Page 483 - NIXBOOK

In 2015, Kilo’s first full year at the PPD, I had contacted the local newspaper; the North Kitsap Herald (circulation 12,000 weekly)
to get him added to their Reader’s Choice Awards “Best of..” annual contest, for the category of “Best Police Officer.” They obliged
and added his name to the short list of recommended top votes (although anybody could put any name down for any category,
like “Best Barista” or “Best Deli” or “Best Barber” or “Best Realtor” etc.) and I think a lot of folks were amused when they saw
that they could vote for a dog as the best police officer in North Kitsap. I was not surprised when he won, and didn’t mind that
he bumped me down the list. That annual event had been going on for about 10 years and frankly I was getting a little
embarrassed that my name was in the top three virtually every single year; I did come out in first place I think a total of 6 or 7
times in the previous 10 years or so.

From then on, Kilo was on the list permanently and kept winning First Place year after year. Although when we hired Dan
Schoonmaker from Westminster PD in California to be our new Police Chief, he was not thrilled when I told the public’s #1
officer was…a….a…dog. The Chief just stared at me blankly from behind his desk. “You’re telling me that of all the officers here,
the voting public ranked a dog over everybody else.” I smiled broadly at him. “Yep, hilarious, isn’t it!” His blank l0ok back at me
continued for a enough time to start to make me feel uncomfortable. “Frankly, I find that to be an insult to every hard-working
officer on this department here.” My smiled faded. “Oh, uh, well, I’ve never thought of it from that viewpoint before, Chief.” I
kind of nodded my head and continued “I guess I see where you’re coming from..” I then had to explain to him that none of the
officers ever took the poll seriously at all, and that none of them were upset that Kilo’s name came out on top and in fact they
all liked it. It took a long time for the Chief to get over that one. Guess who came out top dog for the next year? And the year
after that? The last time I checked, Kilo was still on a roll and holding onto his title.
Being a K9 handler means learning to get used to dog hair. Everywhere. My patrol car especially. I wasn’t real tolerant of dog
hair floating around in my car so once a week I’d go find an empty field or parking lot where Kilo could run around while I
attacked my rig with a cordless leaf blower. Which, I gotta say, works even better than vacuuming; I’d open every door and the
back and just blow the hell out of the whole thing for several minutes. It worked well; I met a few other K9 handlers who were
quite impressed with the overall cleanliness of my ride. Most K9 handlers that I met seemed resigned to the fur and just let it
collect in piles in the floors and corners of their patrol cars.
And I also had to get used to dog slobber. During trainings and actual deployments/searches, there was always a lot of play time
with the Kong and that thing got really slippery with frothy wet dog slobber, which then got all over my hands and uniform.
That was one thing that I could not ever get comfortable with, unlike probably most dog handlers who resigned themselves to
getting dog slobber on their hands so often they’d just wipe them dry on their uniforms and carry on.

Here we are with the boys, doing a 10k fun run in Seattle: