planted behind the speakers.

In the ensuing minutes, Hunter would find fuses and more black powder hidden in a potted plant and in a locker. His nose is trained to ferret out six different explosive chemicals with nearly 20,000 possible combinations, said Celcer.

Despite the finds, there was no cause for concern; the exercise was part of the training that Hunter and his canine colleagues in the Key West Police Department undergo every Wednesday night with their human handlers to keep their senses sharp.

Hunter is the only bomb-sniffing dog in the department, usually working port facilities, but the canine corps is filled out by drug-sniffers Daxo, Wind, Trapper — all German Shepherds — and the black Labrador retriever Balou. They all work for positive reinforcement, a brief moment to play with a bite-sized ball and a firm pat on the side from their handler that follows when they locate their quarry.

"Training's a way to keep them fine tuned," said Raul Hernandez, a former Monroe County Sheriff's Office canine handler and a Florida Department of Law Enforcement-certified canine trainer, as he set up scenarios for Hunter, Wind and Daxo on Wednesday.

Inside a cramped shed at the Key West Golf Course, surrounded by darkened fairways and sinister shadows cast by the imposing vegetation, bags of golf clubs lined shelves, boxes were stacked on the floor, and a fan blew.

"It's in that room. There's a fan for distraction. We are going to try it anyway," Hernandez told Officer Keith Rendueles, who was being pulled into the shed by Daxo.

The fan swirled the air, tangling the strings of scent riding the invisible currents, but moments later, Daxo had disfigured a cardboard box in which drugs had been placed for the exercise.

Daxo, Wind and Hunter all came from breeders in Europe, renowned for their skill in raising and training police dogs, a process that starts almost from the pup's birth. The early training hones their natural instinct to hunt, said Hernandez, and they also must develop athletic abilities like leaping and biting in addition to maintaining good poise and discipline despite distractions.

Those skills are further fine-tuned to adapt the dogs to their particular craft, whether searching for explosives or drugs, but said Wind's handler Officer Sean Brandenburg, addressing a common myth, the dogs are never given drugs to acquaint themselves with the substances.

"They just want to play with the officer so bad, they know if they find the drugs, they'll get to play," he said of their simple motivation.

It is a reciprocal bond.

"I get a little connected to my pets," said Brandenburg, whose right shoulder is tattooed with an image of a departed pet, his male Rottweiler Gunner.

In addition to the responsibility of caring for their partners, the dog-handlers are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whenever the services of their partners might be needed, but that does not deter them.

"I'm with that dog more than I'm with my girlfriend," said Rendueles, adding, "There's no way if you didn't love it that you could do it."

Before the training session ended Wednesday, the canines were put through one more drill meant to sharpen a different skill. EZ Mendieta, who works with Hernandez training the dogs, slipped his arm inside an enormous cast. In turn, each dog laid on the ground at his handler's feet until the officer uttered the command — a single foreign word specific to each dog who bounded across the lawn and thudded into Mendieta, attaching the powerful jaws to the cast until another simple command from the handler suddenly turned the dog docile again.

"To be a canine officer, you have to have the most respect from everybody else," said Hernandez. "

you have an incredible weapon you have to know how to use."