The Dad Bods and Dumbbells Podcast
The hosts Mitch and Bart discuss fitness, fatherhood, and guy stuff to help men live a great life, have fun, laugh, and get a little more fit in this weekly Podcast.
The Dad Bods and Dumbbells Podcast
Fun bonus Pod: Policy Dog Stories with Bart and Retired Cop Pat O’Conner
Patrick O'Connor shares his experiences working with police dogs in the Austin Police Department's canine division, revealing the deep bonds formed with his partners Tex and Murph and the life-saving work they performed together.
• Police dogs work primarily as locating tools with extraordinary scent capabilities that function at parts per billion
• German Shepherds, Malinois, and Dutch Shepherds are selected for their drive, intelligence, and physical abilities
• Handler-dog bonds take 1-3 months to establish with the relationship growing stronger over years of partnership
• Police dogs can reach speeds of 30-35 mph and are often more effective than technology at finding suspects
• The dogs serve as powerful negotiation tools with 97% of arrests occurring without physical engagement
• Dogs undergo extensive training to work in diverse environments and maintain calm during gunfire and chaotic situations
• Retirement is an emotional transition as dogs move from active service to family pets
• The bomb detection unit uses different breeds like Labradors and Spaniels for their specialized capabilities
To Learn more about GLP-1s and Set Up a TeleMed Call with Solutions RX, use this link:
https://solutionsrxaustin.com/solutionsrxaustin-dadbods-and-dumbells
To Learn more about James and Mona De Lacey's Strength Programs, visit:
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Follow Bart: http://instagram.com/bartonguybryan
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Visit Mitch's website: http://Bigboysruntoo.com
Visit Barton's Training Website: http://teambryanwellness.com
you're listening to the mindset forge podcast and I'm barton brian, your host. Now I'm about to turn 49 and so I'm very aware of what this chapter of life we men are going through is all about. You know, there's just more fatigue, there's more aches and pains. We have to be more in control of our habits, our, our discipline, our health, our mindset, so that we can be the best versions of ourselves. So that's why this podcast exists, that's why Chapter 6 is all about it, and sometimes it's always good to get deep into specifics with an expert or someone who's in the field or an athlete, but other times it's just good to hear perspective, hear a story, hear from somebody who's probably doing a type of job that we haven't even thought about or or didn't even consider like what's that like?
Speaker 1:So this is a throwback episode with Patrick O'Connor. He's a friend of mine who lives in Austin, texas, and he's recently retired from the Austin Police Department. He was a canine cop and he worked with two amazing dogs. One's name is Tex, the other Murph. Murph still lives with them today. They're both retired and he's living his best life, working at Lifetime Fitness and living in Dripping Springs.
Speaker 1:So I'm throwing this episode back out there because I really loved his story. I learned so much from the podcast interview with him, the whole situation with canine cops and that whole division. I'm about to adopt a dog, which is also why it's on my mind. I'm super excited. My family and I are trying to adopt a rescue pup, a little spaniel mix, and so I've just been thinking about dogs and just this episode really resonated with me. I hope it does with you. If you've heard it already, give it another listen. If you haven't heard it yet, enjoy it. It's awesome. So, without further ado, patrick O'Connor, all right here with Patrick O'Connor man, it's so great to finally get you onto my podcast. This is fun because you and I we know each other from the gym, yeah, but you've been working for the apd canine division doing a lot of really cool stuff, but I think because of your job, it was like let's get retired, then let's talk stories exactly and and performance podcasts.
Speaker 1:I interview athletes and performing artists. You're you're an aspiring athlete.
Speaker 1:I would say you're definitely a strong athlete but the dog we're gonna, we're gonna talk a lot about tex and a lot about murph okay, the two dogs that really have been your partners in in this whole, uh, you know, apd canine division and all that, and so I'm just so excited to hear about you and murph and just the partnership with all that and how it works and really, and just something you know a lot of special things about Murph the dog and oh yeah, and specifically because he just retired a year ago too, right?
Speaker 2:correct. Actually Murph retired in. Let's see, I went to bomb squad in 2020, so March of 2020 I went to bomb squad. Murph retired and I was actually issued a third dog, leland. So Leland's a Labrador worked with him for two years. Of course, when I retired he was still too young he's only five so he went to another handler and I've seen him and the handler and they look like they're getting along great. That's fantastic. My old boss said that Leland went in and aced all his training day. One carried the handler. I was super stoked about that.
Speaker 2:So yeah clearly I'd done a couple things right with him, so stoked about that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, clearly I'd done a couple of things right with him, so well, hey, let's go back to talking about you pre canine division. So talk about your early days on the force, what you were focused on.
Speaker 2:And then how you got into canine. Uh, let's see, everybody starts on patrol. So you know you come out and back then you had to do a minimum of two years on patrol before you were eligible to go anywhere else. So, graduate the academy. The academy is roughly eight months. You come out, you ride with a training officer for about eight to 12 weeks and after that you're cut loose on your own. You're considered a senior officer. Once you hit the two-year mark You're still considered a rookie until you get two years. A lot of fun, of course. You know your classmates. You form a bond. Carry that with you.
Speaker 2:When I graduated the academy I was only. I was 6'2" and I was 170 pounds. So I decided I got thrown around in the academy quite a bit. So I was like, eh, I'm going to start working out. So that motivated me to start putting some mass on. And then over the years I got bigger and bigger, finally got up to around 245, and I figured it was time to start cutting back a little bit. But it was rookie. Years are formative. Have a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:And you moved to Austin when you were five, correct?
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1:So you've seen Austin and you're what. 40 40. I'll be 48 at the end of the year, so you and I are the same age, okay 47, so a lot of years on the force, a lot of time in Austin seeing a lot of changes in. Austin and being a you know APD, uh, you've seen Austin in a very unique light this entire time, right?
Speaker 2:Austin was always left to center, which made it super cool. The joke was that the cowboys smoked weed and the hippies shot shotguns and that's what kind of made it a neat melting pot of people. But I think over the years it's gotten a little farther left, but it's still a cool place to kick it and hang out and obviously we have people. I think roughly 180 people move here a day.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, that's always kind of an incredible number, you're like wait.
Speaker 2:How can that be?
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, so you're in the force. When does it come about that you're the opportunity to be in K-9? And why was that interesting to you?
Speaker 2:So K-9 happened around 2009. I was assigned to a MetroTac division, which is kind of like a group of guys that handles everything from vice to prostitution to drugs. We're a hotspot crew. It's roughly 15 to 20 guys and they ride around the city or in the area of the city. They're assigned to concentrating on that stuff and I did that for about two years. I was having fun, but I wasn't having a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:A buddy of mine that was on canine he and I were in high school together he approached me he'd been on canine for a few years at this point and said hey, you know, we've got an opening coming up, why don't you think about putting in? And I asked him to explain the job a little bit, what it entailed, and of course he knew that I was a dog. I've been a dog guy my whole life, so it was a natural transition. But when he explained the job to me and what, what it kind of encompassed, I was pretty fascinated. That they're taking a dog and they're using it to go find bad guys. Using the dog as a locating tool was really neat to me. So yeah, just kind of as a natural fit.
Speaker 1:yeah so talk about the just the world of canine, uh, being a canine cop and that relationship and just kind of big picture like explain some of the just the, the day-to-day stuff. The relationship with that, with tex, was your first dog tex is the first dog right and just and things that we wouldn't even know, as people that aren't in that situation.
Speaker 2:So you know. As far as the dogs go, of course you know, everybody knows that it's no great mystery that their nose is amazing. In fact, one of the first classes I went through they explained that of course we measure allergens in the air. The weatherman tells you all the time when mold's high. That's of course measured in ppm or parts per million. There right now the best they can figure out is the dog's nose works at parts per billion. So they are far more advanced than any machine that we have access to, um things that you know that most people would look at our dogs, of course and I'll back up a little bit and explain that canine is kind of a general term of Of course there's three basic disciplines in canine.
Speaker 2:You have apprehension, you have drug and then of course you have bomb. Right, and apprehension is just that we go out, we look for bad guys. You know, somebody crashes their car in the woods. They run. The patrol guys set up a perimeter around a wooded area and then we go in and we attempt to locate them using the dog. Some of the smaller departments they cross-train so they have, instead of single-purpose dogs, they have dual-purpose dogs, so you've got a dog that might be apprehension and bomb or apprehension and drug. Luckily, austin was big enough where we run single discipline, so my sole purpose was to locate people. Great job, I mean, I can't say enough. I mean, when you go over there you know you're a cop. Obviously you transfer into the canine division and then right away you're issued a dog and especially on the apprehension side, they explained to you right away that this dog is not bonded with you. This dog is trained to bite a human being.
Speaker 2:You know, the utmost care in kid gloves has to be, you know, used, so to speak. And it was that way with my dog right away. My dog had been given to me from another handler who washed out of the program. He didn't make the cut. He did some things with the dog that they got him into a little bit of trouble. The dog turned on him at one point and put 22 stitches in his left arm. So they are. You know, we use them 98% of the time as a locating tool. 2% of the time they're used as a weapon system. When they're used as a weapon system they're highly effective. Of course we don't like to do that. Another thing the public.
Speaker 1:So that's interesting. So explain that. I mean, I get kind of the slight vagueness to that, but they're a weapon in the sense that they're like bad guys running away, correct, and they are literally chasing them down, grabbing them and pulling them to the ground. Is that what we're talking?
Speaker 2:about Absolutely. So of course the dog is going to latch on to the bad guy. Um, we do. You know, our unit motto was warnings and reasonable restraint Anytime we could get a bad guy to surrender. That was always the goal. We want to absolutely take the guy into custody with minimal amount of damage necessary. Sure, of course, it doesn't always work out that way. Luckily, the dogs are great negotiators.
Speaker 2:I tell people all the time I said, dogs are very intuitive. They're like children. They know who good guys are and they know who bad guys are, almost instinctively. Um, I tell people all the time you would, you know, you get them in the woods. So a lot of times it was just me, the dog and the bad guy and the bad guys looking around trying to look for escape avenues, because that's just what they do. Um, and I would often try and tell him. I said, hey, listen. I said I know what's going through your mind right now. You're looking for a way out. I was like it really is behooved you to just lay on the ground, let me put handcuffs on you and everything's going to be okay. So if you attempt to run, I said, the only thing faster than him is light.
Speaker 1:So so I mean, give me an idea like how fast you know Murph texts like these are, these are, these are, uh, german shepherds, right?
Speaker 2:well, they're so. They're hybrid, so we have a mix of dogs on that branch. Inside we have most of them are shepherds, some type of shepherd um. We have german shepherd mixes that are mixed with malinois. We have purebred malinois. We have dutch shepherds um. Those are pretty much the three main ones, and why those three specifically for for people that for um.
Speaker 2:So german shepherds are great dogs but typically they're bigger than the malinois and, uh, they're a little more prone to hip dysplasia. Also in texas. They're a little bit lighter, the malinois a little bit lighter. He's able to endure the heat a little bit better. Shepherds are typically longer coat, malinois have a shorter coat got you, so some, some environmental factors environmental factors.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, you know the Malinois. People often ask me to explain the difference in a nutshell between a shepherd and a Malinois. I tell people all the time if you have odor pouring out of a hole in your ceiling, a German shepherd will come into that room. He'll run the room several times. Odor typically stacks in corners, so he'll go to the corners, he'll check it out and then he'll get on his hind feet and he'll attempt to get his nose as close to that odor source as he can. A Malinois come into the room. He'll run the room the same way. He'll put his nose up to the to the hole, the same way the shepherd did. But then the Malinois will attempt to run up the side of the wall and get into the hole over and over again, probably until he dies.
Speaker 2:The. The drive that a Malinois has is it's like no other dog is all I can say. I mean there's, there's a reason they're used in in. You know the military there. You know law enforcement, first responder positions. Uh, the dog. That was the dog that was with um seal team six Cairo when they took down bid and LOD, and that was a Malinois.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, that's so. So, really like the elite tactical units are using Malinois because of their elite mindset. I mean they're kind of like until I die, I'm going to find this scent, I'm going to track it down.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and also highly adaptive. I mean these guys. I mean we're not doing that, of course, but you know there's, you know Navy SEALs are. They're doing water incursions with the dogs. They're jumping out of you know planes with the dogs. I mean these dogs, assuming you train them up properly, they can handle any environment, nothing, nothing bothers them.
Speaker 1:So you, you come onto the canine division, you are given texts to to be to partner with. Talk about those those first couple of months and just building that relationship, cause it sounds like I mean 22 stitches with the other guy. You know it's a bit of a volatile situation. You've got to earn his respect and trust.
Speaker 2:It is I mean. So there, you know, I was given this dog, to be exact, I mean my sergeant at the time. He basically said he goes, I'm giving a dick dog to a dick. So that was what he said and I was like, oh thanks, sarge, I appreciate it. We knew each other really well but this dog was definitely very capable, great dog but stubborn. And the trainer, sean, he just told me he said this dog has defeated a human being. Of course, dogs just like people. They learn he's put one human being down. It's not a matter of if he tries to put you down, it's when he's going to make an attempt.
Speaker 2:We knew that the dog didn't like gunfire and gun, um, and gunfire is part of what we do. Obviously we try and desensitize the dogs to gunfire. So the idea behind that is is that anytime in training we don't want the dog to think that every time a gun is fired that they're going to get the bite of person. So that's the kind of stuff that we try and avoid because we want the gun, the dog, to be completely neutral to that gunfire. If the gun's going off, great. If guns aren't going off, great. But the dog is still going to do his job. He doesn't need to think that just because there's a gunshot, I'm going to go bite a bad guy. Um, so we were doing gunfire drills one night.
Speaker 2:Um, I fired a blank revolver a few times, text turned around and barked at me. This is early on, probably like week three or four. I corrected him with a. We call it a leash pop. They're wearing pinch collars. I give him a leash pop, he turns around. He keeps working.
Speaker 2:I fire the gun again. This time he turns around and we call it coming up the leash. The dog is actively trying to bite me, so he's chewing his way up the leash at me. We do what's called an immediate action drill. We lift the dog off of his front feet so he can't lunge at you and then we spin slowly in a circle until the dog calms down. So once I swung him around in a circle a few times, dog calms down, put him in the car, got him back out and after that we were perfectly okay. They are pack animals and all they understand, of course, is people often think that you know that with police dogs, that we, we act cruel to them in order to get them to engage a human being, and nothing could be farther from the truth yeah those dogs all they want to do.
Speaker 2:It's like a tug toy with your dog. It's the same thing, it's the same principle. The dog gets excited. So when the dog thinks he's pulling on a human being, it's just a great big tug toy.
Speaker 1:So well and you know I imagine so much of the relationship with you and text and then you and murph is is pleasing you yes there's a like once you've earned his respect and you become the pack leader, right, you know the alpha in that situation, then the dog has gone from like aggressive to like hey, this is my, this is my guy, I'm going to go please him, do the things that he wants me to do. Is that kind of what you're trying to create?
Speaker 2:That's, that's exactly what you're trying to create. So the you know, I tell people, usually it takes, you know, between a month and three months to establish that really tight bond with the dog and of course every day that goes on from there. You know it's like any partner. You know it's like any partner. You know what I mean. You start finishing each other's sentences. You know like the dog knows what you're thinking before you're thinking it, which of course when you're tracking a bad guy in the woods really comes in handy. You know, and of course we.
Speaker 2:There's two disciplines behind canine. One of them is is you know for, especially for apprehension canine. One of them is called bite on find where is you know, if I click the dog off a leash in a room and there's a guy decoy in a suit in the room, he's going to go bite him. The other one is called bark and hold. Bark and hold is a discipline we don't use it. But basically if you had a guy in a room, a decoy in a room, the dog is going to come in and he's going to, you know, see the bad guy. As long as the bad guy doesn't move, then the dog won't bite him. So we decided not to use that program because our philosophy is is that we're giving the dog the choice to bite, so the the biting needs to come from us, I guess the, the command.
Speaker 1:You decide. When the dog bites him, when he doesn't, not, not him right and malinois are, of course, adaptive, like we spoke about earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what we started to see in some programs is is that the malinois would come into the room knowing that I want to get the bite because I want my tug toy. So he would come in and he'd lunge at the bad guy and try and get the bad guy to flinch, because if the bad guy moves now I get to eat him.
Speaker 1:So the dog will actually learn that if I can get this guy to flinch or move, then I can, then I can get a bite like so, like hey, new part of the game, can I?
Speaker 2:correct and people laugh and I, they're like that's not possible and I was like it's absolutely possible. You know, they work to please themselves, and you know. And he wants that bite.
Speaker 1:So uh, so okay. So let's talk about tex as a elite athlete for a little while. Let's put the you know, because this is a you know well-trained. I mean, obviously his nose is pretty much superhuman in terms of its ability to smell. But you also have this. You know, this incredible specimen who can run? How fast can he eat? What's his top speed? So, murph Tex, both of them like what was their top speed?
Speaker 2:top speed anywhere between 30 and 35 miles an hour is usually where we clock the dogs that we've actually like set up traps and radars and stuff like that and radar the dogs before, just for fun, just to see what they're topping out at sure and usain bolt, I think he's up at like the high 20s oh, yeah, yeah like his top speed is about like 27 28, so right, not even Usain Bolt is getting past either of these guys.
Speaker 1:No, no they're just.
Speaker 2:I mean, like I said, they're what these dogs, not only what they do, but what we ask them to do. Hence the reason we take such good care of them. You know, we're all issued all handlers are issued credit cards for the dog. And I tell people that and they start laughing and I was like no, no, in all seriousness. I was like what I ask him to do is a lot, so what he gets in return is a lot. He gets the best kennel, he gets the best vet, he gets the best everything. I mean, you know you take a 250 pound man and you're asking a 70 pound dog to bring him down. So you know this.
Speaker 2:you know basically, four times you know, you know, and this dog, and they do it every time. It's amazing. Well, and this?
Speaker 1:is, you know, when I had a, when I, when my dog was young, we we took him to dog training, right, and one of the things they taught us was the a hundred dollar bill, that's what she called it. You have to have some treat that's like raw steak, yes, like that. So right, in a very crucial and stressful moment. So it would be like a moment where, like the dog's about to get hit by a car and you call him over and you, like you say a word right, he runs and then he gets that hundred dollar treat because he needs to know just how important it was that that you know. And so, if you're you know, I mean it's like, if you want your dog to to do really challenging like things, that very important things with, with, uh, with, you know, like big decisions on the line you've got like.
Speaker 1:They have to know that that's more important than just sitting absolutely. Here's your treat I said sit, here's your, like they can't be at the same range. So I would imagine, are you? Are you looking at like when, when, uh, when tex, or when murph does something? Really you know, great job, you're making sure he's well, you know, kind of well taken care of Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's ironic because typically their reward when we're not doing bite work is the Kong, so our dogs. One of the things we do when we recruit these dogs we go look at them from the vendor is we check their ball drive because we want this dog to have just an insane amount of ball drive If he has ball drive, because we want this dog to have just in the same amount of ball drive if he has ball drive, we can train him to do anything because he's going to explain ball drive. So you take a tennis ball, you know a kong, whatever it may be, I mean like this dog wants to get that thing right. So you know it's. It's their prey drive essentially. So the dog has, you know, high prey drive, wants to go like look, you know, find this ball. So that's that ball becomes the reward when we're doing obedience work and we're doing things like search work and things like that.
Speaker 1:So if you're training a dog up and they don't have a very intense ball drive, that may be an indicator that they're not a good fit for apprehension For us, possibly Right, exactly for apprehension.
Speaker 2:Maybe for other dogs, right, and now there's probably half a dozen tests we put these dogs through when we go and we we buy them from the vendor. But uh, but that's one thing, because of course, I tell people all the time. I was like, if you want to train your dog, find your, find out what your dog loves the most like you said, the hundred dollar, the hundred dollar toy and you know that whatever they love the most. Once you identify that, training them is relatively simple because they're going to work, you know and do whatever you want them to do to, of course, get that get that reward?
Speaker 2:yeah, the maximum absolutely now, of course, the. What I tell people too, is that reward has to be administered within a second and a half of them doing the task. Yeah, so you have a second and a half to reward and you have a second and a half to discipline. So the the reward and the discipline window is very small with dog training that's.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting. I never heard that. Yeah, yeah, so you you have to, you know, otherwise they just kind of forget and they're like no yeah it's like squirrel, right, exactly right and then totally forgotten what just happened and we're on to the next evolution right so take me to a moment, uh, in with let's stay with tex where his.
Speaker 1:You just tell me a story where his athleticism, his like training, it just all came together and you really got to see him, just you know doing, doing what he was supposed to, you know meant to do at such a high level, right, well, I so of course you know when they get a, when they get a bite on the street or you know if we're doing SWAT work or something like that.
Speaker 2:It's just, it's kind of incredible. But we had a, we had a barricaded subject at a car dealership some years ago and I was working for the SWAT team. Part of my job I guess you could say one of my auxiliary duties would be that I filled in for the SWAT team. They needed a dog for you know, apprehension or containment. What they call containment is to make sure the bad guy doesn't escape during a SWAT call, because, of course, swat personnel is wearing roughly 50 to 60 pounds of gear. You're not going to run very far, very fast with that much gear on.
Speaker 2:We have a bad guy at a dealership. He's trying to burn the dealership down. He's not coming out. Swat's there. They're introducing CS, which is tear gas, and to make the environment more unpleasant for them, to flush them out. Hopefully, that doesn't work.
Speaker 2:So the team actually pushes into this structure and is able to pin them down to a single room. Well, he scrambles and he comes out and of course, there's nothing between the garage door. He pulls up a garage door. There's nothing between the garage door and a neighboring apartment complex. That's very close, except for me and two other guys and my dog, tex. So at that point, you know, civilians are in harm's way. So we, you know the guy comes out running. We give him several commands to stop. Guy doesn't stop. He's still running towards the apartment complex. I turn Tex loose. Of course Tex does what he has to do. He runs over, grabs the guy by one arm, flings him to the ground. I go over with my backup. Once my backup says, ok, we have him covered, I grab Tex, I take him off the bite. Guy gets put into custody. You know, everybody's safe.
Speaker 2:So at that moment it was kind of interesting to me to see just how fast. I mean from the time they say during highress events, you know, time slows down. From the time the guy rolled up the door to the time the guy decides to make a run for the apartment complex was probably not more than three seconds, but for me it felt like 10. And then of course I had to make the decision okay, is there a threat to the general public? Absolutely, you know. This guy definitely poses a threat to the public, and these are all things that we're working through in our mind before we decide to release the dog.
Speaker 2:So we released the dog. The dog goes over, does what he's supposed to do, you know, minimal amount of injury to the bad guy. He's got a few bite marks. Ems is on scene right away, patches them up. Bad guy goes to jail. Public is safe. So it was always things like that watching the dog perform at a level that no human could you know. Closing that distance, I mean a good chance. If a human had started a foot chase for that person, he would have made it to the apartment complex long before the dog, you know, could have run him down right and and then no, dog, you're, you're, you're're shooting, you've got a gun.
Speaker 1:So, it's like you're using text in this situation in lieu of, like you know, prevention your weapon and saying, hey, stop, I'm going to shoot like, and then going down that road of, like you know, possibly, you know, a fatal injury.
Speaker 2:And another fascinating thing that we tell the public all the time what makes the dogs so great in that situation is is that had the guy take off running, you know, and the guy maybe he traveled 20 yards and all of a sudden he decides, you know, as I'm releasing the dog, to give up. So he throws his hands up in the air and goes I surrender, I surrender. You know, I can actually recall the dog back to me. So the dog is one of the few weapon systems, the only weapon system we have, that can actually be recalled.
Speaker 2:So I can't pull a bullet back out of the end of a barrel, but I can pull that dog back should the guy decide to surrender in those last moments.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. I hadn't thought about that. But that, what, what a tool.
Speaker 2:And no, it's. You know, I mean, and you know it's such a smart weapon to be able to say like text.
Speaker 1:you know what to give him, that command, that like and he stops and he comes back, Right.
Speaker 2:In fact and that's something that you know every year we are tested and certified by an outside agency to make sure that our practices and our training methods, of course, are staying current, and then all of our dogs will do that very feet. So that's something that you know. Not all departments can train and not all departments do. But, of course, because you know we have that extra level of training, we have the great budget, we have all the stuff that we need to do. That's something that we can actually put into the dogs. That makes it that much better for the public.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so you mentioned being called into a SWAT team. Situation like and obviously there's not just like crimes going on all the time that require canine support.
Speaker 2:So talk about just a day in the life of you and and and Tex so, uh, when I, when I first went to canine, you know we were we're all on nights with canine handlers, and and then, as the? Uh, when I, when I first went to canine, you know we were we're all on nights as canine handlers, and and then, as the years progressed, we had shifts of day shift and evening shift. So, but when we're all on night shift, you know you would uh, typically come in. We don't, we don't, we're not like normal cops, we don't go to the station and you know, have a briefing or anything like that. We just show up and, uh, typically the beginning of the night we would meet your squad, because of course there was two squads One squad would work Monday through Thursday, the other squad would work Tuesday through Friday and the other squad would work Friday through Monday, I guess it is.
Speaker 2:So you would have a day of overlap. But usually when you come in, the guys are hanging out and everybody goes and meets at the training site. It's four or five guys and you know, depending on what discipline we're working on that night, whether it be apprehension work or whether it be search work or tactics or obedience, you know, gunfire weekly training.
Speaker 2:Weekly training there is a, there's a head trainer, the head trainer, kind of gives you, you know, your your loose, you know uh uh schedule of what he, what he expects for the evening.
Speaker 2:We knock out, you know two, three, four hours of training, uh, and then, and then you know, we go grab a bite to eat and then, of course, in the meantime, if a call comes out, then one or two of us will break away and head to that call.
Speaker 2:And then you know, depending on the size of the search area, we might need another canine handler so you might bring all the dogs in. Um, yeah, I'll back up real quick and say that when you first go to the canine unit you, um, your first three months you're training every night, probably six hours a night. So, and that's just to get you sped up and get you up to the level where you need to be so you can be cut loose with your dog. So once that three month period is over, you what's called certify and somebody comes in, checks you off, make sure that you can pass all the tests, make sure that your dog is good with gunfire, make sure that he's obedient, make sure that you know his, his bite work is on point, make sure that he can be recalled, like we spoke about earlier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so wow, is there anything else that about you know your kind of the role of the canine, the dog, in your profession? That maybe wouldn't be obvious in the apprehension situation Right.
Speaker 2:In the apprehension. I think one of the things that drew me to canine was that of course in this day and age we have things like FLIR, which is forward-looking infrared. We have thermal you know which the helicopter has. We have all these like really cool gadgets, you know that are really neat and help us apprehend the bad guy, make the public safe, do all these things. We were looking for a guy. It was actually. I guess it was aggravated assault with a deadly weapon is what it ended up being charged with.
Speaker 2:But two fellows were down off of Lakeshore. They rob a gentleman and in the progress of the, during the crime, they discharged a firearm, shooting the victim in the hand. Pretty dangerous. These guys were on the loose at night. They were down around the park down off Lakeshore. There there's a peninsula if you're familiar with Austin, that kind of goes off in there and they were last seen in that general area. We had all of Riverside shut down from 35, I should say Lakeshore shut down from 35, all the way to the dam off of Pleasant Valley. And you know we've got the helicopter up, we've got firefighters and boats, you know, looking up and down the shoreline trying to find these guys, me and my partner Kind of found a bunker.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, Like they normally do these guys go to ground? They actually ended up being completely covered up on the edge of the water. They covered themselves up with like marsh and leaves Right Like straight-up predator.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You know, like Arnold the Predator, like I put mud on myself, he can't see me, he can't feel my mud, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And you or I would have walked by these guys a hundred times and never even noticed.
Speaker 1:The helicopters can't see because the infrared's not working Right.
Speaker 2:They're not putting off a. They're not putting off of a, um any body heat, because of course they're covered with marsh and one thing and other. So you know, we get our dogs out, we deploy and we get a. Uh, of course we get a description of the suspects.
Speaker 1:Immediately be in our search that like do you in that situation, did you have anything to like, you know, give text like something to smell or anything? So like you see a lot of that in the movies. I don't even know if that's absolutely that's.
Speaker 2:That's a great question. You know, we, um that is a different kind of searching. Um, they do it's scent recognition. Okay, so we don't actually do that. Um, our dogs are trained to air scent, so what they're going to do is everybody is giving off their unique odor is what I like to say right, you're right.
Speaker 2:Whether it be like you know, skin rafts or like a smell that they're you know giving, of course we, we were trained to call it enhanced odor. You know, bad guys, of course, are on the run. Uh, adrenaline is leaking out of them. Yeah, typically they've got either you know, some sort of um you of illegal contraband on board, possibly alcohol on board, maybe all of the above. But this enhanced odor is something that the dogs pick up over time and it's really interesting because the more finds that the dog has on the street just like you or I, you know, going to the gym, every time we're at the gym we learn something new. You know stuff like that. Every time that dog gets a street find, he gets a little bit better at recognizing that enhanced odor.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, a perfect example would be like if a guy's hiding in a utility closet, an apartment complex. It's a busy Saturday. You've got people out there with their kids on the playground, people are barbecuing. Um, you know, people are at the pool. We've we've walked these dogs through these environments before and gone straight to that utility closet where the bad guy's hiding. The dog will literally drag us right to it, they know. So. I mean, you have all this human odor right, but that's not the human odor that they're looking for right right so they're imagine like, and this is fascinating, uh, you know we have such a poor sense of smell.
Speaker 1:Oh, all right, right, and but imagine if we had, you know, this type of smell that you could like kind of know, you know, just in terms of like evolution, or like you know, women being able to like smell, who, who the bad guys are absolutely you know, I'm just.
Speaker 1:It's incredible that dogs, you know, have kept this sense of smell for so long and right, and that they can, that we can actually harness this type of power absolutely you know that's incredible that. Imagine this dog going through like a apartment complex. Kids are there, you know families right and they're like no that smells like healthy family, absolutely right.
Speaker 2:It smells like normal kid playing.
Speaker 1:These are good people right and there's a smell of like yeah, because you're right like it's the adrenaline, it's all these hormones, there's all these things being pumped through your correct, your body when you're afraid, when you're you know if you're on drugs and you're right you know, jacked up and and we all know that it alters us chemically in different ways and in ways that we probably don't even know.
Speaker 2:But the dogs know that, that smell, they know that unique odor. And then, going back to the story which you know with the, these guys were and nobody could get a hit on the thermal imager the helicopter wasn't getting hits All the technology.
Speaker 1:All the technology Did not work and multi.
Speaker 2:I mean, at this time we had a brand-new helicopter to the tune of probably $4 million Wow, and that's what that thing cost, with the thermal imager and everything else on it, and of course we've got personnel first responders out everywhere beating it. And you know, of course we've got on, you know personnel first responders out everywhere beating the bushes trying to find these guys because there are definitely a threat to the public. And it's interesting to me that the dogs ended up being the very thing to find these guys and actually get them off the street and put them behind bars. So this was several dogs like tex.
Speaker 2:This is actually just two, so this is just my partner dan evalith and his dog, and then me and me and tex and you know we get down there and you know, like our dogs were.
Speaker 2:it was kind of interesting because there was water between us, the way the and of course the dogs are only as good as the environment and the handler. So the wind was luckily pushing in our direction, but it was pushing kind of across the lake caddy corner and these guys are on a peninsula and you know the dogs were very definitely acting, you know, strange. They're trying to dive into the water. Um, you know, get across to this peninsula. Uh, and I finally just gave a, I gave a warning of verbal warning, saying you know, give up or we're going to send the dog out. And uh, about that time you hear a voice go, please, don't send the dog, I don't want to get bit. And we saw a white tennis shoe move on the other side of the shoreline, wow, and these guys literally just stood up covered in muck, and you know there were the bad guys that the dogs had located.
Speaker 1:That's unbelievable. So the dogs smelled them and the only way they could get to where they were would be just swim across. Correct?
Speaker 2:They always want to go into the scent cones so you know, if you have something, you know, and I tell people that too, that and I tell people that too, that's the downside of the dog is, you know, if you're not, you know, if you're not downwind of that odor source, if that odor source happens to be, you know, downwind of you, you know, then then you're at a disadvantage, right. So, and you know that you can, you can walk an odor source very well and people go. Well, I don't understand. You know the the dog was 10 feet from them. Well, that's sure, the dog's 10 feet. But if the wind is blowing away, you know, then the dog, you know the dog's only good is in the environment he's searching in, right. So that's why we always tell people we will typically enter a search pattern from the downwind side. Interesting. So yeah, and and to go back to your question originally of the um, of the scent recognition, you know you'll see the. Uh, typically when you see dogs doing that, they're bloodhounds and they're usually worked by prison guards.
Speaker 1:Okay, and and the bloodhounds are specifically trained for like the like. This is the you know like kind of the traditional, like ripped fabric from the pants that caught on the barbed wire as he ran away.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so, and that that piece of clothing has skin rafts in it, which, of course, we are constantly, as human beings, like they're dropping off of us all the time. So these skin rafts are trapped in the clothing. You basically introduce that scent to the dogs and then it usually works better in, uh, rural environments, which, of course, prisons are typically in yeah you know, the guy runs out into the woods uh, you'll see the.
Speaker 2:Uh, you'll see the bloodhound. You know he'll take the scent recognition and all of a sudden he goes nose down into the ground. What he is looking for is it's called tracking or trailing, and it's it's basically those skin rafts falling off of the inmate um are sticking to the foliage. Okay, and so what that dog is doing is he's picking up those skin rafts off of the foliage. It's like it's like you're like you're just dragging your finger you're leaving a trail of breadcrumbs exactly and you don't even know. Yeah, you have no.
Speaker 1:And you can't not do it like there's nothing you can do, yeah, other than short of wearing a dexter suit, you're out of luck. There you go. Yeah, yeah, that's funny, all right. So uh talk about you know, at some point you know your dogs retire and sure and uh in 2016. In 2016,. Tex retired. What? What was it about that time Like? Was it just that he was slowing down, or is there like a specific time where they have to retire the dogs to?
Speaker 2:shorting, short of a medical issue, then yeah, it's. It's pretty much to the discretion of the, the handler and, of course, the head trainer.
Speaker 2:Okay. So, and it's every. I'll tell you every handler goes through this. You know as you can. So, and it's every. I'll tell you, every handler goes through this. You know, as you can imagine it's. You know you broke in your partner. You've had this partner for years. You know, like I said, you finish each other's sentences. You know you catch a bad guy. You know, like my trainer taught me, you know you go catch a bad guy. You know you drive through the mcdonald's, you get him a cheeseburger and you give him a cheeseburger. You know, and that was always kind of like the reward for getting the bad guys, you know you.
Speaker 2:So you pull up to the mcdonald's drive-thru and you got this big dog head sticking over your shoulder oh, my god, and you know the. You know the lady at mcdonald's. You know they just think it's great. You know that and you know there's just so much fun to be had. You know, every night because you get to play with dogs at the end of the day suit, or whether you're the guy sending the dog, you're still playing with dogs, yeah well and just the.
Speaker 1:There's something so pure about you know, obviously a relationship with the dog but, also just the like. You know, hey, we got the bad guy oh, yeah, like in this situation and you didn't you know you didn't kill, have to kill the bad guy no he had all the chance in the world to stop and like, and you know there's just this kind of purity of like hey, you know you did the right thing, you got. You know he's feeling great about the fact that he got to.
Speaker 1:You know, please, you and absolutely what do, what you at you ordered him to do, and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:You go get this the cheeseburger at the end of the night and it's just such a win, it's a bond, I mean it really is. It's a. And of course, you know you, you take this dog into places, you know, and one thing and other cause you know we, we typically walk them around the station when they're with us. Or you know, if we're going to grab something and everybody's like hey, can I pet him? And I was like, yeah, of course, and you know they're, they're super excited. You know the whole thing of do you know we treat them poorly. Couldn't be farther from the truth these dogs are. You know, they love their jobs, they love every aspect of it.
Speaker 1:But you know, like, like you said you know, and to not understand that, it's to not understand that they are like 85 wolf yeah, that's exactly right, are we? Missing that they, like, have their wild animals right in in so much of their dna. Yes, they have instincts to to find prey, to chase, to eat, like all those things, and so we're, we're, you know. Obviously they have the other side of that, which is the bonded side, and your point.
Speaker 2:I mean, we domesticated these things long ago for the simple reason that their senses are more acute than ours. Yeah, you know, they have the ability, when we're sitting around a fire, to, you know, hear a predator a long way off. Smell a predator a long way off. Smell a predator a long way off. They can see in the dark better than we can. Their senses are just so much more in tune than ours. Hence the reason we domesticated them to watch out for us when it came time to retire. It's brutal, because you don't want to take a partner into an environment where he could possibly be hurt.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So if he's starting to slow down at all, it's kind of like you have to just acknowledge the fact that, ok, he's not as quick as he once was. You know he could get hurt out here. Now he's becoming older, you know, and it's just time to say, ok, you know, before something terrible happens, we're going to go ahead and retire him yeah, you know, with dignity and honor. And then, you know, he comes and stays at the house, he gets to retire. We buy them back from the city for a dollar, wow, um, they come live out the remainder of their years at home. And you know, it's I tell people all the time it's kind of like he became my wife's dog at that point.
Speaker 1:So wow, and there there was a you know period of time, if I of time, if I'm not mistaken, where you had Tex and Murph, yes, and you were training them both together. Is that right?
Speaker 2:There's a transitional period there, correct, because not everybody on the canine unit was able to support SWAT. It takes the right person, it takes the right dog, so you have to have the right team to work in a SWAT environment. I was one of those people that was checked off on it and unfortunately, we were just in a transition period where I was the only guy that was checked off to work with SWAT. So we made the decision that you know you had enough badassness you.
Speaker 1:That's what he's not saying here it's, it's the badassness you need to have to be on to be able to support SW tell people all the time.
Speaker 2:I said, you know, the biggest thing in the support role for SWAT is the dog to be able to work in these very diverse environments. You know, because the SWAT situation can go from very, very peaceful and calm to, of course, very chaotic very quickly. So the dog needs to be able to feel comfortable in these environments. I mean, you know everything from possibly blowing a front door off with an energetic breach, um, you know, to you know the discharge of a 40 millimeter uh less lethal, which fires a foam baton which of course can impact the suspect and drop them um, all these things. And of course you know the the negotiator yelling on the um on the acoustic device which called called an l rad, a long range acoustical device. It's basically set up so where people inside the house can hear the negotiator, you know, uh, trying trying to diffuse the situation. So all this stuff is going on and of course meanwhile we're all doing this from an armored vehicle um, right, swat guys, a lot of variables, yeah, a lot of variables.
Speaker 2:You know, and I mean a lot of yelling, a lot of lot of you know. Just. You know S? You know, you know SGO, you know. So what's SGO? Shit going on.
Speaker 1:There you go, you can cuss in my podcast, it's all good. So last thing on that is just so that before we go to transition and kind of how Murph got introduced and Tex was retired, murph got introduced and Tex was retired, I do want to talk about just what did you, you know, thinking about Tex and just like going from like calm, submissive to like the ability to turn it on and off Like talk about that Cause.
Speaker 1:I think that you know in some way. You know, talk about like performance mindset, absolutely. One of the things that's been a theme in my podcast is we all remember being 20 and slapping ourselves in the face or drinking, firing yourself up yeah, getting all and somehow that adrenaline was going to make us stronger. And it's the opposite. Yes, it's deep breathing, it's settling our brain, us stronger, and it's the opposite. Yes, it's deep breathing, it's settling our brain. It's it's being very parasympathetic right before we go into, you know whether it's an mma fight or a right big lift.
Speaker 2:So talk about how the dog has that you know duality knowing where you are in the world. Basically, I mean and that's, that's a lot of it is just you know that that dog going in, um, you know it's. It's fascinating because the dog can. The whole thing that your trainer tells you is is that everything you're feeling will go down that leash and transmit into that dog. So that dog, kind of like what they talked about, you know, like when you ride horses, if you're sitting on top of a horse, the horse can feel the rider, feel his thoughts, feel his emotion, you know, feel where he is in the world. It's the same thing with that dog. That dog, you know after you know, feel where he is in the world. It's the same thing with that dog. That dog, you know after the, you know the bond is established in one thing or another.
Speaker 2:That dog feels what I feel and I'm totally convinced of that and I and I've worked with him enough to know it um, that you know, after a certain amount of time goes by, that you know that if I start to feel like you know, if I'm dealing with a subject and kind of interviewing him and trying to figure out where he fits into the role of, you know, is he a suspect? Is he a witness? Um, you know, and he starts doing things and acting a little funny. Of course I start recognizing that body language and about the time I start recognizing that my body language is changing to the point where probably people don't notice, but the dog so. But the dog has noticed my change in my body and he's immediately keying up on the bad guy.
Speaker 2:So you know, there's that, there's that very slow transition of and at the same time, if I interview somebody and I decide that this person is just a regular old bystander that happened to be kind of close to the crime scene at the time, and we talk to him and we eliminate him, as you know, being a suspect or anything else, then I start feeling more at ease and immediately that ease goes down the leash into the dog and the dog recognizes this as a non-threat.
Speaker 2:So I mean it's just, it's, it's very, it's very interesting dynamic. You know, like I tell people there's, there's no better. I think, as a cop, there's no better partner to have, just because you may, you may be quick, but you're never going to be as quick as him and you may be reactionary, but your reaction times are never going to beat his. So I mean, like you're basically with this rock star athlete, it would be like you or me getting to partner up with you know, like the best MMA fighter you know right now. I mean you would feel very calm and very secure walking around.
Speaker 2:And that dog brings that, that mindset, yeah I mean and, and you know, and, of course, what we're asked to do and what we ask the dog to do is, at the end of the day, it's it's extremely dangerous work. In fact, one of the last statistics that was told to me was that you're 10 times more likely to get involved in a gunfight as a canine handler. People always ask why, and I tell people you play hide andfight as a canine handler. People always ask why, and I tell people you played hide-and-seek as a kid. When you were the one hiding, you would see the person come into the room and search for you before that person saw you. And it's the same way with the bad guys. Bad guys in the woods, possibly armed. He can see you because I've got a flashlight and I've got a noisy dog. I'm tromping through the woods. He's going to see me long before I see him. So that's where that dog really comes in handy. You know, comes in handy and can often diffuse a situation, right?
Speaker 1:So and I can only imagine a dog running directly at you and you, you know whether you have a gun or not you just like he's coming at you 35 miles an hour, like teeth out absolutely, and like your ability to focus in and and do anything well.
Speaker 2:It's probably pretty limited and, even the more importantly, prior to the engagement is the just what I tell people. The negotiation aspect of the dog, which is nothing more than the dog snarling he's to the engagement is the just what I tell people. The negotiation aspect of the dog, which is nothing more than the dog snarling. He's at the end of the leash. I've got hold of the leash. You know he's barking, he's fired up and the bad guy's looking at you and he's just kind of. I just told them all the time. I was like listen, I was like I want this to go as smooth as possible. You get down on the ground, you get down on the ground, it goes smooth. We handcuff you, you go to jail. No hospital, no medic, no anything. It's like if you do anything other than that, I've got to turn him loose. And if I turn him loose, I was like that's a that's a influential statement right there, and it really is, and that's why we were so successful on the average.
Speaker 2:I would say that we, per 100 arrests, we averaged 97 arrests without incident.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so only.
Speaker 2:So only 3% of the time you're really looking at having to deploy the dog, which is, which is really a great thing to be able to tell the public is is that. You know, listen, there's this fascinating tool. You know that's really great at a multi multitude of things. You know locating the suspect and then honestly negotiating with the suspect for me on my behalf. You know cause? I have two or three guys and you know this guy might want to fight. If you introduce a dog into that scenario, a lot of times bad guys takes the fight right out of them. They're like, yeah, I just don't want to go down that road, yeah so that's a great point.
Speaker 1:And I think too, um, you know, if, if the dog cannot be driven by the bite, because if 97 times out of 100 he doesn't get to bite, right, then there's no reward other than, you know, three out of 100, that's not going to be motivating to a dog. And the cheeseburger don't forget the cheeseburger. Yeah, so that's what it has to be about the cheeseburger. It does, it does and the praise I mean like at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:You know like I mean I find the bad guy. Somebody else runs up, they handcuff the guy up for me. You know I grab the dog, take him back to the car. We play ball for a little bit. You know all the other cops get to come over and pet him. And you know like, and they just they think it's the best thing in the world, so that's cool, all right, so back to uh, texas, retiring murph's coming on board.
Speaker 1:How old was murph when you took him on?
Speaker 2:oh, let's see murph would have been. Murph would have been about five years old when I took him on. Oh, let's see Murph would have been.
Speaker 1:Murph would have been about five years old when I took them on so are they doing about five years like so take, let's use Murph in this situation. Okay, when Murph is, you know, a puppy, does he go to kind of a 4-h kid type situation, like early on, just for bonding purposes?
Speaker 2:how does that the military will do that in their breeding programs. However, we get our dogs from Europe, so typically really, yeah. So when we get, when we get these dogs from our vendors, they're usually anywhere between 12 and 18 months of age, so they are, I guess you could say, adolescence, going into okay, you know, going into adulthood what's the expectation of the training they receive before they come over to the united?
Speaker 2:states. So typically we get what's called a green dog. Um, these dogs the only thing. At about six weeks in Europe, they typically start training these puppies to bite a sleeve. So these dogs are basically becoming accustomed to just, you know, chewing on stuff and biting Um and then cause you don't want to, you don't want to train the bite out of them.
Speaker 1:Correct, right, like you know a normal puppy would be like, know you don't? No, no, no, don't do that like right.
Speaker 2:So these dogs. Of course you know there's we. We kind of joke that you know you're basically getting a fur missile. So when you go and pick this dog up from the vendor, you know it's just all it is is it's a dog, but it's a dog that's been been trained by the human being. So you know, and that's why we tell people, is we? We train handlers very well.
Speaker 2:We don't want an accident to occur. Of course you know it's no different than you know the trainers I would assume that swim in the big aquariums at SeaWorld. You know accidents do happen when you're dealing with wild animals and they do happen. We get bit all the time. I tell people you work in a kitchen, you get burnt. You work around dogs, you get bit. It's just going to happen. We try and minimize that through training and safety protocols, but it occurs. I mean, it's not for everybody. We take young officers that want to go to canine and they come and train with us. You know, sometimes we put on decoy schools and we put these guys, and you know they're young, they're in their twenties and they're excited about life and they want to be a canine handler, nothing more in the world, and so we put them in the suit, the bite suit that is, and then, of course, we send the dog on them and about half the time, you know the the officer says you know, this really isn't for me anymore.
Speaker 2:I I appreciate the opportunity um, it was like a romantic idea correct that no longer has, and just a lot of and and we, and we tell them I was like, it doesn't make you any less of a police officer for not wanting to do that. And I tell people all the time I said, in fact, it probably makes you smarter than me, because nobody in their right mind would want to get used as a chew toy. So you know, and so I, I, for whatever reason, it worked well for me. But I tell people it does not speak against an officer if it's just not their calling. Yeah, so yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So, and how old was Tex when you, when he got to retire?
Speaker 2:so Tex was about 10 and a half when he retired, so usually that's about the window. Usually sometime between 10 and 11 is usually when they'll retire yeah so, like I said, it's the discretion of the handler, the discretion of the trainer, you know. And then, and then of course we look, we go down to the vendor, we start selecting another dog and then the process starts all over again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Murph, Murph comes on he's. Did you get a name in Murph, or was that like his given name?
Speaker 2:So I did so. Actually, usually when every handler gets the dog, they they change the name Typically um, uh. A fellow, a good friend of mine, was on the unit and he had some family stuff come up and he had to unexpectedly leave because canines are very demanding job. You're on call a lot One thing and other. He needed to take a job that was just a little more easy on on family life. So he'd had Murph for probably at this time. He probably had him for about two or three years. His name was Sumo, uh, I changed his name to Murph. Um, I changed his name to Murph.
Speaker 2:He came over. I immediately started working with him. We were able to certify in a very short time because of course he's an experienced dog. I'm experienced handler. We go through our certification process and then I started working him in a patrol function, which is the day-to-day driving around in your car trying to help up, help. Other cops, you know, go to felony car stops and do that stuff. In the the meantime, if their SWAT call occurred, I had to go home. I had to drop Murph off at the house, I had to get texts, put him in my car, change into SWAT gear and go to a SWAT call.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So that's gotta be, you know, like Murph's, like what about me?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and it's. And it's sad too, because once, once the once texts had fully retired being in special operations, especially back then I'm dating myself now but we were issued pagers. There's a normal page tone that would come out, but when there was a SWAT trigger that would come out, it was called the triple tone and it had a very distinct sound. Well, the dogs actually learn the sound. So when my pager would go off, tex would know it's time to go to work. So I think the saddest moment for me was when he was actually fully retired.
Speaker 2:Murph was doing both jobs patrol and SWAT and the SWAT tone want to go off and Tex would look at me and stand there by the door waiting to go out and I had to tell him sorry, buddy, it's. You know, hung your cleats up, so it was tough, but but at the same time I was also very grateful because, you know, I the last thing I want to see is him get injured and me push him too far. Um, I was lucky in the fact that, uh, about a year and a half before he retired, he was injured during training and had a, had an issue with his vertebrae, and some of the best animal doctors are down at Texas A&M University. Okay, our commander at the time. I explained it to him, I said this is our only SWAT dog, you know everything else.
Speaker 2:And without blinking, the commander said how much money do you need? And I think the surgery was roughly ten thousand dollars. Yeah, and he was like no problem, he goes. That said he'll write a check tomorrow. So just get him down to the hospital, get him operated on and get him back in the running again. So it was a lot of physical therapy, going back and forth and follow-up visits and one thing and another, and I think it was about 12 weeks of recovery time, but after 12 weeks he was back at it again.
Speaker 2:A surgery like that would probably knock you and I out for six months, Right? So you know.
Speaker 1:Or just create some sort of permanent, like you know dysplasia, absolutely yeah. Inability to really fully engage, which is what he has to be able to pull all out, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yes, there can't be a hitch.
Speaker 1:Right, so talk about Murph. What was something unique about Murph, as you know, as you saw him kind of becoming, you know, coming to his own as as that dog, like what was unique about him?
Speaker 2:like, like every person or animal, uh, personality, subtle personality differences. Uh, tex was very stoic in his mannerisms, he enjoyed affection, but I tell people it's more like a cat. He wanted it on his terms. He'd come over to you, he'dudge you, you'd scratch him for a couple seconds and he'd wander off and sit in his bed. Murph is much more like a, I guess, what you call a traditional dog. He would, you know, come over and you know, just want to play and get scratched and, I guess, more social too in that aspect.
Speaker 2:You know could take murph into a any environment and not have to worry about him. You know, becoming disgruntled with somebody or possibly, you know, taking a cheap shot or something like that. You know, whereas murph is is much more um, I guess had had the ability to turn it on and off much quicker. Yeah, so he could go from, you know, an absolute apprehend, high, high adrenaline apprehension to all. The cops are coming over him and you know, you know they're petting them and everything's fine again. So very, very I guess most people referred to him as kind of like a big doof. So you know he's just kind of. You know he's 100 pounds, texas, roughly 70. So burst considerably bigger, more force, but just just a big puppy dog, you know, I guess.
Speaker 2:I guess people would say like an offensive lineman yeah so you know, just kind of a big, a big teddy bear right, right.
Speaker 1:He knew he could bring it when he needed to. Exactly right like show you all the time like there was.
Speaker 2:There was no need to compensate, right? That's funny.
Speaker 1:And so you know. You said Texas retired in 2016 and then Murph retired in 2020. Correct. And then the last couple of years, you got on to the bomb squad.
Speaker 2:It was bomb squad, so it was inside the same special operations division I just transferred over the bomb squad sergeant, a friend of mine called me up and said hey, we had a dog handler leave last minute. Um, you know, I know that you know your dog's about ready to retire, would you be interested in coming over? And again, you know, I asked him and said tell me about the job. And he described it and it's a definitely a change of pace because once again you're using a canine as a locating tool. But of course, you're trying to locate something the size of, you know, this water bottle, which you know is about the size of a baseball, um, and sometimes smaller than that. We actually train the dogs to detect, you know, a couple of grains of black powder. So, you know, I mean almost like, basically look like a couple of pieces of sand and we put them in a small dish and we put that dish underneath a sofa and you know, the dog would walk into the room and find those couple grains of black powder.
Speaker 2:So you know, once again using the nose, employing the nose in a public safety role, which was different for me because, of course, for the last, you know, 11 years, I'd been trained to look for a person that was attempting to do harm, been trained to look for a person that was attempting to do harm.
Speaker 2:Now I'm looking for an object that could possibly do harm to the public. So, change gears a little bit, I kind of tell people. I almost felt like I went from being a machete to a scalpel. You know, and the role is a little bit different in in the, in the idea that VIPs will come to Austin because we are becoming a very much a destination town. You know everybody, from the you know Secretary of Defense, to presidents, vice presidents, congress, I mean all these dignitaries. You know celebrities, one thing and other that need these sweeps done to make sure that they're safe. And you know, we do sweep motorcades, we sweep events, we sweep hotels. You know, and you're, you're, of course, you're just making sure this person is as safe as they can be while visiting our city, which, of course, in itself is a is a big responsibility.
Speaker 1:Right. So there's. I mean you're obviously there, there could be a bomb threat. You go to that building or or that location for the bomb threat. But there's also this preventative. Hey, you've got somebody coming into town. We want to make sure the dog goes around and basically just make sure the coast is clear in all the places that that person's going.
Speaker 2:So I mean ACL, south by I mean the list goes on and on.
Speaker 2:I mean we were all present at all of these, and of by I mean the list goes on and on I mean we were all present at all of these, and of course it's. These venues are massive. So you know you're talking we. There's only three dogs on the bomb squad. So you're asking a lot of the dogs, especially in the summer. But you know, like I said, we cool them down, we drive around as much as we can, we get as close to the stage and we jump them back into an air conditioned environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, but um and you're the bomb dog was a Labrador right, he was an English Labrador. What was his name again?
Speaker 2:Leland, leland. Okay, so all of our, all of our dogs on the bomb squad and I found this out through a little bit of embarrassment on my own part. You know I came over and you know they said this is Leland.
Speaker 1:I was like well, who would name a dog Leland?
Speaker 2:And then I was told by the senior officers on the bomb squad, I was like these dogs are actually all named after APD officers that have fallen in the line of duty.
Speaker 1:So of course I was that guy that put my foot in my mouth. No surprise, okay, but yeah Right.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So so, english Labrador, what? What are some of the traits of an English Labrador that really make him excellent at the role of a bulldog?
Speaker 2:So all three of our dogs were considered hunting breeds. So we had an English Labrador, we had a German Shorthair Pointer and then we had a Springer Spaniel All bird dogs right. So these dogs have good drive, which is important Again, the ball drive we want a reward, because of course they're not biting. Anything at this point.
Speaker 2:you know, is important Again, the ball drive right we want to reward because, of course, they're not biting anything at this point. So you know, you take them out. And the perfect example for a training op would be you know, we take 20 pieces of luggage right and we put a little bit of odor in one of these pieces of luggage. The dog walks down the row of suitcases and has to identify which bag has this odor in it. So and of course, once he identifies it and he sits and he does everything he's supposed to do, then he gets the ball as the reward.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, as far as like the inherent traits that these animals must have, of course, is a very keen sense of smell, which the hunting bird dogs do, and then, of course, great drive, which they do, because they're easy to train on birds, they have that great ball drive.
Speaker 1:Once which they do because they're easy to train on birds they have that great ball drive. Once they see that reward they just they go crazy. Right, so is. So is the in this situation you talked about, like him, when the dog finds the suitcase right, they sit like, they identify it, but they don't start barking at it correct and?
Speaker 2:and we tell people all the time barking is okay usually, you know like some dogs don't like to sit, like german short-haired pointers. Of course they're called pointers, right? What do they want to do? They just want to sit there and they don't want to point their nose at it, which is fine. So what? I tell people all the time it doesn't matter if you're on the apprehension side or if you're on the narcotic side, if you're on the bomb side, as long as you can read your dog's alert and you know what the dog is trying to tell you. That's the most important thing. Now, of course, on the bomb side, the last thing we want that dog doing is reaching out and pawing something that could possibly have an explosive in it, so that part is where dogs have what they call like the soft soft jaw, where they, like, put the bird in their mouth and bring it back, correct?
Speaker 1:what's that called? Is that that's not soft jaw? No, it's um, but it's something like that, like a soft mouth, right? So, yeah, yes, because they don't bite into it, they bring it back. They don't want to damage it right, right.
Speaker 2:So, and it's the same thing in this, in this sense, we have to train them up on the alert. Typically, we either want, you know, like some sort of a sit or a lay down or something like that, yeah, as close to the source as possible. Right, you know, we'll plant. We'll plant a odor on vehicles, we'll plant odor in suitcases, buildings, anywhere a human could possibly put a device to hurt other humans. That's what we're training and that's what we want the dog to do. We want the dog to get as close to that source as we can. So another important attribute you were asking would be the ability for the dogs to to work in any environment. Right, so I may have to take my dog into the w. He may have to get on an escalator, um, may have to get in an elevator, might have to go from like a linoleum floor to a carpet. You know all these things. Some dogs have problems with these environments, but it's important that these dogs work anywhere, right?
Speaker 1:that'd be flexible in the way they exactly can move right right, yeah, okay. So last question for you, and it's really two questions, but um, is tech still around?
Speaker 2:tex is not so he he died um in 2018, 2018 yep so, and murph is murph home with you right now. He's home with me right now and I think he's getting younger and I'm getting older because he, uh, he hasn't slowed down one bit. He'll be 12 in December and, uh, he still moves like a puppy, wow. So he may not run 35 anymore, but I wouldn't be surprised if he ran 30. So yeah.
Speaker 1:So what's that? Like like having that whole life with you, know Murph, and before with texts, and and then it transitions to just like know owner, owner, dog, like relationship, and you know you don't have that same kind of intensity of the relationship. How do you, how do you make that? Yeah, transition that so it's.
Speaker 2:It's. It's interesting because, you know, I tell people all the time it's you do you. It gets dialed back. But at the same time it's almost better in some ways, because you don't have to worry about him getting hurt anymore.
Speaker 2:You know, the hardest thing to me being a canine handler was learning that, uh, there was, there, would be, there might be a situation where I had to drop the leash and expect the dog to die, right, I mean, which is it's horrible to think about. You know, I mean even, you know, even the, even what we call the tough guy club, right, you know, nobody wants to sit there and possibly have to send the dog to the death, but that's what they're for. At the end of the day, their life isn't as valuable as a human life. So that's what they're, that's what they're paid for, that's what, you know, the job that comes with it. So, upon retirement, you know your dog makes it to retirement and you almost feel this sense of like relief.
Speaker 2:Okay, we did all this great stuff, all this cool things. We helped the public, went to elementary school, saw kids together, you know, did all this neat stuff for the community, and now he gets to just sit back, relax, take it easy, bond with the family. You know, chill out a little bit. I think there's an adjustment phase for them because they're like they went from being a pro athlete to now they're just the guy that sits back and tells stories. I guess you know.
Speaker 1:I mean on some level, like your wife had to see you go off and put yourself in harm's way for you know 20 plus years, or however long you knew her, you know her Right, it's almost the same thing. Like you're, you're thinking OK, Murph is now safe.
Speaker 2:Exactly, she's thinking OK, you're retiring.
Speaker 1:And that'sph is now safe. Exactly, she's thinking okay, you're retiring, he is now safe. You know, on some level we just don't want the people we love to Go in harm's way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, and that's at the end of the day, that's the job I tell people. You know, the job is to go in harm's way, whether you be a police dog.
Speaker 1:so well, hey, thank you so much patrick, this is great barn, thanks I wish we could have murph here as the athlete maybe put a couple uh, you know, barks into the into the thing, but uh, I'm sure he'd be all over the place absolutely but. But you know, if there's any like resources that you think I should, you know, find 401K9.
Speaker 2:401k9 is you know they're great, so that's great.
Speaker 1:It's a funny title too, so yeah, Well, thank you so much and and thank you Just appreciate it, man. Thanks again. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode with Patrick O'Connor talking about Murph and Tex and the canine division of the Austin Police Department. For more information, check out the show notes. Have yourself a great week and keep listening to the Mindset Forge podcast.