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?