“The apprehension.” Sent by an anonymous fan…
I am a 13 year Deputy, currently assigned as a Narcotics Investigator / K9 Handler. I began handling K9’s in 2002 and during the beginning, like all handlers, I started on the streets as a Patrol K9 Deputy. About three years in I had grown very accustomed to the midnight shift with my K9 partner. As a team our favorite call was in the middle of the night when some clown felt the best thing to do, when caught, was RUN! One particular midweek shift the calls for service were kind of slow not a lot going on. I decided to meet up with another K9 handler from our city agency and get some grub. As we arrived at our dinner location I chose to go with the greasy cheeseburger instead of the grilled chicken salad. Needless to say about 20 minutes after dinner. My stomach began to let me know that it did not approve of my dinner selection and I quickly realized that I needed to get to the nearest district office to take care of this disagreement. As I started in the direction of the office the radio that had been quite all night erupt with traffic alerting everyone working of a car chase. Now car chases were a pretty regular occurrence at our agency and as a K9 handler you tended not to get to over excited about the chases because you were always requested to respond regardless of your distance. So as the radio traffic continues and the sound of my car zipping down the road went on the disturbance that had developed in my guts had for the most part subsided
As I got closer to the chase I had learned the vehicle was stolen out of another state which definitely got everyone involved a little more excited including myself. I found myself chanting, as I grew closer, “please bail and run, please bail and run”! Sure enough about a mile out I heard the words over the radio I had been longing to hear, “driver has bailed and is on foot.” Now for all you handlers reading this you know this feeling, you know the excitement that has now taken over. As I arrived the deputy primary in the chase was doing an awesome job setting up a perimeter. I wasted no time getting my, now extremely excited partner, out of the car and we were off to the races. Now I must tell you that the driver ran into a lightly wooded area that quickly turned to some pretty thick woods which slowed us down. About five minutes into this track /manhunt, the disturbance between my greasy dinner and my bowels were no longer interested in my car chase / manhunt and went back to an all out war.
As my K9 partner was trying to pull my arm off with the 25 foot lead attached to his harness I quickly realized if I didn’t deal with my current gut situation I was going to have a mess on my hands. I began to slow to a stop and the dog had the lead at full tension. I knew that based on the slow night I had more deputies than normal for my perimeter so I was pretty confident that my bad guy had no choice but to lay down and wait to see if he could be found. I decided this was as good as place as any so I tied my dog who was at the end of the extremely tight lead to a strong tree base. I quickly jumped about 10 feet off the track to another tree that was laying down that looked like the perfect spot to take care of this. I knew it was going to be bad an also knew this was not going to be a situation where it was gonna be a clean break where I could get by with taking care of the wiping after this track was over.
So I did what any self respecting K9 handler would do and pulled out my pocket knife and cut off my underwear to utilize for the “paperwork.” After an explosive minute or so I knew the disturbance was over. I took care of the cleanup and got my uniform back on only to be kicking it commando. I have to tell you without getting to graphic that this was NOT a pleasant scene and it was NOT quiet. Never the less I realized I needed to get back on track and find the bad man. I untied my still very tight lead and as I was giving my dog his command to track I took one step forward at which time I heard a blood curtailing scream!
As my partner began to let this bad man know that it’s not inappropriate to run from law enforcement, I found myself realizing that I was less than 10 yards from this guy as I was releasing the pressure of the violent explosion erupting in my body. I handcuffed the bad guy, got the dog off and notified the perimeter that I was walking out with our prize. As I was walking our now limping bad guy back to the car. It was awkwardly quiet. Normally I would be getting the dog pumped up praising him as he got to escort his chew toy out of the woods. Not this time all I could think of was this guy just got bit after listening to me coming close to death.
As the bad guy was being loaded in the ambulance I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew what had happened. When the other deputies walked off from the ambulance and the medics got the guy stabilized I asked if I could speak to him privately. So I got my answer, while trying not to bust a gut the guy tells me that when I stopped and tied off the dog he was only about 3 feet from the business end of my partner. He then proceeded to tell me that he heard me crapping my brains out and said that he hoped that if I was in that much pain that I would real the dog in and retreat. After a good laugh I got back in my car and started headed home to get some drawers when I received a call from our aviation unit. It was the pilot advising me, while trying not to laugh that if I wanted to stop by the hanger they would be more than happy to provide me with a copy of my track. He laughing informed me that it would be a great k9 training video because of how well the Fleer System worked that night!
— Appropriated from Cop Humor on Facebook.
@QBall45
