My Hero Theo

‘Once you’re on the Dog Unit, you’ll never want to give it up.’

He was right: it’s the best job in the world.

If you think about the most exciting thing you’ve ever done and times it by ten, then think about doing it every day with your best friend and getting paid for it, that’s what being a police dog handler is like. It’s the best game of hide and seek ever. Every dog owner knows how much fun it is to play with your dog. I knew if I worked hard and passed out with flying colours, I’d be able to play with my dog every single day and get paid for it. Yes, there’s a cost and a risk to chasing baddies but, ultimately, to your dog it’s a game.

I didn’t know it when I was training but when the general public get in trouble, they phone the police, and when the police get in trouble, they phone the dog handlers. Turning up to a scene and getting your dog out the van calms everyone. It’s like the cavalry have arrived. Us dog handlers have experience of so many different types of crimes because we’re called to everything and with that experience comes an air of calm. It’s partly because the dogs are so protective of us too and they know how to solve violence fast. One good dog is better than ten people on the ground. Faced with the prospect of a police officer unleashing their dog, a lot of villains decide to come quietly rather than keep on fighting.

I remember once turning up to a job and a massive fight was kicking off. Backup was on the way, but there were a few patrol cars there. The police were backing off and a handler with more experience than me had got out of his van with his dog and asked: ‘Who rules these streets? Who’s in charge of the streets? It’s the police! Now, let’s go and sort this job out.’ He wasn’t violent – he didn’t need to unleash his dog because he had experience and just having his dog beside him made everyone who was fighting think twice about continuing.

As he got his dog back in the van afterwards, he told me the best bit of kit any police officer has is their mouth. Sitting in the training school, being laughed at for saying I wanted to be a dog handler, I didn’t know any of that, but I was determined to get the job I’d wanted since childhood and nothing was going to put me off it.

2

Out of 400 recruits on that first day, I was the only one who wanted to work on the Dog Unit. There were 136 handlers in Greater Manchester Police in 2002 and I was determined to be one of them.

I passed out at the end of September that year and started my two years’ probationary policing. You see all sorts when you’re newly qualified and the experience you gain means by the time you come to apply for a speciality, you have become a developed all-round officer with street experience.

As well as dogs, I loved fast cars and when a job came out of division – where all the vacancies ended up – in the undercover car branch, I applied. I was told my application was impressive but there were more experienced officers applying. However, I was offered a six-month secondment into the branch when I heard about two spots that had come up on the Dog Division. I was desperate to get one of these jobs and turned down the secondment, putting all my eggs in one basket.

My excitement at getting to apply for my dream job was soon tempered, though. Denver hadn’t been himself for a while and the same day I heard about the jobs coming up, I had a call from the vet. Tests done the day before had revealed Denver had bladder cancer and it was advanced. He went downhill fast and I had to have him put to sleep just weeks after the initial diagnosis. It was the biggest shock of my life to that point. I was devastated and it took me years to get over my loss.

Despite treatment and pain relief, Denver’s quality of life massively deteriorated in the weeks following the initial diagnosis. He went from jumping up to greet me when I came home from work to limping towards me in pain. I was still taking him out, but where once he’d enjoyed walks for miles and miles, even a few times round the block left him exhausted. He’d always been so alert, ears pricked and ready for something exciting to happen, and suddenly seemed tired all the time. It was like he was ebbing away before my very eyes. He’d rapidly become a shadow of the dog he once was and I knew it wasn’t fair to keep him going. Selfishly, I wanted to keep him alive because I loved him and couldn’t contemplate life without him but I knew I had to do what was right by him in the same way he’d always done what was right by me.

On advice from the vet and using my intuition, I made the appointment to have Denver put to sleep just five weeks after he was diagnosed. I talked to him and explained what would happen. Of course he didn’t understand me but his tired eyes looked into mine for the longest time before I let him up in my bed for the final night’s sleep of his life.

The ten-minute drive to the vet the following morning was awful. I wanted every light to stay on red forever so I could keep him with me, but each time they turned green we inched closer to a world without Denver in it.

The vet said I didn’t have to be present but there was no way I’d let my dog draw his last breath looking into the eyes of a stranger. Watching him go, seeing him draw his last breath, is forever etched inside me. He was part of me. I loved him and I was never the same after he died.

Denver didn’t ask for anything, he just gave and gave and gave. He gave me so much love, he made me laugh, he listened to me rant on about work or friends or family. He did his best with all the training we did, he was loyal and he loved me just as much as I loved him. But then when he went, Denver took all that love with him. I was so angry when he died, it’s hard to describe but I’ll always be angry with Denver for dying.

As Denver grew progressively sicker, my application for the Dog Unit was going through the appropriate channels. A friend I had at division – Phil, who had finished his probation before me – was applying too and I’d heard through the grapevine there were fifteen applicants across the division for the two positions.

After weeks of waiting, my interview time came up. It was with the Head of the Dog Unit and the Divisional Commander. The first question loomed large but I was expecting it: ‘Why should I interview you as a dog handler?’

‘I’ve got a vocation for dogs. I love dogs, I’ve had dogs throughout my life, and I get them and they get me. I know that means nothing, I’ve got no experience of what police dogs are, but I want this job and it’s one I’ve wanted since I was a nipper.’

‘Correct. That’s what I wanted to hear!’ was the reply I got.

The rest of the interview went well. I showed I had experience, I had a good track record for arrests and had behaved impeccably during my time on probation. Desperate for a ‘yes’, I knew that I wouldn’t find out for a week.

I was in the nick at the end of a shift when I heard. It was before the time of emails and the chief inspector called and gave me the news which would change my life forever. He said I was young in service but they were really impressed with how I’d progressed. I’d start at the kennels in Hough End, Manchester, the following week for a thirteen-week training programme. I’d be given my own dog and would learn how to search, track and detain. It was a dream come true and by the time I hung up the phone I was buzzing and couldn’t contain my excitement. If I said thank you once during the conversation, I must have said it twenty times. I was in shock when we hung up, stunned I’d managed to land the job of my dreams on the first go.

I was still struggling with the loss of Denver. I’d had him cremated and his ashes were on the mantelpiece at home. I felt bereft without him and hated putting my key in the door because, every time I did, the absence of his wagging tail and nuzzling head on the other side felt unbearable but this was a ray of light. Not only was I getting my dream job, I’d have a dog back in the house again.

It was a very small pay rise, but a pay rise nonetheless. I’d get an extra £5 a day in my wage to compensate for the extra work I’d be doing outside of shifts, walking a dog, grooming and generally taking care of them. I was buzzing, absolutely beaming from ear to ear. I called Mum and Dad, who were over the moon. I was twenty-five and I had my dream job. Then I rang my sister Suzanne and my brother Gavin too, who were both delighted for me.

The dog course is at the Greater Manchester Police training kennels in Hough End, near Stockport. There’s a smell about it; the first thing you notice is the pungency – a mixture of wet dog and haylage (fermented forage) because the GMP horses are stabled up there as well. It’s an unmistakable smell, one you’ll never forget the second it hits your nostrils for the first time, but a really welcoming one too. When I turn up there every shift, there’s something about breathing in that scent deeply when I get out of my car that makes me feel like I’m home, a part of me is back where it belongs.

For all the welcoming nature of the scent, though, it’s a daunting place. There’s a hierarchy among handlers and when you’re a new recruit, you’re no one. Within minutes of starting on day one, I went from thinking I had my dream job to wondering if I’d made the right decision. I was an accomplished police officer in my twenties but now I instantly felt like a little lad on his first day at school.

I asked a handler who was coming out of his van where I should go.

‘Why the hell should I tell you?’ was his response as he walked away from me and through a door I’d follow.

I found my way to the canteen and saw a familiar face. The friend I had who’d applied at the same time – Phil – had secured the other position on the team. I’d never been so pleased to see anyone in my life. We said our hellos just as a mountain of a man came strolling through the door to greet us.

Dave Johnson was from Wigan and he had hands like shovels. He was huge and had an air of authority about him that I still wouldn’t mess with to this day. He explained we’d be working long hours, that training would be split up into different skills, but the dogs were the priority, and at the start and end of each and every day we’d be expected to muck them out and get them sorted. It would mean an extra hour or two on top of our normal working day but the Dog Unit wasn’t for the faint-hearted. Like many branches of the police, the training would be tough to root out the ones who had the mettle for it and those who didn’t.

After our warm welcome from Dave we were taken to the kennels for the moment I’d been waiting for: we were being allocated our dogs, the partners we’d serve with for years to come. I was still feeling anxious but my nerves gave way to excitement as soon as we approached the kennel block.

It’s worth pointing out here that being given your dog is a rite of passage for every handler but what often happens – which new recruits don’t know – is that the pairing doesn’t always work the first time around. While I was desperate for one of the fourteen-week-old German Shepherd puppies we were walking by, Dave stopped outside a kennel that had an aggressive-looking German Shepherd in it by the name of Simba – he was four and huge. I’d find out later they’d purposefully given me Simba because he was the biggest dog they had and I was only 5ft 7in.

Standing in front of his kennel with some bars separating us, Simba was snarling and growling with his top lip curled up. I’d never seen anything like it.

‘There’s your dog, G, go and get him.’

(G became my nickname on joining the police force and it’s still with me to this day. Gareth when I’m not in uniform, G when I am.)

Dave handed me a lead and gestured for me to open the kennel.

Clearing my throat, I squared my shoulders and unlatched the door. Somehow I managed to get in and get his lead on but the second I brought him out of the kennel, Simba nearly yanked my arm off and I almost ended up on the deck.

It was horrible. Everyone was watching, everyone was there; it’s something that stays with you forever the first time you get your dog out. I’d dreamt of the moment so many times, it’s all I’d wanted for decades, but rather than be the magical moment I’d always longed for, it was one of the only moments I’ve ever wanted the earth to open up and swallow me. Even thinking about it now I get goosebumps and feel a bit sick about how badly it went.

I could have cried as I handed Dave the lead and walked out without a backwards glance. Afterwards I gave myself an internal pep talk: ‘Come on, Gareth, this is what you’ve always wanted. You’ve dreamed of this job for years and you’re going to give it up the first hour you’ve started just because some dog has pulled you? You’ve come all this way, don’t moan, get on with it!’

With that began my thirteen weeks of hell.

Day two started with a lecture from Dave Johnson, the crux of which was that whatever you’re feeling as a handler will go down the lead and into your dog. Dogs are such intuitive creatures and have worked alongside humans for thousands of years, our bond being the strongest of any two species on the planet, but with that bond comes a responsibility. If a handler is stressed taking a dog into an already stressful situation like a fight, there’s a risk that things could go wrong and the dog could act of its own accord. If you are calm and focused, your dog will be that way too. But if you are erratic, panicked, over-zealous or angry, your dog will be the same. It’s vital you behave in exactly the same way as you want your dog to behave.

We’d start with simple commands, sit and heel and recall work, and move onto the more complex matters like biting as the course progressed. It was such an emotional roller coaster, Dave’s advice on day one was hard to stick to sometimes. Simba was never pleased to see me but we tolerated each other. Four years old, he had been given to the unit by his owners, who couldn’t handle him anymore. He had natural aggression, he was a tough dog and he was brand new to the unit, which was the only thing we had in common. We didn’t bond straight away and he liked to play me. One day he’d sit and do exactly as I told him, the next he’d ignore every command, leaving me frustrated and looking like I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d go from the high of controlling a huge Shepherd to the frustration of being treated like a fool by something with four legs.

I soon learned that timing is massive when it comes to praising your dog and that you have a small window to reinforce positive behaviours and get rid of negative ones. Get it wrong with the moment you praise or admonish them and you can mess them up completely. If you’re struggling with recall and screaming at your dog to come back and he does and you shout at him, he’ll associate coming back with being shouted at.

When you’re teaching him to sit, even when his bum hits the floor for a split second, you need to notice the second itself and praise him. As a new recruit all I’d hear for ages was ‘You’ve missed your chance, you should have praised them then.’ Timing has now become second nature to me, like it was for all the trainers who taught me, but it takes some time to learn to get it right.

Life at Hough End wasn’t for the faint-hearted. The daily routine started at six o’clock every morning:

Go to your kennel, get your dog out

Put him in the wagon, come back

Muck the kennel out, go back to the wagon

Get your dog, groom him

Go to the canteen to make tea and toast for all the trainers (it had to be Lurpak butter, anything else just wouldn’t do and you’d get berated before being sent back to the shop to get the proper stuff)

Start the day’s training after tea and toast

Every day was Groundhog Day. It was September, absolutely Baltic and it rained every single day. You’d finish at 3 o’clock, only you didn’t finish because you’d have to sort your dog out. It was Monday to Friday but you’d be expected to go to the kennels on Saturdays and Sundays and do the same routine of taking care of your dog before using your initiative and training them on things they’d been weaker on during the week.

As well as the act of training the dogs and preparing them for a life of front-line policing, the whole training programme was designed to test you to see how badly you wanted the job. The training got tougher as the weather got colder. Everyone’s hands were in ribbons. We were working with long lines that would zip through your hands and leave them dry and cracked, but on day one Dave had decreed anyone who came with plasters would be off the course: ‘No one’s going to come and help you at 2 a.m. when it’s lashing wind and freezing rain and you’re on a track in a forest in the middle of nowhere that’s just dried up. You have to be able to help yourself and get used to working in uncomfortable conditions.’ I needed to be toughened up and while Dave’s way of doing it might not have been to everyone’s taste, it worked for me.

Phil, the pal who had got the other job on the Dog Unit when I got mine, severed his index finger one day a few weeks into the course. He was bitten by the dog he was training and had to go to A&E. They patched him up and told him to rest his finger, but the next day Dave had him straight on tracking.

You hold the lead loosely in your hand and rest it over your index finger when tracking so the dog can head off and use the length of the lead if they need to but so you’ve got a hold on them to keep them safe and out of harm’s way. If a tracking dog comes to a main road, they’ll get themselves run over by their singular dedication to follow a track.

They started us on tracking that day just because Phil had hurt himself and it would test his mettle to hold the long line like that for the whole day against his injured finger. There was no other reason for it. Everything was about making a point and testing how much you wanted it. Phil still can’t straighten his finger properly as a result of that day but not for one second did he think about complaining or quitting.

Six weeks into the course, while Simba had become more pliable and we’d accepted each other as partners, I was struggling to get him to lie down. I was so frustrated by it but, remembering what Dave had said about my feelings going down the lead, I tried staying patient. As he’d done on day one too, Simba still strained at the lead and pulled when I got him out, something I’d have to get a handle on before we could pass out.

It was a dark and cold December afternoon when Dave decided he’d had enough of watching me struggle.

‘Check him back.’

Dave wanted me to issue Simba with a command that would bring him back to my side – a tug on his lead should have done it. I checked him to heel and looped the length of the long lead underneath my arm. Clearly dissatisfied with how I’d done it, Dave let out a long sigh and marched over to me. He stood between Simba and me, and using his 17-stone weight compared to my 9½-stone weight he pulled Simba back. Simba wasn’t used to such force, though, and turned around. As I was standing in between Dave and Simba, he latched onto me and rather than go for one bite, he bit me on the arm five or six times before I managed to get him under control. Dave watched the whole thing unfold before uttering, ‘That was your fault, lad,’ and walking off.

A fellow trainer on the course could see I was in pain, angry, upset and ready to answer back. ‘Eyes open, ears open, gob shut,’ he said before following Dave back towards the canteen.

Convinced I’d lost my job on the unit, I walked Simba back to the wagon. He bit me again before I could get him in the wagon and I knew, even if my time on the unit wasn’t over, I couldn’t work Simba, he’d lost any respect for me that I’d worked hard at gaining.

Every day on the unit ended with a brief appraisal and, more than any other day, I was dreading mine. Simba had broken the skin on my arm and I was in agony but sat dutifully and waited for Dave to begin.

‘How do you think today went then, lad?’

‘It could have been better …’ I trailed off, exhausted, in pain, cold, tired and upset.

‘Yep, you’re right there. See you tomorrow.’

That night was agony. You don’t stitch a dog bite unless it’s very serious because their mouths are germ-laden and you need to make sure you wash out your wound. I was in pain and worried sick about what the next day would yield.

Walking in to Simba the next day it was like he’d forgotten yesterday had happened. He let me lead him out to the wagon without any fuss at all and I started to think maybe my luck had changed. After all, I’d been bitten. I’d taken it like a real dog handler; maybe it was the initiation I needed and everything would be fine. I dared to start feeling a little sunnier about the whole thing but that changed the second I presented Dave with his morning tea and toast.

‘Take your dog out the van, you’re not having him anymore. That’s you done!’ I was told.

Somehow I managed to get out into the open air before tears started streaming down my cheeks. My dream job, the one I’d wanted since I was a lad, was done. I was out, it was over. I felt humiliated, hurt and angry, but above all else I was bereft. I didn’t have a plan B and my plan A had been ripped from me for something I felt wasn’t my fault. But I did as I was told and pulled myself together before I got back in front of Dave.

‘We don’t know what we’re going to do with you – possibly send you back to division and we don’t think you’re going to come back, so we’ll see …’

It was brutal. I’d rather they took me into the yard and beat me up. Physical pain I’d learned to deal with, but this was an emotional pain and I was hurting at the thought of getting so close to my dream only to have it potentially snatched away from me.

3

While I spent the rest of the day feeling sorry for myself, unsure of what my future held, but knowing better than to ask or make a fuss, I was able to observe things way more than I had when I’d been busy with Simba. I could see there were high-level discussions going on between Dave and a man called Paul Quinlan, who was a trainer in charge of the breeding programme for Greater Manchester Police.

As I sat trying not to be noticed, drinking my now-cold tea, I could see Paul shaking his head and telling Dave ‘no’ in no uncertain terms. At the time I had no idea what the discussions entailed, but I later learned Dave was telling Paul he needed an extra dog. The dogs Paul was working with were supposed to go to experienced handlers only. Police dogs can only work until they’re around eight or eight and a half before they’re retired, usually to the handler who has run them during their career. Puppies mostly go to those with experience who are on their second or third dog. Their argument was getting heated but I knew better than to presume the dog would be for me. Another officer on the course didn’t have a dog because he hadn’t gelled with any he’d been given so I presumed the new dog – if it came off – was for him.

Paul reluctantly finally agreed. Dave was a man used to getting his way and later that day I saw Riley for the first time. A ten-month-old German Shepherd, something about him immediately captured me. He had a brindle stripe (sometimes called ‘tiger striping’, the term is used to describe a dog’s coat where the stripes or patches are almost the same colour as the base coat) and was absolutely beautiful. Indeed, Riley was a Ferrari compared to Simba, who had been like a Ford Fiesta. He went straight to the officer who didn’t have a dog as I had expected and I spent a week on the course without a dog.

If it had been hard before, it was even harder without a dog to train. I did all the chores, got everyone their tea and coffee and toast, mucked out, brushed and got all the dogs their food and water. I was a lackey but knew better than to utter anything about my future or what would happen. Every time I’d pass Dave he’d tell me he had yet to hear from division about what would happen to me. With hindsight, I know now that it was all a test: they were seeing how resilient I was, how much I could cope with and how much I could take. The thing about dog handling is you can’t lose your rag, you can’t get stressed and upset or start shouting the odds. You need to be even-tempered and have a quiet, stealthy resilience. Dave was pushing me all the time to see if I’d throw the towel in or have a go at him about the unfairness of the circumstances because I was idling and growing bored, but I didn’t. I don’t think they had any intention of putting me off the dogs, they were just testing me to see how much I could take.