Page 460 - NIXBOOK

I put a big padded dog bed in the back so Kilo wouldn’t slide around during any crazy driving, which happened a lot. In fact, I
had never realized how drastic my driving was until Kilo showed up. Hearing him slide around in the back and crash into the
walls made me very aware of how my driving affected him, and from then on I had to make a concerted effort from to calm
down my sudden U-turns in traffic to go catch traffic violators, and I had to be aware of speed bumps and things like that. Yet
another example of how being a K9 handler means you have to be aware of what the dog is experiencing.
I kept that partition open, so he could sit in the back and stare out the front window and see what was going on. And drip
slobber all over my thermal paper printer housing directly underneath his mouth. You can see I added a couple water bottle
holders and I bolted a small water bowl into the side. So this view is from where the prisoners would sit when I was taking them
to jail. I always sternly instructed my prisoners “to not interact with the K9” because I didn’t want them acting all nice-nice and
making friends with the dog. Because they didn’t deserve have any kind of a friendly relationship with the police dog. That’s just
another consequence of being a law breaker; law breakers don’t get to be buddies with the police dog.

These accommodations were quite above and beyond the norm; I observed most handlers had just plain bare metal flooring for
their dogs, or maybe a rubber mat to give the dogs a little traction to not slide around so much during fast driving. In fact, mine
was the only carpeted + dog bed set up I ever saw.

One of the realities of being a K9 hander is coming to terms with the dog hair that is constant. All K9 vehicles have varying
levels of dog hair in them, and I mean everywhere: in the back, in the front, under the seats, on the seats, and between the seats.
My solution was to go park the rig out in the middle of nowhere, let the dog out, and blow the whole thing out with a cordless
electric leaf blower. Much faster than using a vacuum to suck it all up: I just opened all the doors and blew it all out. It worked
great. I had to do that every week.

Dog was my copilot!