Latest / Real Crime with Adam Shand / Trust the Dog The Story of Police Dog Vader

Transcript

Trust the Dog The Story of Police Dog Vader · Real Crime with Adam Shand

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: A Poche Production.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand. I'm your host,
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Adam Shand. Imagine walking into the darkness looking for a killer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: You don't know where he is.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: You don't know whether he's armed. You don't know what's
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: waiting for you around the corner. And the one partner
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: you're trusting with your life can't speak.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: He can only lead you.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: For 26 years, police officer David Raymond worked alongside police
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: dogs in far north Queensland.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: But one partnership would come to define his career. His
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: name was Vader.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: A jet black German shepherd, Vader tracked killers, confronted armed offenders,
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: found the missing and helped save lives.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Again and again.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: David was forced to make a decision that went against
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: what witnesses were telling him and sometimes against his own instincts.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: He had to.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Trust his dog, and Vader had to trust him. At
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: the centre of David's policing career was partnership. It's the
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: bond that develops when a police officer and a dog
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: walk into danger together, each relying on the other to
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: get them home, day after day. There are moments in
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: David's book, Vader, A Police Dog Story, that are frightening.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Others are funny. Some are heartbreaking.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: And hanging over all of them is the knowledge that
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: partnerships like this don't last forever. Anyone into dogs knows that.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Because after surviving armed offenders, violent confrontations, and thousands of
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: dangerous jobs, Vader's story ended not on the street, but
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: quietly in his kennel. On the morning of the 15th
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: of May 2015, Dave walked outside, and saw Vader lying
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: there motionless and knew his partner was gone. This is
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: the story of David Raymond and Police Dog Vader, a
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: police officer, a dog, and the unbreakable trust between them.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Dave Raymond.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Adam. A very, very nice description. Thanks
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: for the introduction.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, mate, it's making me tear up already.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: You too.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, these things, they leave a big impression on us.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I would start by asking, because you didn't begin the
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: book with Vader's greatest arrest, but the morning you found
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: him dead, why did you decide that was where the
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: story had to begin?
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: That I'm not sure of. I've obviously been a policeman
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: for 36 years, and that's why I see myself as
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: a police officer, not so much as an author. And
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: people keep calling me. an author these days, that's very
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: hard to get my head around. It's almost surreal to
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: see your book in, you know, bookshops in the middle
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: of Melbourne or the middle of Sydney and stuff like that.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: So why I started the book like that, I don't know.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: I've always had a keen interest in writing and it
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: just seemed like the way to start it. I get
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: abused by quite a few friends when they open the
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: book and they read the first chapter and they say,
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: you make me cry, you know. So I don't know.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: I don't know what they thought. Maybe it was a
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: stroke of luck. Maybe it was just, yeah, good management. But, yeah,
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: it worked out pretty well.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'll venture a theory here that the
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: manner of finding him dead like that and the impact
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: on you is so apparent immediately when you open the book.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: And then you spend a fair bit of time building
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: up the reasons for that partnership. And it wasn't a
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: straight line. No dog's perfect. No partnership's perfect. But by
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: the end, it's a perfect story.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And I think... It's very difficult to get
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: your head around. The dog, we had such a close bond, obviously,
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: from that type of situation. And so writing a story
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: of finding him dead was probably one of the worst
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: times of my life, you know, finding the dog dead.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: But it's funny about the police service. QPS is no different,
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: I think, from the other services, police services, but Once
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: your dog dies on the Monday or the Friday, on
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Monday you've got a new dog, you know, so you
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: don't have time to grieve and stuff like that. So
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: this is probably a way of grieving and writing a
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: story about my dog and writing about how he died. And,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: you know, the amount of stuff that that dog went through,
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: like taking people from moving cars and wrestling with crocodiles
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: and all that type of stuff, to think that he
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: would just die. And I was sure he was going
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: to die in a hail of bullets because of the
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: life he lived. But obviously, yeah, as I say, as
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: you say, I found him in the kennel dead and
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: most probably we think, going by the vet's prognosis, was
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: probably by a snake bite.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well that only came out and we weren't,
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: we're not 100% sure but we think that's what's actually happened.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's tragic mate and, you know, you've got a
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: family and the dog's there at home with you, as
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: most handlers do, they have their dogs at home.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: What impact did it have on your family?
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: Vader was, I've had five police dogs all up and
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: Every single dog that wasn't a great police dog was
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: very good with the family. But most of the other
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: two dogs that I had that were not so good
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: with the family were great police dogs. They just wanted
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: to work. They couldn't care less about anybody. Even people
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: like Vader, people think we had a close relationship, which
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: we did. But the dog would often not even acknowledge me,
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: just look at me and say, well, we're going to
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: work now. You know what I mean? And that type
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: of stuff. And if I go to work, of course,
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: he'd jump in the back and off we'd go. He'd
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: be happy. So he'd sit in the kennel there. The
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: other dogs, I lost Zed. Zed was more of a
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: family dog, and he's the one who got me belted
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: one day. If I could just quickly tell the story,
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: I was chasing an offender up a creek line one day.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: We'd gone about, I suppose, five minutes off the creek line,
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: so about a kilometre. We came to the top of
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: this ridge, and this male person had been walking along
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: the creek bed and been threatening people in the backyard
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: with a knife. We clambered to the top of this
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: three-metre embankment, and I saw the offender ahead of us.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: and the offender came up from eye to tree and
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: I called on him to stop or the dog would
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: bite him. He decided to take a separate course of
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: an action off he ran. He went through a few
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: yards that bordered on this three metre embankment. We followed
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: through and then I saw the offender go around a
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: fairly high fence line. I decided now was the time
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: to let the dog off to apprehend him because I
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: didn't want him to get into a house with a knife.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: So I sent the dog in to bite. I followed
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: and I was only 30 seconds behind. As I came
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: around the corner, the offender was waiting there with a
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: one of the fence parlings and smashed me in the face.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: It split my nose, cut my eye, knocked me to
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: the ground, didn't knock me out luckily, but what is,
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: and probably if it wasn't so serious it'd be funny,
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: but what actually happened was when the stick broke, the
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: stick broke into half a dozen pieces and Zed was
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: in doggy heaven, he thought I was throwing sticks for him,
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: so he's running back and picking him up, running back,
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: picking him up and coming back to me. While I
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: was fighting for my life, my dog was playing with
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: these sticks. So the end of the story was we
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: ended up rolling down to Beckman. But as luck would
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: have it, one of the yards that I actually ran
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: through chasing this crook was an off-duty police officer's house.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: And he saw us having this wrestle and came down
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: and gave me a hand. From there, obviously, the police
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: dog didn't make the grade for a police dog anymore.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: So we decided that we'd have to retire him. Now,
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: I tell that story because although he wasn't a great
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: police dog, a family dog, he was the most beautiful dog.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: He lived with us for the next eight years, eight
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: to ten years at home. as a family dog, and
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: he was just the most beautiful dog, as opposed to
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: people like Vader. Vader probably wouldn't have made a nice
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: dog even in retirement. He probably would have been kenneled
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: because he just didn't, he just wanted to work. That
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: was his life.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because some handlers will tell you that it's a
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: fractious relationship. There are times when the dog that wants
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: to work, comes to a scene, is ready to bite.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: That's what they train for, these general purposes dogs. And
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: if they don't get to bite, they can redirect on
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: their own handler. Were you bitten by Vader?
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, they're more frustration bites. So it would often
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: be if you took the dog off an offender and
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: the dog would turn around and bite or it didn't
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: get opportunity to bite, it just will zip around and bite.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: But handlers, as a handler, you're very aware of that,
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: that that's going to happen. So you just make precautions,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: you know, make sure you've got a hold of them.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: You're half expecting it. And the bites that the dog
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: will give you in frustration, only little nips, they don't
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: hurt too much. You don't have to put stitches or
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: anything like some of the dogs I've dealt with, so. Yeah,
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: so they're just frustration bites, and they don't really turn
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: on you as such. They let go pretty quickly when
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: they realise who they've got hold of.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: I have heard of handlers who have stitches from their
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: own dog, but they swear by them.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: That's their role.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: They're not supposed to be cuddly and lovely, but they
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: can be, but they're there to do a job.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: And Zeb's interesting. Zeb was another German Shepherd, wasn't he?
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: That's right, yeah. Zeb was another German Shepherd, yeah.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: It might surprise people to know that you don't get
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: these dogs as puppies. You get them as more mature dogs.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: And Zed had come from the Air Force.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: How did you come by him?
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: No, Vader had come from the Air Force. So originally,
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: believe it or not, when I first joined the dog
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: squad in 1999, you'd go into the new squad and
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: they'd say, there's your new uniform, there's your new belt,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: go and find yourself a dog. So we'd get on
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: the radio station, we'd put an advert in the paper
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: asking if anybody had a dog that was digging holes
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: and jumping fences or running away and stuff like that.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: They're the dogs we wanted. So we didn't have our
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: own breeding program. We've gone on from that. Now we've
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: got our own breeding program. We breed some beautiful dogs.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: But back in those days, you just basically got whatever
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: you could take off people. And that's how I ended
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: up with my first dog, which was Buddy, and my
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: second dog, which was Zed, which was a donation from people.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: And then the next dogs were basically bred for police dogs.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: So the first couple, Buddy and Zed, was sort of potluck, really,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: what you got. Were you a dog guy before that?
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Did you have some intuition about the kind of dog
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: that would work with you?
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Look, I've always been very fit. I don't... Yeah, I was...
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: a lucky person that you put me in front of
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: an exam and I'd usually fail. But physically or genetically,
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: I was very lucky to have that type of stuff.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: This just comes naturally with fitness. And that's a very
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: important part of dog handling, obviously, because you have to
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: work by yourself. I'm very self-motivated, so I could work
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: by myself. And they're probably the two traits that we
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: want in a dog handler. So as for being a
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: dog person, I had my own dogs, obviously, but I
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: had a fairly good reputation about being able to work
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: by myself and a lot of motivation there. So that helped.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: And the OIC back then, my old sergeant said, yep,
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: we want you in here. So that's how I got
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: into the squad. Yeah.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: But what were the qualities in those dogs that led
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: you to take the chance with taking them from other
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: situations into police work?
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: So we would look for a dog that wanted to
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: dig holes, that wanted to jump fences, wanted to run away,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: that was just full on. The people just shake their
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: heads out and say, this dog's too much for me.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: So that's the ones that I wanted to get away from.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: So we'd go and do tests like retrieval drivers are important,
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: being able to put their nose on the ground, having
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: that little bit of not scared of anything, basically not
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: scared of fireworks, not scared of thunder, not scared of people.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: And they were the traits we really needed. And then
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: we could develop those traits into dogs. into what we
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: moulded around to what we needed.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and yet they're undergoing a 14-week training program where
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: they were having to be conditioned to all kinds of
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: noises and automatic gunfire, helicopters hovering over them.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: And it's a rigorous process.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: And so, I mean, an unforgiving process as well.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And a lot failed. A lot didn't
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: get through. I think we were looking at one in
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: every couple of hundred dogs that we actually took originally,
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: you know, that we would search throughout the state. And
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: we'd only take so many dogs. Putting a dog under
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: automatic gunfire, you know, is one thing. As you say,
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: jumping out and coming in a helicopter, because we would
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: not often, but sometimes we needed to be deployed by helicopter.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: So the dogs had to get used to that type
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: of stuff as well. I remember one, they're not scared
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: of anything, but when I had my first dog, Buddy,
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Buddy was such a massive big dog and he was
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: the pitcher, the pitcher dog of the QPS. He had to...
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: make me look a bit better. But anyway, we were
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: sitting down there one day and because we were recruiting
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: at that stage for more dogs, they decided they'd use
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: Buddy as the dog to say, well, this is a
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: police dog and his handler. And they interviewed me. And
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: it was one of the local TV stations. And what's
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: happened is the interview is talking to me. And at
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: the same time, the sound guys put the boom mic
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: over between myself and the reporter. Now, I'm not the
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: only one that thinks that that boom mic looks like
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: one of those big arms we put on. And, of course,
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: without any warning, Buddy's just launched himself between myself and
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: the reporter and taken out the boom mic. So it
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: cost the poor QPS, I think, about 15 grand or
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: so if it were to replace one of those on
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: that weekend. But, yeah, so they're just amazing. They're always
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: on edge. They're always watching anything that's going to be
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: a threat to myself as the handler.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you start to develop the intuition more about
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: your dog's capabilities, its strengths and weaknesses, and you've got
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: to work within those. Zed clearly didn't make the grade
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: too nice. He gets retired to home. And you get Vader,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: you get Vader and It's all going well until you
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: take him into the bush, you make a discovery about
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: him that's going to be what you must work with
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: the rest of your career with him.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've really struggled and I think it's much easier
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: to get your first dog than trying to go on
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: your second dog because all you want, and it's a
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: bit like me as a 60-year-old now, I'm going in
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: the department or whatever, want to change the computer system.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: I go, really? That was working perfectly all right. So
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: when you get a new dog, the dog is totally different.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: My five dogs were totally different in age. in the
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: way they track, the way they bit, the way they
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: did their obedience. Everything was a little bit different. And
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: when I came, I had Zed that was a really
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: nice tracking dog that would track very, very slowly and methodically.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: And then I came across this Vader that just was
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: not doing anything that I wanted to. I was just
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: relying on him to do exactly the same as what
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: Zed was doing and track slowly, where in fact, and
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: the way I got over that problem is one day
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: I just said to one of the blokes who had
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: no preconceived ideas about dog handling, I just said, a
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: bloke's just run off. I want you just to run
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: with this dog and let me know what you think.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: He used to come down to help us train. And
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: he took the dog and the dog tracked at a
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: million miles an hour, just really fast, not methodical, but
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: did not miss a corner, did not miss a beat,
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: just went around there. And then that taught me, okay,
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: so all I've been doing is trying to pull this
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: dog back, whereas I should just let him go. And
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: each dog has their own different traits. And we rely
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: on that speed to get people Unfortunately, in the smaller areas,
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: we don't have the resources like the capital cities do
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: where they can get five, six, seven police cars in
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: a cordon to trap somebody in. We often, in these
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: regional centres, need to actually catch up to the offenders.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: So we do try and put a bit of a
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: cordon in place, but we track at speed so we
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: can catch up to them. And that's why, and that
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: was ideal for up here, having a dog that tracks
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: so fast.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: And one of the key attributes of these dogs is
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: not to be distracted. And Vader was very good at that.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: But there was one thing that always distracted him, small animals.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: And the first time he took them in the bush,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: a wallaby became his target.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: Well, that was the first time I had the dog.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: I turned up at the police academy after Zeta died,
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: turned up there and the instructor said, oh, mate, just
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: go down to kennel five. There's your dog. There's his
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: name's Vader, take him out and get used to him,
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: which I did. So I got him, went in, showed
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: him the toy. And of course he jumped in the car.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: He's really toy driven. If they're not food driven, they're
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: toy driven. So we make sure that, yeah, we work
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: on the trait that they're really interested in. So this
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: was the toy. I took him down to a little
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: place called Wacol, which is about 15 minutes from the
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: police academy. There's a big cricket pitch there with a
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: white picket fence all the way around. And my idea
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: was just to, we do a lot of training down there.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: We do our courses. And my idea was just to
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: get the toy and just throw it for the dog
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: and let him enjoy it. I hopped out of the car,
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: went in the back there, opened the back, and just
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: about to throw the toy, a kangaroo comes past. And,
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: of course, Vader spots it. And I had no idea
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: this dog had a hatred for small animals at this stage.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: So the dog decided, I want that kangaroo, and off
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: he went. And I saw them both jump the picket fence,
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: kangaroo first, Vader after that. And then I jumped after
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: that a long way back, obviously. And then they jumped
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: over the second picket fence on the opposite side from
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: where the police car was and into the bush, and
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: they're gone. And I wandered around for 15 minutes, 30 minutes,
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: looking for this damn dog, calling his name. But he
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: had no loyalty to me, so he was going, no,
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: he wasn't going to come back. So I thought, after
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: about 30 minutes, I thought, oh, I went and got
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: the police car, actually, and I drove up and down,
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: hoping the dog would hear the car and come back out.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: And I decided I'd have to throw my hands up
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: and let the boss know that I'd lost this dog.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: A bit embarrassing, I can tell you, because they're worth
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: a lot of money, and it's a bit embarrassing. You
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: protect the brand, of course. They don't want to hear
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: that a dog has lost his dog. And just as
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: I'm dialing the number, he should come out of the bush,
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: but Vader. I didn't say anything to him. I just
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: hopped out of the car, walked around, opened up the back,
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: and he hopped. He looked at me as if to say,
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: I missed him this time, mate, but I'll get him
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: next time for you. Like I wanted the kangaroo, you know.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: And I just slammed it all down. I took him
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: back to the police academy and put him in his kennel.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: Didn't say anything until the next day when I realised
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: they're not going to be careful. But it wasn't the
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: only time he chased after small animals. There were a
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: couple of other jobs where he took off and I
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: couldn't handle him. So, yeah.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, because that's something that, You have to deal with
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: the strengths and weaknesses of the dog. But also, I
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: guess people underestimate how much the dog mirrors the handler,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: his temperament, his reactions. How long did it take for
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: you to start to gel in that way, that he
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: could understand your mood, what you wanted from him?
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: It's very funny, but if you go to a job,
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: for instance, somebody's running into bushland with a firearm or
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: with a knife and something like that, And you'll stand
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: on the edge. And being in that uniform is a
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: strange feeling because you almost feel 10 foot tall and bulletproof.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: You know, you just do when you've got your dog
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: beside you. And there's many times we've stood on the
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: edge of the bush and somebody has said, a fender's
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: gone in there, he's got a firearm. And I felt
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: a little bit uncomfortable. And the feeling of the dog
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: looks at me as if to say, you sure? And
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: I look at him as if to say, sure. We
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: get that feeling. We go, oh, let's go. You know,
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: we do get a bit funny. So they feed off
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: you all the time. And it took me a little
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: while to get used to that because of that initial
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: tracking ability. I wasn't tracking, I wasn't following him as
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: I should have. And of course I get frustrated. And
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: in fact, I don't like the dog. It's a stage
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: where I go, I don't like you anymore because you're
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: not doing your job. Whereas it was my problem. And
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: I should have known that from the start. I still
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: do the same thing, although I'm training other dogs now
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: for some government organizations. And I still do exactly the
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: same thing. You've just got to trust your dog. And
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: sometimes your mind seems to want to override that, that
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: feeling that you should trust your dog.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: That's it. You've got to follow the dog. And this
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: really came.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Home to you.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: I think it's a great part in the book where
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: you've got a young man who is intended to take
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: his own life. His mother gives you information suggesting one direction.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: And Vader's saying, no, no, no, no, you've got it
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: all wrong. And it gives you the opposite direction.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: That was a trust moment that actually was life-defining for
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: that young man.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: What happened? Well, exactly, it saved someone's life at the
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: end of the day. And just a trigger warning, this
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: does involve suicide, but I turned up to a job
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: where a young fellow, 22-year-old, had run off from his
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: mum's house, did sort of wanted to harm himself. He'd
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: taken a rope and decided that he was going to
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: do himself in. So I turned up there and... I
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: asked mum, because he'd left mum's house, I said, which
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: way did he go out once he got on the footpath?
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: And she said he went right. I brought the dog
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: out and the dog wanted to go left. And I'm
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: thinking to myself, you know, witnesses have told me he's
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: gone right. And not just her, it was a number
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: of other witnesses. But Witnesses are funny sometimes. You know,
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: people will see totally different things. You'll have five people
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: there and they'll all see different bits and pieces. So anyway,
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: so I decided this time I was going to follow
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: my dog. And I'll go on with the story later
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: where I didn't follow the dog and missed out on
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: getting somebody. But in this case, which was a life
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: and death situation, I decided to follow the dog. I
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: tracked for about, I suppose, half a kilometre. The dog
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: turned left into a park, a very darkened park. And
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: keep in mind as well that... We don't run along
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: with the torchlight for obvious reasons. We don't want to
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: give ourselves away as to our location in case we
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: have an armed offender. And our night vision gets very
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: good over all those years of training, running in the dark,
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: so our night vision is quite good. And then that's
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: when the feeling on the line, you start to understand
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: what your dog's behaviour is on the end of that line.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: The dog will slow down, it will speed up, and
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: you'll know it's going to turn a corner or run
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: off somewhere else. But in this particular case, the dog
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: lunged forward, so I knew straight away that somebody was there.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: And then the dog started barking. towards this area and
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: I shone my light and actually found a young fellow
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: hanging from a set of swings in the park. I
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: then quickly ran over and tied him because the dog
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: went to bite him and the dog just thinks everybody's bad.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: So I quickly ran over and tied my dog to
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: the parling fence because there were a row of houses
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: alongside the fence there and we managed to cut him
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: down to give him CPR. I was on the radio
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: obviously calling for help doing CPR, and we managed to
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: bring him back to life, which was a fantastic thing. So, yeah,
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: just incredible. And that's not the only life the dogs save.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: The dogs are responsible. Everybody seems to think that the
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: dogs just chase criminals and, you know, they steal all
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: the bite work and stuff like that. But the amount
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: of lives they save from people, finding missing people that
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: have gone to hurt themselves is just a phenomenal amount.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: But as you say, they're tuned up to bite and
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: you've got to restrain the dog at that point.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: And so the dog's going, well, what's happening here? You're relieved.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: He's trying to read your emotions. How do you calm
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: the dog down in that situation?
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: It's just a matter of, one, reading the dog, making
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: sure that you understand what they're doing and keeping yourself
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: nice and calm because the dog's going to feed off
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: you all the time. So if you get really angry
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: towards someone, the dog will start barking and carrying on.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: But then if you calm down, and that's what happens,
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: and that's all. I think that's just policing. As you
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: get experience with policing, you know how to respond to
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: a situation. and the dog follows you in that regard.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: And when it's a dynamic situation, and quite often we've
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: heard of stories where dogs actually run off or something
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: because of the dynamic situation because they're not put in that.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: So it all comes back to your training. So if
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: you train like real life and you come to those situations,
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: you're going to have no problems with your dog.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's quite a moment though. You're alongside this young
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: man you've just saved. Dog doesn't know what's really going on.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: You're related. He's confused. Do you give him a treat,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: give him his toy to thank him, or how does
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: it work?
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: The dog doesn't understand what he's done. He's gone and
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: found a person. Now, it's like if I let the
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: dog out of the vehicle, he's going to do something. Now,
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: whether that's just go to the toilet, which we give
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: commands to go to the toilet, whether it's to find
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: a murderer, he doesn't know any different. At the end
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: of that track, if we find somebody, it's just basically
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: good pat, a great, really high-pitched sound, run the dog
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: back to the car, say he's done a great job,
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: and that's his treat. That's all he wants. He just
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: wants love. Or we'll give him the toy. So in
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: that situation, it was just a matter of, I had
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: to tie the dog up to the fence because the
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: dog was going off his head and I couldn't control
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: him as well as do CPR. So in that case, I, yeah,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: put the dog in the side of the thing. Of course,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: a lot of lights came on then because I thought
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: that the police was actually wrestling with somebody. But that
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: was good because they got on and rang the station
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: to say, we know exactly where he is. Because sometimes
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: you get a bit confused as to where you are
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: after following a track for quite a distance.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I hope that that young man got
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: the help that he needed. and maybe reflected upon the
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: close call that he'd had. Did you keep tabs at all?
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Did you used to keep tabs with people like that?
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: Not on him. I kept tabs on a lot of
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: other people. In fact, we had one young lady who
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: decided to do exactly the same thing. And I put
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: Vader into the bush searching for her. And after about
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: 45 minutes to an hour, we located her and she
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: was within meters of a crocodile. And she was within
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: 30 minutes of dying. In fact, we got a call
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: from the from the doctors to say that she was
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: so close to dying we were lucky we found her
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: which was a fantastic effort but a funny thing with
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: that one as well when I put the dog in
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: she was hidden behind a log which was on the
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: creek bed and the dog continued to want to go
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: over there but in North Queensland we have a lot
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: of those rivers that have crocodiles and they're pretty vicious
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: although there's no coming back from a crocodile bite so
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: I put the dog over there he wanted to continue
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: to go over to that particular area to search I
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: was doing I wasn't doing a thing called tracking this
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: time I was doing a thing called wind scenting where
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: the dog will pick up any scent that is coming
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: off the thing. So it's heads in the air as
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: opposed to on the ground. Because the track was too old,
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: she parked there about three hours ago. So getting a
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: track was a waste of time. So searching was the
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: only way we could do it. But in that, with
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: the wind scenting as well as pick up the human scent,
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: the dog would be picking up the crocodile or the
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: small animal scent as well. So the dog wanted to
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: go over there. And I kept taking him away from there.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: Eventually I relented and went over there and we found
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: the lady under there. So just going back to your
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: question with that lady I kept in touch with and
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: she actually worked in our, my wife and I, a
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: small business. We've got a small business on the side
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: and she came and worked for us for a while.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: She was down on her luck and we gave her
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: a bit of a sense of purpose. But she's not
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: the only one I've kept in touch with, others around. So, yeah,
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: a nice story.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I hope she thanked the dog at some stage.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Exactly, she did, yeah.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: In Madrid or something because it's those terrible moments that
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: you have to deal with and to think there's a,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: a happy ending must motivate you in your job. It's
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: one of the rewards that police have, I think. You
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: are human beings like the rest of us.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: For sure. I've never been one to say, well, I
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: found you and that's the end of it. You know
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: what I mean? Like I've always followed up. And if
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: they're baddies, sometimes I'll speak to them and just see
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: how they're going and stuff like that and say, you know,
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: it's almost like a big game, you know, sometimes that
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: they run, we catch them. But I just don't think
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: it finishes there. And quite often I've kept in touch
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: with people that we've located and mainly the ones who have,
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: you know, fallen hard times just to check in on
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: them sometimes.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: So, yeah. Good on you. And some you can't save.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: And there was one chapter in the book which really
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: was very vividly written, and congratulations on how you did it,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: was the case of the 17-year-old Sonia who'd been stabbed
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: by her stepfather. He'd spread fuel through the house and
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: her sister was also supposed to die as well. And
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: you come into that scene absolutely hellish. Just paint the
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: picture for us if you could.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: Well, and that is a case where it's just a
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: sensory overload. There's people screaming, everybody running around. Nobody's gone
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: near the house. It's a unit block with separate little units.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: In that case, separate semi-detached units. So like a small house,
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: you don't know. For starters, you don't even know which
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: address it is, you know, and they're just pointing to
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: one door. And then you go to that type of
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: stuff and... Obviously, you take your dog out because you
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: want to do a search of the house to make
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: sure nobody's in there. Still not knowing that there's a
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: dead person inside there, if you know what I mean.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: So it's just absolute chaos. And I think that's where
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: it comes down to, again, experience with your critical incident thinking.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: What's important now is a very good saying. Let's have
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: a think about what we've got to do. Well, the
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: first thing we've got to do is get in there
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: and see if we can find. So I went in there.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: There was a female on my right-hand side that was
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: obviously deceased. I had to go in with my dog,
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: with Vader, to do a bit of a search. In
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: this case, I left him alone. So the dogs do
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: what's called a building search. And that is if it's
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: a recent break and enter or there's a person we're
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: looking for inside a house, the dog will search through
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: that house. And where that person is hiding, if there's
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: a person hiding in there, the dog will sit and
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: bark and then we can come in and help them
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: and apprehend them. And I found people in roofs and
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: people in underneath the floorboards. I found one bloke in
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: a sofa bed, for goodness sake. You know, he didn't
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: take the mattress out and hid himself in the sofa bed.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: The dogs are fantastic like that. And normally that's off lead.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: But in this case, I wanted to put on lead
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: because I knew that this offender was armed and had
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: already obviously committed a murder. So I put the dog
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: through the house. We went through a couple of bedrooms,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: and I came to the back of the unit and
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: In there, there was a door handles had been tied together.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: The toilet, they're on right angles together. And the toilet
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: door was tied up with a piece of rope to
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: the bathroom door. And I thought there's got to be
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: an offender in here. I thought, my feeling was that
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: somebody had actually tied the door locked and left the
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: offender in there. So, and of course it's all... And
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: another problem was there was a lot of petrol around there,
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: so the taser was out because if I had fired
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: the taser, there would have been, you know, a big
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: chance you could blow yourself up. Same with the firearm,
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: although I did my firearm out, if the muzzle flash
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: may have ignited the fumes. So there's a whole lot
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: of stuff you've got to think about while you're going
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: through here. And all in... Even going back now, I
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: think I'm searching for an hour, but in fact it
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: was probably only about two minutes, you know, the actual search.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: It was really, really quick, but it just... Reflecting back now,
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: it seemed like I was there forever and then we
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: found a young girl in the bathtub in the kitchen
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: I kicked the toilet door open and sent the dog
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: in the dog was just going to rip him apart
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: if he had to go hold him first up and
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: there was nobody in there and it's funny but that
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: feeling just before you get and I don't think it's
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: the the feeling of what you're going to see in
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: a situation it's the anticipation of what you're going to
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: see but If that makes sense, it's anticipating, right, here
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: we go. I'm going to kick that door open. What
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: am I going to see? And then when you find
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: somebody or find a dead body or find whatever you do,
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: it's not so bad. You say, oh, I've got to
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: deal with it then. So I'd gone in and organised
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: a toilet door, kicked that, turned around and smashed open
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: the bathroom door. And that's where I found the second
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: young girl.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: What about the offender?
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: The offender had escaped through one of the bedroom windows.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: He'd obviously heard the dog turn up. Because just going
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: back to the beginning when we do that building search,
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: we put the dog beside us. We'll give the command,
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: police with the police dog, give yourself up in the
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: hope that they'll give themselves up so we don't have
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: to put our own lives at risk, obviously, with the fire,
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: with the petrol and stuff like that in there. So
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: we'll give the command. And generally speaking, the offender will
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: come out. In this case, they'd heard him and he'd
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: ducked out the back window and taken off, unbeknown to me.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: I didn't know how long he'd gone, otherwise I probably
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: would have got a track. He headed himself to the
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: police station quite a few hours later.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: And that job ended.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: You raise an interesting point, though, about levels of force
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: the police officer has at his disposal. You've got your taser,
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: you've got your firearm, you've got your capsicum, you've got
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: your bat and you've got your dog. And obviously the
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: firearm is the last resort. And the dog is part
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: of that continuum of force. And there may be a situation...
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: And every police handler has to deal with this or
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: he has to sacrifice the dog in order that he
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: not shoot an offender. Difficult process.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: Difficult decision to make. And again, it's not something I
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: would like to say what I do, but then in
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: any situation, you don't know how you're going to react
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: with any situation. Is the dog's life above a human's life?
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: No way in the world. No way in the world.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: I'd send my dog in every day. If I had
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: to choose between them, I'd send the dog in every
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: single day. Is there another way to get the offender
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: without anybody getting hurt? That's probably the way you'd look
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: at it. And if not, I mean, unfortunately, the dog goes.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: But I haven't heard of that happening ever, not in
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Australia anyway. So I'm glad I never had to make
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: that decision.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, but I guess it's because you have that thought process.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: What do I do next? What's my next option? Where
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: a lot of people who haven't had that training will
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: just go bang, bang, bang or send the dog straight
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: in or whatever it is because a lot of offenders...
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: will give up when confronted with a dog. I'll never
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: forget seeing a very violent protest in South Africa. And
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: the police there, they would allow this riot, basically, to
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: get to a certain point. And then there were two
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: streets where there were all the canine units. And when
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: they got to that point where they didn't want them
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: to cross, the dogs were released. And I'd never seen
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: people scatter faster in my life. And that avoided a
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: physical confrontation with the armed officers.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: So.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Usually, a lot of people will actually give up.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, you get the odd person
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: who wants to take the dog on, but very, very rarely.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: We're very lucky, and I think in Australia, and I've
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: just done a course with the Americans, and they were
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: a bit surprised about how fast our dogs track in
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: relation to finding offenders. And they said, we wouldn't do
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: that in America because we're going to get shot. We
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: don't have the gun crime over here as what they do.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: Every person over there has got a gun. Every offender
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: they're chasing may have a gun, whereas here very rarely
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: do they have that type of stuff. So generally speaking,
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: we can track fast and then we can ask the
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: offender to give themselves up. And 99% of the time,
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: they don't want to take the dog on. You get
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: the one or two who have over the years, but
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: I've never seen the dog lose, if anybody wonders.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: And what's the closest.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: You ever came to Vader being killed on the job?
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: Probably with Vader, probably the one that sticks out, and
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: I think I wrote about this in the book, but
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: we turned up to an incident where there'd been a
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: home invasion. We were only streets away, so we put
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: our lights and signs on because as a dog handler,
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: all you're doing is patrolling. You don't need paperwork, which
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: is half the reason I joined the dog squad because
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: I hate paperwork. If the detectives don't ask for a
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: statement five times, they don't really want it. That was
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: my mantra. So I turned up to this particular job
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: and as I'm getting out of the car, a person's
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: run towards me and I've had my firearm out at
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: that stage. I said, stay where you are because I
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: didn't know if he was a friend or foe. And
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: he basically put his hands in the air and said,
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: I'm the one who rang the police. So I went
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: inside and he said, they've run out the back. And
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: I said, what's happened? He said, they just came in
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: and assaulted me and my partner. So, of course, thinking
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: they're decent people, I've got my dog out and I've
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: tracked out the back of these unit block and bordering
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: along the back of the unit block was a bit
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: of a trail into a bit of a mangrove rainforest
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: area at the back of this unit block. The dogs
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: started tracking down there and about, I suppose, 150 metres,
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: 200 metres along, it's turned, ducked into this little side area,
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: clearing in the bush, and I thought to myself, okay
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: i i didn't show my torch but i called the
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: person to come out because i thought he might be
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: there but then the dog come out and started tracking
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: again so that's what we call a hot spot with
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: dog hanging so we know that somebody's either sat there
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: possibly for a little bit and then taken off so
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: i'm under the impression they probably sat there seen me
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: coming and taken off i've continued tracking with vader and
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: about three or four streets away i saw these uh
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: a pair who had stopped running by then they just
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: are walking because they thought they're far enough away but
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: when a canine gets on your trail you're pretty well
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: buggered and uh anyway so i arrested them somebody came
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: picked them up i went back and there were police
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: inside there watching because there was cctv footage of the
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: whole incident that happened inside the house i came back
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: and i was watching it on the television and one
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: of them had a loaded shotgun he's loaded up and
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: aimed it at uh the occupant of the house. Happened
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: to be a drug deal gone wrong. And these two
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: have run off when he's heard the police car coming,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: he's run off and gone. And when I went to
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: that hotspot, what's actually happened is, because I said to
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: the staff then, I said, I know where that firearm is.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: And I went down, found the firearm exactly where I was.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: I went back and spoke to the offender then. He says, yeah, mate,
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: I had that gun trained on you. And he said,
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: but when I saw the police dog, he said, I
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: got scared, so I ran off. So you just never
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: know what's around the corner. You just get a little bit,
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: is it complacency or is it just doing your job?
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: I don't know, but you do. So, I mean, there's
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: an opportunity. The dog could well have been shot. I
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: could have been shot. Anything could happen, especially if they're
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: full of drugs or alcohol and not thinking clearly. So
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: I suppose that's just a close call.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: You talk about one decision in the book where you
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: decided not to take Vader into a dangerous situation. It's
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: one of the best decisions of your life. How hard
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: is it to protect a dog whose instinct is to
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: run towards danger?
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: I think you're talking about the one that was on the, yeah,
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: where there was an offender who wanted for child exploitation
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: material and a few sexual offences against children. He decided
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: he was going to go up on about 100km away
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: from our home station and decided he was going to
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: camp there away from everything and away from the police.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: We got information as to where he was. We went
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: in with the search team. As luck would have it,
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: for some reason, Invader was not a noisy dog when
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: he was involved with the CERT team because we used
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: to do a lot of work with CERT before they
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: got their own dogs. So we started walking towards this place.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: But if I could set the scene, this offender had
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: actually put a tent in the middle of a big
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: clearing area with a few sparse trees and stuff around
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: so that if anybody did approach his tent, he could
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: make a quick getaway. Unbeknown to us, that's how it
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: worked out in the end. So... What actually happened is
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: we started sneaking up. We got, I suppose, about half
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: a K away, maybe a K, half a K away,
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: and the dog started making noise and I went, this
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: is no good. I'm going to take the dog back.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: I said to the cert team, I said, you ring
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: me if we need to, if we need the dog
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: to come in. I'll be there as soon as I
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: can if he runs and we need to track him.
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: As it unfolded, the cert team turned up and he
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: sprung the cert team sneaking up to his thing and
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: he's run off and he's had an exit plan. So
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: what he's done is he's put a noose on the
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: side of this cliff face and he's ran out of
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: the tent, put it around his head and he's actually
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: jumped off this ledge and hung himself and died instantly. Now,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: had I been there with the dog, I would have
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: sent the dog in for sure. I mean, that was
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: just his, that's his bread and butter, chased down an offender.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: But you can guarantee if that bloke had gone over
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: the ledge, the dog would have followed him straight after
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: and the dog would have just plunged to his death.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: or he might have hung on to the bloke and
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: given him a double dose of what he's getting. But,
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: you know, it's just those little sliding door moments, I
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: think they're called, don't they? You know, it's just why
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: I didn't take him up there. I'd taken him to,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: you know, 10, 15 other search jobs, but this one
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: I just said, oh, I can't do it because he's noisy.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: Maybe he knew something.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. 36 years at Copper, 26 years with the Dog Squad.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Your wife, Helen, rode every moment. Of these adventures. Did
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: you go home and share this with her?
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Every single time. I'd often wake her up at
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: one or two o'clock in the morning and say, guess
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: what I did? You know, and I'd be talking like
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: I was on speed or something like that, tell her
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: exactly what happened. And she'd just go, OK, that's good love.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: Now you're right now off to bed. You know, that
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: type of stuff. And off I go to bed. Because
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: you would come down off, you know, jumping on the
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: side of moving cars or, you know, violent offenders and
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: catching some really bad people. And being in chases back
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: in the old days, not so much these days, but,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: you know, just all that type of stuff. You come home,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: you're adrenaline rushed and you'd sit there and, yeah, so
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: she put up with it. She also put up with
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: the times, and I've said this before, 41 times I've
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: had to put a work cover claim from wing injuries
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: I've got from work, 41 times. And probably half of those,
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: at least half of those, were hospital visits from, and,
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: you know, a quarter of those are up in the ambulance,
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: so being dragged up by the ambulance. And I'd often
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: make a point, that I was conscious I was going
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: to ring Helen, my wife, from the ambulance and I'd
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: get on and I'd say, oh, and she'd go, what's
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: happened now? I'd say, well, we were in the ambulance
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: but I'm all right, you know. So, yeah, it's just
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: part of being– and I was never– I did 36
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: years and I did 36 years on the front line.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: So I was there every single time. And I think
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: most people will agree, even police, that probably the dog
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: handlers are right on that front line because they're very
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: experienced officers. They've got the extra use of force, as
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: we say, with the dog in the back And we'll
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: go to everything. We'll go to fatal traffic accidents in
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: case somebody, the drivers run off and we'll take control.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: We'll go to sieges. We'll go to the first on
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: the scene to the murder. So we can just control
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: things until people get there, until the DDA gets there,
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: who is the district duty officer. But we will often
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: be first there. So we, yeah, we're right on the
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: front line. And people talk about awards and that type
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: of stuff because I've got a few little things that
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: I've racked up over the years. But that is not,
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: because I've stepped out or been brave or anything like that.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: It's just happened to be there, you know what I mean?
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: I was on the road constantly that we're going to
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: turn up to those things. So it's just a matter
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: of a stroke of luck as well as, you know,
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: just being there at the right place at the right time.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: You're just as eager as the dog by the sounds really.
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: Oh, exactly. That's 100%, 100% sure.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: You're built like a racing whippet and you have the
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: same mentality.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: And a lot of all the dog handlers I've ever met,
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: are always long serving and they carry all kinds of
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: injuries and they never want to pull up. What is
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: it about this job that you guys stay in the job?
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: And also, I mean, I have met some who've had
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: mental health issues around trauma and things, but a lot
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: of them tend to be able to submerge that and
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: keep going. And sometimes the dog is the key element
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: of that. There's a fellow I knew in Victoria here
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: who had a very severe PTSD and they gave him
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: a put him on light duties and they gave him
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: this black Labrador who'd failed at Border Force and they
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: were just almost a little mascot. And blow me down,
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: he turned this dog into the best tracking dog of
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: all time and it.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Resurrected his career.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: How much different is it working with a dog than to, say,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: a human partner in terms of your own mental health
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: and the way you approach the resilience of the job?
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great having two work. You know, I got
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: on with everybody in the QPS. I don't think I
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: had too many enemies out there or too many people
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: I disliked. But it's really difficult when you turn up
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: to a partner. You've got to spend eight hours with
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: that partner and make small talk, you know. So in
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: the dog squad, you obviously go out by yourself with
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: your dog. You go to Macca's, you get yourself some food.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: You buy food for the dog. The dog doesn't answer back.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: It just does as he's told sometimes, most of the time.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: And you just get along fine if you're. You know,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: you want to spend five minutes of taking the dog
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: out to play a game. You do. You go do
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: a training track. You don't have to make all that
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: small talk. So that's a great, great thing with it all.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: In respect to, and I haven't come out totally unscarred.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: And I think any police officer who does probably 10
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: years operational is going to have some type of PTSD.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: It doesn't make a difference because of the amount of
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: trauma they go to over their careers. um and so
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: i haven't come out totally unscathed i'm not medication or
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: anything like that but i you know and and i
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: think this is a very important thing for those young
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: coppers who are listening that get out and get that
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: they have in the in the qps anyway we have
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: that early intervention program where you can go and see
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: a psychologist before anything happens and i used to take
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: advantage of that all the time i'd go and speak
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: to a psychologist to make sure that i didn't fall
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: into those depths and and and that's one thing i
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: would would say to any police just take advantage of that.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: They pay for it. You know, go and just have
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: a talk to somebody because you can't see those symptoms
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: affecting you. And I did listen to the story on
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: that young fellow you were talking about, Victoria, and he
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: did a fantastic job in turning that dog around from
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: its own environmental issues. But that's part of the job
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: and part of the excitement of all. That's just a
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: great feat to be able to do that and he
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: should be very proud of what he's done there.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, he's a terrific fellow.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: And I think that point about The dog handler works
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: on his own. He's got to be kind of bulletproof.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: People look to him. It can be putting a suit
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: of armour around you when you really should make yourself
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: more vulnerable. Seek out the help that's available. And so
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: you can be continuing to be effective in your role
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: and not drive your family mad as well.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: You've got an Australian Police Medal.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: I think Helen deserves a medal as well, having gone
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: through what she's gone through.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: Oh, she wears it around. Don't worry, Adam. She wears
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: it around.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: That's tremendous.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: It's tremendous.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Now, because you did start in the book with the
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: death of Vader, I want to return to it. And
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: I'm just trying to imagine what it was like for
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: you putting the dog in the police vehicle for that
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: final journey. Did it feel like you were transporting a
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: dog or a fallen police partner?
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: I've never really thought about it, but I think it was.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: It's just a surreal feeling again. I talk about that
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: job where it felt like an hour I was searching.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: I was probably in search of two minutes. The drive
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: to where I put the, where I took the ADA
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: is like, felt like it was two hours away. I
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: was only about 15 minutes. It was, but yeah, I
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: suppose looking back now, it's, it's, I was in tears.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: So I probably wasn't thinking clearly, you know what I mean?
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: Cause you're so close to the dogs and, and that's
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: a big thing as well. Being a big, tough dog handler,
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: you know, you don't want to, you know, just show
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: your vulnerability and say you're in tears, but, The fact
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: is I was because he was so close. And yeah, yeah,
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: definitely felt like transporting a partner to his final resting place.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Because his death became national news. Were you surprised at
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: the amount of emotion that this event created?
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Now, I must admit that when I first, when
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: I became the OIC of the dog squad, I decided
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: I was going to raise the profile of the dog squad.
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: And I think that's where that all came in. So
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: social media was fairly new. We started showing our catchers
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: the training we do with the dogs, how they track,
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: how they bite, the funny little things they do, you know,
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: picking state of origin champions and stuff like that. You know,
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: they do the dog who it goes to, Queensland, New
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: South Wales. So we started doing all that and they
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: got a bit of a following. And from that, I
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: think it just developed. And, you know, I wouldn't be
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: wrong in saying I think we're the first to start
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: doing this. And a lot of the other people started
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: taking it on. So they became quite a cult hero
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: within the community. My next dog, which was Axel, when
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: he passed, the community here put a statue up of him.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: So the statue actually in Cairns of my police dog Axel,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: because of his same, the amount of people he caught,
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: the times he went to community events, the whole social
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: media following was fantastic.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: Is it hard not to compare a dog like Vader
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: with who comes next, Axel?
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: You probably don't compare, or you probably do, because if
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: you had asked me which were my best dogs, I
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: could tell you the best dogs that were the best
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: police dogs. I could tell you which dogs were the
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: favourite that were, you know, comforting towards me, the ones
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: that were really good with the family. So all a
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: little bit different. So you compare them, but in different ways. Yeah.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: You talk about the fact that you didn't have to
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: talk to a human partner and make small talk and
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: the rest of it, but I'm going to tug the
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: emotional heartstrings now a little bit. If you could somehow
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: put Vader beside you now for five minutes, what would
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: you want to say to him?
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, good boy. That's what he lived for. I'll just
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: be saying, you know, but he would just be sitting
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: there and looking at me to say, okay, whatever, where
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: are we going now? It What's the next job? You know,
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: that's what he would be doing. He wouldn't be saying,
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: I don't need that. I don't need food. Let's just
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: get out and get to work. And that's what he
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: wanted to do or training or doing something, you know.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: So he wouldn't care what I said to him. He
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: just wanted to get out and go back on the
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: front line. Good boy. Good boy.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: Now, listen, I think there's a lot that guys like
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: you can offer the average dog owner. What piece of
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: advice would you give to people about how to create
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: that partnership that's going to be fulfilling and how that
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: can go? Well, it's very important that every single bit
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: of dog training is nice and slow and you don't
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: try and rush anything into the dog. People tend to
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: look at YouTube and all these social media posts and
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: stuff like that. I think it's just so important that
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: we don't look at these dog trainers that are out there,
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: and there's some fantastic dog trainers out there, but they're
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: not going to show the dogs that, you know, don't
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: climb ladders or don't scale too many high fences. So
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: it's just important that you take time with your dog,
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: just spend five, 10 minutes a day in training it
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: and don't try and rush anything.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: I think that's probably the most important thing and just
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: love the dog for what it is. You know, don't
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: try and make it something it's not you're going to
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: see all these things where these dogs just do fantastic
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: and i get a lot of clients who've got their
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: uh melanoise which are really high driven animals and they
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: see them on youtube you know uh jumping fences and
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: and healing nicely beside them And they just want the
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: dog to turn into that. Sometimes they're just pet dogs.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: They just don't want to do that. As long as
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: the dog's sitting and staying and being quiet when you
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: want it to, who cares? Giving a cuddle when you
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: need it, who cares what it does?
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: Yes. And in your case, you learned a lot about
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: yourself as a handler through Vader.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: He taught you.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: And I think it's a bit of a misnomer when
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: people go to puppy school. It really can be owner school.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: It's about learning the correct temperament to deal with the
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: dog successfully as you had to.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: Not just puppy school, all schools, it's mainly the handler
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: we're teaching. It's the tone in their voice. It's the
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: right time to give them their treat or the right
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: time to give them praise. It's all about timing. It's
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: really teaching them. And everybody comes and they just admit
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: that that's what they want to do. The way they
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: often say is the dog's just not, and if they
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: get frustrated with the dog, the dog's going to feel
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: that frustration. It goes back to the old saying, the
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: dog feels every emotion off you. When I used to
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: go to jobs, when I'd get a call to say,
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: male person armed with a knife at such and such
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: an address, you'd be going in your head, okay, where's
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: my gun? Where's my taser? Which route am I going
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: to take to make sure that I don't compromise my position?
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: So all this is going through my head. And all
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: that time, this adrenaline's pumping off me. And in the back,
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: the dog starts crying because it's feeling, it's knowing something's happening.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: It can feel that pressure. So the dog can feel
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: everything that's coming off you. So if you get frustrated
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: with the dog, the dog's going to get frustrated as well.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: And it's just not going to perform and it's going
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: to make you more frustrated. I did a job one
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: day where a young fellow had escaped from the police
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: air wing. And long story short, I ended up searching,
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: couldn't find him. And I decided I was going to
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: call the search off after about an hour. And I went,
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: as I'm walking the dog back to the police vehicle,
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: I looked over down this little side street. I saw
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: these four detectives talking about what our next move was
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: to try and find him. I walked back to tell
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: them that I'd finished. And I was standing outside this big,
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: big house. And in front of the house was a
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: bush and there was a fence behind that. I came back.
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: I sat down with the dog beside me, with Vader
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: beside me. And I said, sorry, I can't find him.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: And without warning, that dog's launched itself into the bush
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: and dragged the offender out of the bush. He was
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: right in that bush beside these detectives. He's seen the
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: dog coming and he has just had this big adrenaline dump.
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: And that dog, the dog's fed off that and gone, okay,
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: he's mine. So he disregarded myself and disregarded those other
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: four detectives straight in there and got the offender who
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: was scared. So these stories tell you what the dog's feeling.
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: It's so important that it's easier said than done to
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: calm yourself down And if you can't calm yourself down,
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: just take the dog back and come back in five
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: minutes later and try it again.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Well, the amount of people I strike in the streets
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: here in Melbourne where they've got the little white fluffy
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: dog and they come towards the other, oh, my dog's
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: nervous and they pick it up and the dog's looking
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: at them and it's all, and it's this heightened moment.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: I always say, I think it's you that's got the problem,
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: not the dog.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: Exactly right. Exactly right.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: I'm always a smartass like that. Listen, just finally, you
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: haven't given up.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: You've now retired after a fantastic career, and thank you
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: for your service, but you're not finished with dogs.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: What's the current involvement?
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: Well, now I just basically got my own little business
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: that I run. I train just normal people's dogs. I
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: do puppy preschool and stuff like that. Also, I have
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: a contract with the government, so I'm training a few
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: government dogs for some government organizations, which are fairly high end,
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: and that's pretty intense that's tracking bite work uh detection
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: work and stuff like that I have been lucky the
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: friend of mine invited me over to Cambodia just recently
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: to do some uh and helping uh instruct on some
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: courses with tracking mind detection dogs over in Cambodia and
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: also once I understood my role they took me into
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: the tactical section where we did a lot of tracking
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: a lot of bite work and stuff like that so
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: I've got all these little options that are open it's
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: good because I won't have another dog myself because they're
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: too hard to say goodbye to. And I've learnt that
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: over the years. And now I haven't got that fallback
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: where the dog dies Friday, back down Monday, you're back,
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: you don't have time to grieve, back with another dog.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: I don't have that to fall back on now. So
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: I'll be, you know, so I get my dog fix
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: out of training other people's dogs or other organisations' dogs.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: Fascinating you should say that because I've gone through the
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: same process. My dog died a couple of years ago
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: and I have not had the heart to get another dog.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: And I literally look after other people's dogs, pat every
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: dog in the street. But I realised that that grief
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: of losing your best mate, it's hard to get over.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure Vader will always be in your heart
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: in the same way.
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: Oh, exactly as they all will. They all will. Axel
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: was probably, he was probably a good police dog, but
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: really good with the family as well. They used to
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: run around. And when Axel died... He was, the night
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: before he died, he was, we were in the lounge room.
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: He was never allowed in the house. So we put
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: him in the lounge room for his last night. We
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: knew we had to put him down the next day.
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: And I had a terrible cold and I was coughing
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: and that poor dog was blind. It could hardly walk,
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: could hardly move. And he was sitting in one corner,
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: just basically dying. And I was sitting in the other,
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: in the lounge chair about five metres away and I
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: got a really bad cough. And that dog managed to
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: drag itself over to sit beside me when I thought
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: I was really cruel. You know, that just goes to
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: show what it, what the dog, unconditional, just right to
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: the end, that dog followed me just to protect me,
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: which was just a great thing. And which is really
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: nice now because now I can go down, I can
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: sit down at the park where the dog statue is
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: and look at him and go, you know, remember your mate.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: You know, that's, yeah, it's just such a lovely feeling.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: Lovely, mate.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: It's a great place to finish there. Thank you so
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: much for your time today, mate. It's fantastic. Well done.
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: No worries at all. Thanks, Adam. Appreciate it.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Dave Raymond. The book is Vader.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: police dog story published last year it's still available dave
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: is also doing some speaking around the country if you'd
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: like to get in touch i can direct those messages
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: and he's got a lot to offer not just about
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: dogs but about temperament around dogs and and those stories
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: a lot to offer there so um and um yeah
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: these dogs are amazing and uh they will go we'll
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: run through brick walls for their owners and their handlers
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: and uh that's what vader and the other dogs did
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: for dave raymond If you want to report a crime,
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: please call Crime Stoppers 1-800-333-000. You can also email me,
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: Adam Chand, writer at gmail.com. But don't ask me to
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: look after your dog, please. This has been Adam Chand
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: for Real Crime. Thanks for listening.
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to this episode and supporting this story.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Independent storytelling that shapes the world is what Podshape really
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: cares about. Right now, there's thousands of people listening to
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: this show and our other true crimes, and they're completely engaged.
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: More than 10 million Australians listen to podcasts each week.
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: If you've ever thought about advertising your business in a podcast,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: there's a link to reach out in the show notes
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: or head to Podshape.com to book a free call.