I came across this article on Drudge today and it was just too good to pass up. It's pretty short, but the basic deal is that this woman was looped to the gills, falling down stinking drunk and took exceptoin to a police officer refusing to take her statement. So, what's she do? She goes over and starts making faces at the policeman's dog (he was a K-9 officer). Now, this isn't just drunk, this is flat out stupid and luckily for her the dog was better trained than she was.

Back when I was a kid, I had a paper route in my neighborhood where a couple of retired MP K-9's lived - they'd served in Korea. One of them, a German Shepard named Nicolas was the dang biggest Shepard I've ever seen. We didn't have any leash laws in those days and he roamed free in his front yard. Every day when I showed up with the paper, he'd charge out to me and grab it out of my hand, right next to my hand and take it up to the front porch. Even when I wasn't delivering papers I learned to make sure and carry something to give to Nick if I was going to be walking past his house. See? He trained me.

When I was in Columbus, Ohio doing satellite uplinks on the 2004 election, the Columbus police brought by a bomb-sniffing dog to check all the sat trucks parked at the courthouse. He was a gorgeous black Belgian shepard and just as he was done checking my truck, a little girl passing by on the sidewalk with her mother broke away and ran up to hug the dog. Naturally mommy freaked, but the police officer assured her it was ok. He was right, that dog just sat there smiling as that little girl hugged on him. Then, back to work and he moved on to the next truck.

Man's best friend? No doubt about it.

Aquilla

I saw that article too, and it gave me a good laugh...though I've always heard that any actions taken against a police K9 are the same as if you did it to a human officer (assault, etc.). Why would they drop all the charges, though, when she was drunk as a skunk and resisting arrest???

But, what a mental picture.

It is a funny situation to be sure. One thing that people may not know is that a search warrant can be issued by the courts based on a trained dog's positive response (as in a drug case). Here is a sample affidavit to certify the dog and handler to the court. I saw a show a long, long time ago, I think it was the old Dragnet with Jack Webb that documented the first drug-sniffing dog. It was pretty interesting. They had to demonstrate to a judge that this dog could find drugs hidden in a warehouse. So, they hid some and took him there and he found every one of them. Then the dog reacted positively to a box where the police hadn't placed any drugs. They looked pretty nervous until the judge smiled and said, "I put those drugs there as my own test". Needless to say, he granted the warrants from there on out and that's now an accepted practice.

Aquilla