- Good afternoon. Welcome to the Bloomington. Recording in progress. Celebration of service. I'm Steve
- Wicks, and I'm honored to serve as your president this year. Please silence your electronic devices.
- On this day in history, May 26th, 1927, the Ford Motor Company produced the 15 millionth and final Model
- T, the world's first mass produced affordable automobile.
- So in honor of yesterday's Memorial Day holiday, please, if you are able, stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
- I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands,
- one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
- Thank you. So we had no one sign up for today's reflection. Most of the reflection spots in June are
- still open. Please sign up if you have something interesting to share that you can share in three minutes
- and avoid crossing any political or religious red lines. The link to sign up for the reflection is in
- the roundabout each week.
- So in replacement of reflection, we have a short Memorial Day video from 2023 that Tyler's going to
- show. On Memorial Day, we take time to honor the men and women of the United States Armed Forces who
- gave their lives in defense of our nation and its values.
- On this sacred day, we reaffirm our commitment to those who paid the ultimate price. To never forget
- those soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who selflessly served our country and
- gave their lives for our freedom, our values, our way of life. For we must never forget the price that
- was paid to protect our democracy. We must never forget the lives, these flags, flowers,
- and marble markers represent a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, a sister, a spouse, a friend,
- and America. We honor not only those who served our country selflessly and paid the ultimate price,
- but also their families. For Gold Star families, the price of freedom is personal. We are grateful for
- the service of their loved ones and humbled by their sacrifice.
- May your resilience inspire Americans to never take our freedoms for granted. Every fallen hero has
- a story. It is our duty to remember those we have lost. It is our honor to stand with their families.
- And it is our sacred obligation to remember all that you have given. Here at Arlington National Cemetery,
- the final resting place for over 400,000 service members
- and their family members, every day is Memorial Day. The service of these brave men and women is forever
- enshrined in these hallowed grounds. This Memorial Day, join us in remembering these service members.
- May their memory be a constant reminder of selflessness, duty, and the price of freedom.
- Thank you, Tyler. Tracy Ivanovich will introduce our guests today. Thank you, President Steve. And as
- I call your name, if you could please stand so we can welcome you. We have Rachit Gupta, guest of Jim
- Bright. Marilyn Widd, granddaughter of Marilyn.
- I'm not supposed to introduce him because he's usually here a lot, but I'm going to anyway. My neighbor,
- Bob Walker from South Bloomington, Rotary, as in Fort Myers, and Tracy Goodman here with Hank Walter.
- Then last but certainly not least, Ben Barranco here, guest of Jeff Richardson.
- And if you all are interested in learning more about Rotary, we'd love to tell you more about it. So
- just ask any of us and we'll be happy to give you more information. Thank you, President Steve. Thanks,
- Tracy. Joy, do we have any guests online? Steve, we are a small group of Rotarians online today.
- No guests. Thank you. All right. One birthday to celebrate this week on the 30th, Marcus Debro. And
- then we have lots of anniversaries.
- On the 29th, Judy Lucas, 29 years with the club. On the 30th, two individuals, Joy Harder, 20 years,
- and Wilson Shatandi, three years. On the first, sitting over there at the reception desk, Judy Schroeder
- and also Bob Salzberg, both of whom had been in the club for 38 years. Also on the first, Marshall Goss,
- 39 years, Winston Schindel, 44 years,
- Tim Thrasher, 45 years, and Fred Dunn, 53 years. Let's have Tyler, if you could put up the PowerPoint.
- Okay, announcements for today. First, housekeeping item. Continue to have members who forget to sign
- in. We track sign-ins both for attendance and also to make sure that we're square up, we're on the honor
- system with IU Dining. So please, if you attend, just initial next to your name. If you're not eating,
- we have a handful of people each week who don't eat, make sure you circle your name, circle your number,
- and that way we'll make sure we don't charge you for a meal.
- help wanted. Um, mentioned the weekly meeting roles besides the reflection. We have other meeting roles
- that need to be filled for June. So please sign up. Uh, hopefully the link will be on the roundabout
- celebration of service. We'll start with a Rotarian doing great things outside the club. So Lance Eberly
- past club president, plus past district governor, and he has been named to the boys and girls club hall of fame.
- The Boys and Girls Club board member for 23 years, chaired multiple committees, served as treasurer,
- served as vice president, served as president, still active with the Boys and Girls Club. So it's quite
- an achievement for Lance. And now another celebration of service. Last Thursday's Wonder Lab Summer
- Blast Off.
- Here's some pictures, here's the early crew, Ellen Strohman, Sally Gaskell, Diana Hoffman, getting ready
- to greet enthusiastic youngsters. Here's a later crew, Mark Peterson and his wife, Patricia, Amy Osojima.
- Here's Amy, and then on the right is Leslie Kutsenko, Rotarian, and also the Wonder Lab coordinator
- of this project. She did a lot of work arranging all of this.
- Here we have Leslie and Joy Harder and Peyton Flynn. As the sun came out, they put a tent up over our
- table, which was really nice. And here are the people who made this happen. First of all, I think they
- expected 600 children. They had 800. So very well attended. There was a lot of youthful energy. Besides
- Leslie Kutsenko, Michelle Cohen, our community services co-chair, took the ball and ran with it from
- the club standpoint.
- And then members who helped, Lam Barker, Peyton Flynn, Sally Gaskell, Joy Harder, Diana Hoffman,
- Steve Engel, Dave Meyer, Glenda Murray, Cindy Neidhart, Amy Osojima, Mark Peterson, Ellen Strohman,
- and Steve Wicks. And then we had a couple of friends of Rotary who helped, my sister Cecilia Knapp and
- Mark's wife, Patricia. So good job, club.
- Hopefully there will be some children, more children reading this summer. Volunteers for Meals on Wheels,
- I checked with Diana this morning and we have that covered for Friday, so we're in good shape there.
- Okay, Beacon is an organizational member and their Solidarity Sleep Out is coming up June 5th,
- June 6th. The link to sign up is kind of covered right now, but it's sleepout.something.
- Both Forrest and Amy are here today if you have questions, but I think they'd like you to sign up if
- you plan to sleep out. It's at the First United Methodist Church, Greenspace. So please consider doing
- that. And then our meeting in two weeks. It is one of the weeks when the Union is booked with other
- events. So we're meeting at the, in the Grand Hall, the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center, 1145 to 1.
- You should be able to park for free here at the IMU that day, or you can pay for parking at the IU East
- Garage, which is across from the Delta Gamma House. And then for those of you who get rides, there's
- a really nice passenger drop off on the north side of the Neal Marshall building. And we'll have more
- details in the days ahead. Other save the dates. Club Picnic at the Bryan Park Woodlawn Shelter on June 23rd.
- the teacher's warehouse supply drive on July 11th and then the rotary toast is on November 6th and we
- will right now they are selling tables for the rotary toast so if you're interested in buying a table
- see me or Hannah Hirsch from our club is leading the efforts for selling tables so Hannah can help you
- and she's sitting at the far back table. So Rotary 7 area is a focus I cover this almost every week
- And we're finishing up Youth Service Month. So we did a lot of things this month involving youth. The
- Wonder Lab Summer Blast Off was youth oriented and certainly our scholarship awards geared toward high
- school seniors. And then Happy Dollars. So for the balance of May and June, Happy Dollar proceeds will
- be donated to the Rotary Foundation.
- be used to fight polio and undertake service projects around the world, including here in Monroe County.
- And we do have time for Happy Dollars today. So is anyone happy? I see a few hands up in the air. We
- are adjusting our technology.
- I missed celebrating my birthday with the club last week, but it was on Sunday. So I'd like to celebrate
- the fifth annual Refugee and Supporter Picnic Sunday at Cascades Park.
- It was a great time. In spite of a little drizzle, it turned out to be a beautiful late afternoon. And
- a special shout out to my bride, Cynthia Nighthart, for all her hard work in organizing this and also
- the annual winter holiday party that we have for refugees. Thank you.
- I think most of you know, we just got back from a almost five month world cruise, and I just want to
- say here's $10. It's so nice to be back. As crazy as it is here, you just need to go to Mozambique and
- see an AK-47 on their flag, and it makes you appreciate being here. And it's wonderful to see Rotarians
- again. I am celebrating the start of the Bloomington Early Music Festival tomorrow.
- today. Yes, we are celebrating the Bloomington Early Music Festival and tonight you can hear a quartet
- from Philadelphia playing a federal fanfare at the Franklins. If you have never attended this festival,
- it is music. It is not weird people in stuffed shirts, so don't freak out. But you will be amazed at
- the range of music that was happening at our
- 250th, and that's what we're celebrating this year. I left some brochures on every table. Ignore the
- one that says FAR. Everything is at Trinity Episcopal. There are amazing workshops, coffee versus tea,
- how to make your own quill pen. So many things. Go to the website. Show up at concerts. No tickets.
- Just come and have fun and be amazed.
- I'm excited because Linda has just produced a number that she's written, and it's already been in New
- York. And so it will be coming out somewhere here, I'm sure. And so thank you.
- Michael, I'm very happy because my daughter and my adopted daughter are both going to be visiting here
- next week. I'm celebrating graduating law school earlier this month.
- I'm happy to have celebrated two of my grandson's major life events. One graduated from IU this year.
- He now works at the IU Fowl Golf Course, and he got to meet the Savannah Bananas. He was so excited
- already. And then the other one just got married, and he and his lovely bride live here in Bloomington.
- Joy, do we have any happy dollars online? No happy dollars online, Steve.
- Okay. Michael Shermas, as soon as he puts down the microphone, will introduce today's speakers. Okay,
- so this introduction is all wrong. Just going to start off that, but it'll be corrected by our speaker.
- So K9 Twix is one of three working dogs at the Bloomington Police Department. He is a three-year-old yellow
- Belgian Malinois, Twix is a certified canine member through the American Police Canine Association in
- tracking article searches, building searches, narcotics detection, apprehension, and obedience. He works
- the third shift and is part of the Critical Incident Response Team, also called CERT. And by the way,
- Jordan Hassler, Twix's handler, is all those things too.
- except he's not a Belgian Malinois. Neither is the dog that we have here, but he is a police officer
- at the Bloomington Police Department. He's going to explain more. How about a hand for Twix and Cole
- and Jordan Hassler? Thank you. Again, my name is Jordan Hassler. I'm a sergeant with the Bloomington
- Police Department. I've worked there for the last 16 years.
- and I appreciate you all inviting me today to come talk about one of my favorite things, which is working
- with dogs. In the last 19 years, as an officer, I worked four years in Greene County prior to coming
- up here. Working with dogs has been by far the most rewarding task that I've ever been given. So I'm
- gonna go through some of our training stuff that we do, how to become a K-9 officer, what we do with
- the dogs, how they become certified, how our dogs are taught,
- And then canine coal is going to run a demonstration for you. Canine Twix is with me today. However,
- he's out in my car. Again, he's a Belgian Malin Wall and he does do apprehension work, so he's not a
- dog that I allow anybody to pet or love on. So that's why we brought coal because you all can pet and
- love on him all that you want and there's no problems. His handler Detective Moscato. He works downstairs
- and he's going to go into some of the stuff
- that coal is used for and some of the techniques that they use. So with that, again, I'm one of three
- dogs at the department. Myself and Sergeant Raybold have both patrol dogs that work on the road. Sergeant
- Raybold works afternoon shift and I work the third shift. Canine Twix is my second canine partner. I
- was a handler for Canine Ike before he passed two years ago, three years ago now.
- And then we picked out canine Twix canine Twix is from Holland. He was flown over to the kennel
- in Pennsylvania, shallow Creek kennels where we drove over there and did a selection process and picked
- him out. Part of that process is. Watching the dog work on some small small drills to make sure that
- they had the potential to be an actual police dog. You can understand or.
- have an idea possibly of what it takes to actually be a police dog. They have to have good control work,
- be very obedient, and have a demeanor to learn and keep driving. With all of our dogs in the training
- that we go through, canine Cole is food driven. So everything he does throughout the day, he gets little
- bits of food. He doesn't get fed two cups in the morning and two cups of the evening. He works all day
- getting his food.
- that makes his drive go higher and higher because he knows that everything he does, he gets to eat.
- With K-9 Twix and K-9 Kimbo, everything that we do is ball driven. Everything for me and my dog is just
- a game. We're playing. If we are out looking for a person who's fled officers or if he's searching a
- vehicle for narcotics, it's simply a game. He knows that he gets to work around in the grass and track
- this person.
- At the end of the day, at the end of that track, he gets to play with his ball and play tug for four
- or five minutes. And he goes back in the card and it's to the next game. Um, part of the article searches
- that we do is, um, if a person steals a purse and takes off running and person is a dropping the purse
- or a cell phone or any kind of articles at all, say they have a gun and they fired a shot as we're tracking.
- the dogs will actually find that article or that shell casing in the grass or the purse. They'll smell
- it. Just lay down. Say dad, it's right here. We pick that up. So the smallest thing, even the 22 casing
- from a spent shell in some of the tallest grass, these dogs will go find that. Some of the questions
- that we get asked for training portion of it, you know, our dogs are trained in fresh disturbance for
- tracking and direct sense. So the,
- disturbance is where someone basically just runs through the grass. Runs through the sand runs through
- the asphalt. That area has now been disturbed and the best way for me to describe that is in the springtime.
- Your neighbor that's the first one to mow their grass every year. Well, that's the same grass that was
- there the day before and you never smelt it. But as soon as he mows it, you guys can all smell that
- fresh green grass, right?
- It's the same thing every time we step or walk. There's a disturbance in the ground with asphalt or
- grass or sand. That odor smells different than everything else around it. And our dogs will actually
- smell that odor. To the person we're trying to find. The same if I throw a ball or an article, it smells
- totally different than everything else around it. Um? With all the dogs that it takes a little bit different time,
- As a handler, our handler schools are anywhere from six to eight weeks long. So once we go through the
- process and we are chosen by the department to be a canine handler, which generally is a person or an
- officer who's been with the department five, six years, preferably a little bit later. That way they
- know that this person can be a police officer and take care of a dog. In that six to eight week process,
- it goes through everything from the initial meet and greets. So the first couple of days you're sitting
- there and just playing with your dog.
- just walking around, getting to know your dog. And then it builds all the way up into some of the advanced
- stuff that we do with our dogs. But along the way we can make it to the end of week five. And if that
- dog does something that, um, isn't satisfactory or they're just not getting it, that dog now washes
- out and we're going to start to process all over again because we asked so much of these dogs and
- You know when when push comes to shove and I'm catching a bad guy on night shift by myself who has a
- gun, I want to know for a fact that my dog is going to do everything that I asked them to do. So again,
- with my dogs I had Ike for the last portion of his career and with Twix I trusted with my life 100%.
- I know for a fact that when I push my button on my belt and I'm away from my car, that back door is
- going to fly open and he's going to come right to him. Technology is something that's come a long ways as well.
- with these dogs. My car, I can log in. I have an app on my phone. I can tell you how hot, cold my car
- is. I can tell you if there's a fire alarm, a seal alarm. I can tell you if my car battery just dies.
- I mean, it's some of the technology that we have is amazing for these animals. And rightfully so, with
- the training that goes into these dogs and what these dogs cost, I need to make sure that if I'm out
- of my car, that that dog's taken care of.
- So whenever you see these police cars just sitting, you know, on the street or a station or wherever
- it says canine, don't think that they just got left in the car because I can, I can monitor my car 24
- seven from my phone. Um, and if anything happens to that car, it's my phone starts making all kinds
- of crazy noises. In the event that people ask, you know, they, you know, what if you lose service or
- you don't, you can't respond on your phone. If a heat alarm, I have three alarms on my car. If the heat
- alarm kicks off for the lowest alarm,
- The windows drop and on the backside of my car, there's an exhaust fan. It starts pulling that cooler
- air circulate through the car to cool it off. If it keeps rising, well, now the alarm is going to start
- going off. It's going to start flashing and the sirens going to go off. It's to say, please cannot emergency
- call 911. The last alarm that door is going to kick open. That way that dog can get out of that car
- and they're not trapped inside of it. Something bad were to happen. So technology has been something
- great for us and it's something that's needed.
- Again, these dogs. With the training that we we work with them. It. It's never ending. For our policy,
- our patrol dogs work at least 16 hours additional training each month. Canine Cole has an additional
- eight hours that he has outside of his regular working hours. And that's just something mandatory that
- we do to make sure our dogs are always doing something.
- we generally always surpass that. Our dogs are getting almost an additional 20 to 30 hours a month and
- just individual reps with the dogs, making sure they're sharp because I can't take an animal like this
- and just go through the phase once, put them in a car and expect them to be sharp as a tool when I pull
- them back out lit. And again, it's a tool and it has to stay sharp and we make sure that we get those
- reps in and it's a game. Everything we do is a game and it has to stay fun for the dogs. Um,
- Canine coal was a donation that we got from the not program. Is that correct? Yeah, so I'm going to
- let John get up here and speak for a little bit about canine coal and what he does. The patrol dogs
- are are fun. I love having them, but can I call is a specialty? He's one of our therapy dogs. He finds
- electronic devices, so I'm gonna let him talk about some of that. Thank you Sergeant Hasler. I'm also
- I'm really.
- grateful to be here. I'm grateful for the invitation to come talk to you guys. We do quite a bit of
- demos. It's typically for young school aged kids. So it's nice to have a crowd that's not not like that.
- So yeah, so Cole came to us from not today. It's a program that started in Indianapolis and they combat
- child trafficking, child exploitation, those kind of things.
- and we apply for a grant, a donation through them to get canine coal. There's 11 electronic detection
- dogs in the state of Indiana, which is what Cole is. He's a dual purpose dog. So his, his two primary
- jobs are electronic detection and therapy, emotional support. So that can be both for officers at our
- department or for victims of crimes. You know, most notably his very first,
- Deployment so to speak as a emotional support dog was for a young child that had lost their parent and
- we had to bring her back to our police department and I was able to bring Cole in and she was able to
- find some comfort with Cole, which was just nice to see. You may hear Cole whine, he was probably whining
- a little bit earlier, he just likes attention and doesn't like it.
- Cole is three years old. He's an English Labrador Retriever of Black Lab. He originally started out
- as a medical service dog. He failed out of medical service school. They have much stricter guidelines
- that they have to go by. So a lot of electron detection dogs and a lot of detection dogs in general
- do come out of medical service. He still has a lot of great attributes as far as being a detection dog for us.
- So yeah, his primary jobs are to find cell phones, thumb drives, flash drives. A lot of my work as a
- detective, I work for the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. So I investigate a lot of child
- exploitation cases. And when we have a search warrant and we go to somebody's house, we are looking
- for electronic devices most of the time. Sometimes these suspects will want to hide their devices.
- And I mean, we've had them
- We've had, you know, hidden cameras hidden in teddy bears and stuff like that. So his job is once we
- go into a house, we will go in as officers and do a hands on search, look for everything and seize everything
- that we can find. And then I'll bring Cole in to run through the house to see if he detects anything
- that we may not have seen or come across. So I do have.
- some bags that are set up here. Uh, some of these have electronic devices in them and some of them do
- not. Um, this might be a little bit tricky, so we'll see how he does. So basically any odor, uh, any
- electronic device that has storage capability has a chemical that's sprayed on the motherboard as a,
- as a coolant. It's called triphenylfolene oxide. TPPO is what we call it. And that's the chemical that
- he's trained to detect.
- So when we're up here, I've got these bags laid out, but we've also got this looks like a receiver up
- here. We've got the digital display on the wall over here and then this computer and camera. So all
- of these items are giving that same odor that he detects. So and then with airflow, it's kind of dependent
- on where he's smelling the odor. The odor from electronics is a very, very fine odor. It's heavy and
- it falls to the ground.
- Uh, even something like the projector up there, if we were to go over there, he may detect that odor
- coming from the ground. So he may alert on the ground where that odor is pooling. So, uh, we'll run
- through. I typically always, uh, run him on my left side. So I'm going to start down there and kind
- of run back this direction. The commands I give him is I say, let's go to work. And that tells him that
- it's time to, it's time to go to work. He's like Sergeant Houser was saying he is food driven.
- I've got this bag here that has his food in it. This is the only way he ever eats. He never eats out
- of a bowl. It's always out of my hand doing either training or deployments. So, um, I'll give him the
- command to go to work and I'm going to tell him to seek, which is his command to start sniffing and
- see what he can find when he either sits or lays down. That's his alert that he's in that odor. He's
- smelling that odor somewhere. And then I'll ask him to show me and,
- Hopefully as he usually does is he points his nose towards where he's smelling that odor. So again With
- airflow with these devices up here There's liable to be odor kind of in between here, but then I got
- my bags out So hopefully he he actually tracks onto my bags and not the other odor. So alright,
- come on buddy. You ready to go to work? Good boy Good boy, so I'll start out anytime. I'm gonna do a
- training. I'll start out and
- by giving him just a command. I'm just going to do a walk through that way. He can smell anything that
- may be around. Maybe he, maybe there's a crumb of food and he can, that way he can do that and not be
- distracted by things as we go through. So come on, let's go to work. Good boy. Seek. Seek. So as we're
- going, so he smells that and I say, show me. Yes. Good boy. And then as a reward, he'll get his food.
- Oh boy, boy. So once, uh, when I'm doing this general walkthrough, once he does hit on an odor, that's
- generally where I'll start actually working him. Uh, since he knows what we're doing, he's like, okay,
- I smell, I know what we're doing. Yep. We already got that one, buddy. All right, come on. So just,
- uh, for those, like may not be able to see it was a cell phone inside this bag.
- Let's keep going to work. Come on, let's go to work. Seek. So he skipped over that one. He wasn't sure.
- He's not super a big fan of the bags. We typically work in rooms where we have, you know, dressers and
- beds and all that kind of stuff. And I try to make it as real life as possible for mobile demonstration
- purposes. That's why we use these bags. So I'll bring him back down and start from the beginning.
- Come on. Good boy.
- Good boy. It's gonna work. Seek. Seek. Do ya? Good boy. Good boy. I don't remember which ones had devices
- in them or not, but that's why we have him. So that was the cell phone.
- Yeah, you already got that one. Yep. Yep. That's good job. Good job. Come on. Keep working. Keep working.
- I know buddy. Come on. Keep working. Thought I had one more over here. Oh, okay. Yeah. I didn't see
- it down there. Come on, buddy. Come on. Keep working. Good boy. Keep working. Go. Keep working. Seek.
- They didn't look at it. Come here. You got interested in the food over here. That's why I let them do
- those. Let them do those walkthroughs. Come here.
- Show me. Show me. Yes. So he's he's detecting the odor there. He was not super keen on getting under
- the table, but it was also a cell phone. So the other bags that he walked past were just were just blank
- empty bags. I think I had, yeah, just little rolls of little rolls of baggies in here so there'd be
- no sit that he's detecting. So
- Hopefully you're able to see that OK, but that's typically what he does. It's it's pretty remarkable
- when we do it inside of a house and he finds things. There's been times that he's gotten into odor and
- I and I search all around trying to figure out what it is he's smelling and then we have to. I started
- looking up and I realized that I mean we had one. We had a dog, an ESD dog up in Indy. Like two weeks
- ago. He was alerting above a toilet seat, but he would not get up towards the wall.
- they pulled a frame off the wall and there was a hidden camera inside the wall above the toilet. So
- he was detecting that. So yeah, these dogs are pretty incredible. Um, that's why we keep them food driven,
- uh, just because like he, he will always work for food. Uh, he has, I've never once seen him reject
- food or act like he's full. He will, uh, he will eat as long as I give him food. So. So these, if you're watching,
- Going back to it, everything's a game. If you notice how happy that tale was that little prancing that
- he does. So I thought we're looking for anything that we do with the dogs anytime we're training or
- we get started. Be fun. That's how we get those repetition. We make sure the dogs training and he's
- he's enjoying it because once it's no longer fun or a game for him, they will shut down and it makes
- the day a lot longer. So these reps like this we will get short reps, you know, three, four, five minutes
- in a couple turns. Dog goes up.
- doing our thing, come back out, start playing again. So it's part of, that's part of our conditioning
- for the dogs. And you heard John tell him his cues. If you're ever out on the street and you hear Jeff
- and I talking to our dogs, we speak Dutch and German. So reason being obviously is if bad guys running
- and he's telling the dog to stop, I don't want the dog to stop, right? So everything that we teach dogs,
- it's Dutch and German commands. So, um, and,
- In reality, I don't think the dog would listen to a bad guy anyways when he's chasing him, but we want
- to make sure that's not something that happens. So, the Twix and Kimbo, same thing. We can put narcotics
- in the bags and the boxes. We run drills like that. We search around cars and it's the same thing. It's
- always a game. And we're constantly looking for that, is the dog having fun? If the dogs, because dogs
- are like humans, they can have an off day or a bad day or they have a head cold.
- We're looking for that rate of sniff. Is the tail up? Is it wagging? Are they prancing? Are they having
- fun? And if they're not, we'll do it again later. You know, um, but that's, that's part of our handler
- stuff that we do. And our dogs tell us a lot more than what we generally pick up because if, if, if
- I'm on a track or I'm trying to catch somebody, my sole purpose as the handler is to watch that dog
- because his body movements and his demeanor and his tail wags and his rate of sniff or his head tosses
- tells me exactly where this person's at.
- I can take a person in a open field of leaves or even hay cover personally up. And as I get within 30,
- 40 yards, Twix will give me a proximity alert to where he'll throw that head up and his hair will kind
- of bristle up. And he's actually starting to scan now. Like I'm right here. Dad, I'm right here on top
- of him. And it just, if I miss that, then I don't know how close I am to this, to this person. And I
- keep talking about suspects. Um, we'll use our dogs for any missing person.
- If we have somebody that has dementia or Alzheimer's and they wander off, um, or dogs or tracking dogs
- at the end of the day, they're tracking an apprehension, but that goes back to me as a handler. Like
- I just told you to proximity alert. I'm not gonna let my dog just run wild, right? I'm going to keep
- control of him. Um, as we track that person who's done nothing wrong other than maybe wondered off.
- And if we don't find them, you know, it could be a bad day. Um, once that dog gives the proximity alert,
- I'll pull Twix back.
- And now I send all the guys in, Hey guys, they are right here within, within a hundred yards square
- of where we're at right now. Um, and some of the stuff that you don't think of as a handler, if you're
- not experienced with it is we have to play a lot of the environment, um, on the street for patrol dogs,
- the winds, humidity, the temperature, um, early mornings, the sun rises, the thermals of the earth as
- it heats up and the thermals rise, that odor is rising.
- So I have to learn how to play a lot of the environmentals and with the dog is as a dog's working as
- well. So there's a lot that goes into these dogs. And that again, I'll tell you hands down, I've done
- everything that you almost can do other than the dive team at this agency. And running a dog has been
- the most rewarding and most beneficial ever. A lot of people ask, you know, what's, what's the downside
- to having a dog? Well, there is one, there is one. I'm always dirty.
- I'm always dirty before I became a handler. I was the guy that had the class eight. The buttons are
- shiny. I look good every day. I was big into officer presence. I think that you feel if you're going
- to be an off shield, you should look the part you know with the dog. It don't matter. It'll be the wettest,
- muddiest day and that dog will be so excited when I leave my other car to come see me. He's giving me
- hugs and now I'm covered in there and mud and everything else. So in our cars, you know,
- I'm a stickler on my car. We got clean our cars up at least once a week. Now, if you have dogs or animals,
- you take them from home to the park. Tommy get back, you know, there's some hair and button back. We'll
- have a car, have a dog get back there for eight and a half hours throughout the day, you know? So it's
- it's it's constant, but it's it's the most rewarding because when everything finally clicks and they
- figure it out, it's it's the best thing in the world. You can ask these dogs to do amazing things.
- I was telling the guys earlier like John here say that as part of the cert team or SWAT team we do a
- lot of the major incidents here in the city and I want to make sure that my dog squared away and part
- of that is I can take this red dot and I can put it on John here. As Twix sees that red dot, he knows
- Dad wants me to catch that red dot. Why is that important? Well, if I have three or four people here,
- I want to make sure my dogs getting that bad guy or he's going to that area.
- We'll use this every night to like on the streets for building searches. We get a lot of alarm calls
- at night and. Our dogs are locating tools. Well, it's much safer if it's nighttime. We can't see everything
- just in my dog in to say dad. This is where they are. If I know that he didn't check off on a closet
- or a cubby space or whatever, I could pick my head in and shine this red dot on that corner and he now
- like a cat chases that red dot that corner start searching that area. So.
- That's just some of the minor stuff that our dogs can do. And again, I don't want to take up too many
- time. I want to leave you to leave you guys some time for some questions if you guys have questions.
- But I truly appreciate you inviting us here to show off coal. I'm sorry to bring Twix in, but he's he's
- not one that we can pet. So I appreciate it greatly. Thank you again. At some point the dogs have to
- retire. When is that and?
- What happens to the dog at that point? So I did not cover this. I think good question. So it depends
- on the dog. Ike was clearly going to be my first dog was clearly going to be a patrol dog his whole
- life. That's all he wanted to do. That's all he wanted to do is work and then he worked up until he
- had some medical issues and he passed away with me in my car. Which I hated that, but again, that's
- all that dog loved to do. I'm trying to keep it now to where our dogs work on the road six to seven years.
- They then retire and they go back to their handler. All of our dogs live with us. They live at home.
- They had their own kennels. They live in the house, Coles in the house. The handler from the day that
- they are selected and that dogs picked up, they stay solid with the handler. There are a lot of days
- like if I go on vacation, John goes on vacation, he'll call and say, hey, can you come take care of
- my dog? I'll show up as a handler and feed and water to take care of the dogs. But yes, it's.
- There's no there's no set dates yet, but I'm trying to keep it. Enough where they can work where they're
- young and then have a few years at home to have time to actually be a dog and just live at home. And
- relax a little bit. That was my question. Um, you said that when they retire they like they live with
- their handler, but when dogs learn how to do all that stuff, do they ever like forget or do they just like?
- their body just keep recognizing all of this stuff that they have learned so far. I don't know that
- they ever forget. I can tell you every bad thing. I've tried to get away from Twix. He's never forgot
- any of those things. Um, no, they, I will say this, that the dogs are very smart about picking up uniforms
- and IDing things in the vehicles. He knows when I walk out in uniform, we're going to work. He's bouncing.
- He's excited. He's ready to go. I walk out in shorts and a t-shirt.
- I gotta go outside and walk for a little bit. I get my food. I'm staying home and he knows when we're
- at home. We're at home. We're not working. We're not constantly checking everything. I have two little
- boys at home and a wife and he knows that when I'm at home I just get to play with the boys and do dog
- things. So there's some internal switch there. How do they interact with other dogs? I know you try
- to keep them separate, but sometimes when you're out and about other dogs,
- you can control your dog, but you can't necessarily control the other. Correct. So every dog is just
- like us. We're all different. Um, I'm a very big believer from a little bitty puppy. Dogs should be
- socialized. They should get around other dogs, other people, um, get exposed to as much as you possibly
- can. Twix is very, very social. He loves, he loves every dog, every cat, whatever he could find. He
- hates cows. I don't know why I would have cows behind my house, but he doesn't like cows. Um,
- Now Kimbo, our other patrol dog, he's a little more territorial of his car and of Jeff. He barks a lot
- more and he's just, he has a little bit more different attitude. But on the street when they're out
- with us, we control our dogs, we tell them to sit, stay, go wherever and they'll do their thing. And
- the biggest thing on the street is everybody else's dog that hasn't been through the training that we
- go through or isn't on a leash. That can be tiresome at times.
- Does Twix wear a bulletproof vest? And if he's going after someone to apprehend and they have a gun,
- is he taught to take them down by grabbing the arm that has the gun? So he does have a bulletproof vest.
- He does not wear it all the time. There's been studies shown that due to heat retention and heat loss
- and the weight, they can't have heat strokes if they're just kept in that kind of gear.
- Um, if I have a major call out where I know that, you know, there's possibility that this could happen,
- I can put it on him. Um, he is trained to apprehend in the limbs and the arms. Um, part of the training
- is, you know, that we have somebody with a gun that shoots blanks. Um, and he'll, he'll, he'll grab
- either or he's not trained to tag just one specific arm for the threat. Um, but with that said, all
- of these dogs are tools. Um, we use them for specific applications. If I know bad guy has a gun.
- Um, a dog's not the best tool to send into that fight. I'm not going to do that. Um, now granted, are
- there vehicle pursuits where we chase people at night and they run out with guns? I don't know. Um,
- yeah, I had one the first this year. Um, but if I know ahead of time going into it that, you know, this
- is a call out, this is the real deal. This dude's got a gun in here. Dogs, not the tool for that. So
- I'm going to protect, I'm going to protect him and the rest of our dogs as much as I can. So, but again,
- At the end of the day, if a dog loses their life over a human, then that's, you know, they are here
- for that, but I'm gonna mitigate as much as I possibly can. Sergeant, thank you, number one, for not
- bringing Twix. This is from our Shih Tzu, our 10-pound Shih Tzu. I'm wondering, as a little boy, were
- you a dog person? Good question. So, absolutely.
- I grew up in law enforcement, my family's comes from law enforcement background and I have a large hunting
- background. And from the time I was probably nine or 10, I raised labs and I've had labs my whole life.
- Um, and seeing that working portion of it, and I kind of got into the trial runs and the, uh, the testing
- of the labs is just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And that's all I knew until I became an actual
- handler and going from a lab to a patrol dog with pointy ears, it's night and day.
- these dogs pick up things so quick and it's it's so again it's it's the it's the ratification of here's
- a small task I want you to learn and do going through all the steps taking the time and the reps and
- finally one day it just clicks and it's it's amazing that I've been a dog person my whole life. So how
- many calls per year average calls per year do the dogs tend to perform their duties in active service?
- I don't have the totals right now.
- We're averaging on patrol with Jeff and I, we're, we're probably getting 25 to 35 deployments a month
- where the dogs drive the car with us. Um, and again, we're both supervisors, so we have our supervisor
- task as well as canine task. So I would like to see them twice that many, but, um, our average calls
- are finding articles or items or sniffing for narcotics. Um, we may have,
- call out or two every month and a half, two months. Most of our deployments are trying to find something
- on the street. Do the dogs ever mistake legal substances? Like I'm not sure if it's Delta 8 or Delta
- 9, but I think one of them is legal versus illegal marijuana. Do they ever mix up between those two?
- For this reason, neither of our patrol dogs are certified or detect marijuana. They do hard substances,
- meth, meth, cocaine, heroin,
- And that's cocaine, heroin, and no, we actually stay away from fentanyl because it's so potent anyways
- that we don't even mess with it on the street. If we find it, we think it's fentanyl, we totally discard
- it. Go ahead. I can't say discard it. We send it off to the lab to have them test it. Yeah, we don't
- throw it away or nothing. And does that work for prescription drugs as well? I know some drugs have
- similar chemical makeup, similar to that point that we just discussed this earlier is
- Some of these dogs that may be trained on fentanyl, well, people can legally prescribe, have prescription
- for fentanyl, for scripts or pills or whatever it is. And that becomes, I think, kind of an issue down
- the road. So to avoid that, we stuck with the hard powders and got away from marijuana because one day,
- you know, if they were happened, if they do happen to legalize that, then that dog's now out of service.
- So. Where are some of the training done?
- in the United States. I'm sure it's different places. Um, and my second question is, um, my sister had
- a health service dog. Did I hear you say this dog is health service trained also? And if so, what's
- the difference in training? So I had mentioned that Cole, he started out when he was younger as a medical
- service dog, he was going through the training for that, but he failed out of that school.
- I don't know for what reason. And then the trainer that trains detection dogs bought him from the company
- that was training him for medical service. So he's not, he's not certified medical or anything like
- that. He's just strictly detection of electronics and then emotional support. Where are they trained?
- Cole specifically came out of Indianapolis. It's a company called Jordan Detection. Todd Jordan is the, uh,
- Owner of that, if you remember the Jared Fogle, the subway guy back in 2015 at 2015 or 2014, but one
- of the headline pictures from that was Todd Jordan walking out with an electronic detection dog. And
- at the time, no one really knew what that was. So they're all wondering why. Why is there a canine come
- out of the house? Well, that was kind of the first. That was kind of the beginning stages of electronic
- detection. The training portion of that for for the patrol dogs.
- Both of our dogs are trained in the American police. Can't are certified to the American Police
- K9 Association and through Napa water, which is the North American Working Dog Police Association. And
- they're nationally accredited. And they put out these guidelines that if you want to be part of this
- group, you gotta pay your dues and you gotta pass this book of certification stuff and we have local
- groups and trainers that are certified through those agencies or organizations that we all train with.
- So at least twice a month we
- meet together as a group, whether it be in Bloomington, Barnesville, Knox County, Bedford, or I guess
- Morgan County as well. And we all train together and we do certain portions or tasks that we work on
- each month. Hi, thanks. I was wondering, can a civilian get their hands on one of these working dogs,
- you know, and maybe privatize some of the services or, you know, use them as a tool like on
- their own or is it something that's very specific to like law enforcement? So anybody can have a working
- dog. Um, something right now that's huge, that's, that's a growing industry for whatever reason is the
- bed bug detection. There are bed, there are dogs now that are trained working dogs that if you have
- a hope that's the biggest things, hotels, hotels and assisted living. Um,
- If you think that maybe someone's got bed bugs, they bring these dogs in that are trained on the pseudo
- odor of bed bugs. And we literally just worked with them two weeks ago with training. It's first dogs
- I've seen that were certified in this and they had this little, um, uh, uh, what was that? It was a
- little GSP, um, German short hair pointer. And this little dog come in like a rocket and he's working
- around these chairs. As soon as he got in that odor, he just sat and put his head right on that seat.
- I thought this is, this is something else.
- But yeah, even patrol dogs or electronics. If you got the money, you can do it. Can both of you kind
- of just say, what's the most amazing thing you've ever seen your dog do? I mean, I'm amazed. So it's
- one thing when I do training, a good portion of the training that we do, I know where devices are.
- If we're doing where, where neither him or I know where it's at, I at least know that I am looking for
- something. Uh, it's just amazes me every time we go into a suspect's house after we do the search warrant,
- I have no idea if there's anything in there or not. So we're going through, I don't know if he's just
- trying to lie to me so he can get fed. Uh, but, but it's absolutely incredible for me when he alerts
- and we do find a hidden device. It's, it's beyond, yeah, it's, it's incredible for me. So, so,
- They always say this handlers that that we operate the dumb into the leash because we are the we are
- the lowest portion of this team right here because these dogs are so smart. 90% of the time when something's
- missed, it's because we've missed what the dog has told us. And same thing. I mean, just just tracking
- people or people that need to be caught and the dog told me one thing, but I'm so smart that I know
- he went this way instead of this way. And of course the guys right there on the corner on the left side
- and it's just.
- As a handler, it takes reps and a lot of time to realize that, Hey, you know, listen to your dog,
- your dog, promise you your dog knows more than you do. So yeah, a hundred percent. It absolutely is
- the training that we went through. It's, it's me learning how he works. Yeah. It's, it's not me like
- teaching him things. He's teaching me. Yeah. Yeah.
- and john thank you um working tonight it was my night all okay yeah i have a lot of respect for third
- shift people who come in at noon the following day or yeah um wonderful presentation i think col is
- an example for all of us when you fail at something in life there's still something else that you can
- accomplish so good job col um john and jordan in order of your talk a traditional we made this quarter
- to wheeler mission
- I'd like to thank today's volunteers. Our next meeting will be here in the Georgian Room on June 2nd.
- Bill Daniels will speak to us about growing native plants from seed. Please join us. So Tyler, if you
- would share the graphic for the four-way test and please stand if you're able.
- Of the things we think, say, or do, first, is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all concerned? Third,
- will it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will it be beneficial to all concerned? And fifth,
- is it fun?