Those who do have the space to keep a
police dog at home, and whose applications
are successful, go on to form deep bonds
with their animals. One officer, PC Ben
Hendley, tells me he had his first general
purpose dog as a puppy. “She went through
the training and was a lovely pet, but she
couldn’t handle it as a working dog in the
real world. She didn’t want to be a police
dog, so she had to be rehomed.”
His second dog was brought over as a
puppy from Portugal and worked until
he was six. “I lost him quite tragically
back in January, very suddenly and quite
unexpectedly,” Hendley says, still clearly
mourning his old partner. “He had an
intestinal torsion and the vet couldn’t save
him.” A few months later he was paired with
a rescue dog — a Dutch herder called Riley.
But Riley, like Hendley’s first dog, didn’t
take to fighting crime and was rehomed.
Hendley has two young children at home.
How have his various canine colleagues
made the transition from work mode,
where they could be tasked with chasing
a knife-wielding gangster, to being around
small children? “They’re great. After work
the dogs just switch off. It’s quite amazing,
actually. They go to work, do the business,
come home and switch off, just like we do.”
And how do you switch them back on
again? “They just know — the uniform
goes on, they see the police cars and
everything clicks into place.”
Occasionally, dogs will get hurt. In May,
one of the Met’s malinois, Kaiser, wasstabbed five times in the head and once just
below the eye while trying to subdue a man
in south London. Kaiser had been on patrol
with his handler, PC Mark Woolcott,
answering a call about an intruder in the
back garden of a house in Orpington.
The knife struck bone, narrowly avoiding
serious injury. Despite this, Kaiser kept
hold of the attacker until officers arrived
to detain him. The man was held under
the Mental Health Act. Kaiser made a full
recovery and returned to work in August.
Watching a GP dog learn how to “switch
on and off ” is a remarkable thing. On a large
field at Keston, PC James Carrigan has put
on a protective sleeve in preparation for
some bite-training with a “very sharp, very
drivey” mali called Havoc. Havoc’s handler,
Neil Bye, shouts at Carrigan: “Drop the
weapon, mate! Last chance! Don’t run ...”
Havoc barks the kind of terrifying, deep-
throated bark that would make any sane
person not run. But Carrigan legs it, his
padded arm held out, brandishing an
imaginary weapon. So Bye unleashes
Havoc, who goes from 0-30 miles per
hour in a blink and dives at Carrigan, biting
him hard on his outstretched arm in full
flight. The force knocks the officer right off
his feet, and man and beast scud into the
grass — Havoc’s teeth still clamped firm.
Bye runs in and apprehends his
colleague (checking he’s OK in the
process). “Good dog,” they both
say, as Carrigan releases the
sleeve and Havoc trots off with it
in his mouth, wagging his tail.
What triggers the dog to let go?
“The handler, with the command
‘leave’ or ‘loss’,” Biles says. “Part of
the licence they are workingtowards, when we test them, is that in the
bite scenario they have to leave on
command. We can’t have a situation where
a dog is just ragging their arm all over the
place.” Obedience is paramount.
Carrigan gets up and dusts himself
down, unfazed. A tall, well-built officer (his
colleagues joke that he’s “the pin-up of the
dog squad”), he’s used to diving around in
the grass: as a teenager he used to play in
goal for Hayes FC. He tells me he applied
for the dog section “after seeing the
amazing work our dogs do as a local officer
on the street. I just fell in love with it.”
His German shepherd has recently
retired. “I did general purpose and firearms
support with him — gun crime around
London, detaining people with loaded
firearms in the streets. He’s had some
good results.” Did his dog ever get shot
at? “He’s never had a gun fired at him, but
he’s chased and detained people who’d
already committed an offence with a
firearm. To be the ones who get there first
is scary enough, really, whether a gun is
pointed at you or not.”
The GP dogs generally work until they
are eight years old, and live to about 11.
The spaniels work till around the age of ten
and tend to live longer. They will invariably
see out their retirement living with their
handler’s family or another police family,
with vet bills (often big ones for a retired
police dog carrying a lifetime of wear and
tear) paid for with the help of independent
charities such as the Thin Blue Paw
Foundation (thinbluepaw.org.uk), since
old police dogs can often be uninsurable.
Some retired dogs, particularly the labs
and spaniels, become comfort dogs in
the community.
As I leave Keston, one member of the
dog squad tells me why he loves his job
so much: “People have such an affinity
with their pet dogs, don’t they?” I nod
and am about to start wanging on about
Fudge, when he says: “But there’s
nothing better than training a dog
to fulfil a good purpose. You’ve
gone through this whole process
of getting a pup at eight weeks
old. And when you finally catch
somebody, it’s just the best
feeling ever.”
Fudge, we’ve got some training
to do nThe dog knocks the
officer off his feet. Man
and beast scud into the
grass, Havoc’s teeth still
clamped round his arm
Havoc, a trainee general purpose malinois,
leaps into action to bring down a fleeing PC
James Carrigan in an exercise at KestonKaiser, a Belgian malinois, was stabbed five
TOM BARNES FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, MET POLICEtimes in May. Right: Fudge the cavapoo
The Sunday Times Magazine • 15