K-9 Officers Show Their Stuff

Ledyard Police officers Dan Gagnon and Bob Kempke brought their partners to the Wednesday, for a Montville Area Fire Police Association meeting, and aside from a little heavy breathing, the partners behaved perfectly.

Gagnon’s partner even attacked Kempke – with glee, and on command. And he let go on command, too.

Ringo and Lambeau, Gagnon’s and Kempke’s partners, are Ledyard’s K-9 officers.

Ringo is a 120-pound German shepherd, and Lambeau is a younger and smaller dog, weighing in at about 70 pounds.

The dogs are trained to find and, if necessary, detain humans, and to find drugs. And the human officers are trained right along with them.

The training

The process takes 12-14 weeks, Gagnon said, regular work weeks, eight hours a day, Monday through Friday. Dogs and humans have the weekends off. Longer training means more thorough training, and sometimes K-9 and human officer training goes on for 16 weeks or so, with part of the time focused on tracking and detaining, and part of the time focused on drugs.

Most of the training, Gagnon said, is for the humans. The dogs get it quicker than the humans do, he said, as the humans are learning “a lot of dynamics.”

There’s leash control, body physiology, cues and more. “You have to be able to pick up” what the dog is telling you, he said.

Kempke said he trains Lambeau in obedience for an hour every day, and the human and canine officers have refresher work every other Tuesday, for eight hours.

Issues

Many dogs don’t make it through the process. They “wash out,” to use Gagnon’s phrase.

Surfaces can be a real problem for many dogs. When the dogs go to, say, the Crystal Mall, they can wash out because of the shiny, slippery floors.

Gunfire can be another problem.

“If he can’t acclimate himself to gunfire, he gets washed out,” Gagnon said.

His dog, Ringo, was a dropout from the Fidelco guide dog program. Ringo was just a little too aggressive to be a guide dog, but he’s a fabulous K-9 officer.

And fire police turnout coats, Gagnon said, “look eerily similar to bite suits.”

Cost

Ledyard paid $6,500 for the canine officers, and then there was training on top of that. A fully trained dog can cost $10,000-$12,000.

There’s an outfit in Pennsylvania, Gagnon said, that will supply a trained dog, training and all the equipment for $15,000.

Once the dogs and humans are trained, however, the ongoing costs are minimal. Gagnon said Ledyard budgets $2,500 a year for the canine officers.

In June, the Montville Public Safety Commission discussed the idea of adding K-9 officers to the Montville Police.

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