At home, Esko is like any other dog.
He lies around, plays fetch with his owners and goes on walks. But his day job at the Athens County Sheriff’s Office requires him to literally sniff out crime.
“He doesn’t listen to anyone else but me,” his owner, Deputy K-9 Handler John Morris, said. “He listens to my wife half the time, but I don’t want him listening to anybody else.”
The Sheriff’s Office accepted donations in 2009 to purchase Esko, a 95-pound German Shepherd bred in Germany, for $11,000, which includes the price of training and equipment.
Athens Police Chief Tom Pyle, who said his department uses police dogs, said it’s not uncommon to pay anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 for a police dog.
“They’re highly trained and highly specialized dogs, but they can be rather expensive,” he said.
Sheriff Pat Kelly said that Esko is a commissioned dog who gets workman’s compensation — for instance, in case of injury — just like an actual deputy.
Esko went through basic training in Germany and another trainer in Ohio, but before working with Morris, the two trained together for six weeks.
To train the dogs to find illegal narcotics, Morris and other trainers put trace amounts of drugs in PVC pipes with small holes in it. The trainer plays fetch with the dogs to get them used to sensing the drug. Dogs are unable to inhale the drug, but familiarize themselves with the scents.
“So when we go out and are searching cars, he’s not looking for drugs; he’s looking for his toy,” Morris said. “We associate their toy with the smell of narcotics.”
Although Esko and other police canines smell the drugs, Morris said the odor wouldn’t hurt them, unless they directly inhale the drug, in which case the dog would have a reaction.
Most police canines serve as narcotics canines or patrol canines, but Morris explained that Esko is a dual-purpose canine, meaning he searches for drugs and patrols the area for safety while on duty.
Esko is trained to detect marijuana, heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and other illegal narcotics, but he’s not trained to find prescription pills because many are legal, Morris added.
“I do believe that (Esko) recognizes our uniforms, so I’m not too worried when another officer walks up to him, but with pedestrians and people in plain clothes, I keep him on a short lead,” Morris said.
Because much of Esko’s training was in Germany, he understands commands in about seven foreign languages, and Morris said he doesn’t know what some of them translate to — he just knows what they do.
“There are words that turn (Esko) into a different, angry dog. I can’t say what they are, but if we’re going to a high-risk call, I tell him the word, and just like that, he turns into a different dog and he gets all prepared,” Morris said. “We don’t want people to know what the commands are, not that (Esko) would listen to anybody else, but still we don’t want others to know.”
Along with searching for drugs, police dogs are now being trained to track criminals while on patrol. Though Morris said Esko tracked a bank robber about a mile away, some Canadian dog handlers are training their dogs to track within a five-mile radius.
After the dogs from the Sheriff’s Office were flown in from Germany, dog handlers in Ohio train them.
“We use one out of Tuppers Plains in Meigs County, and the dogs are trained extensively about how to detect the drugs,” Kelly said
The Sheriff’s Office owns a second police dog, Turner, who lives with another deputy.
Though Esko isn’t a typical partner for most deputy officers, Morris said having Esko around is like having another person helping him at all times.
“He’s been with me 24/7 going on four years now, and I like having him around if I ever need him,” he said. “Sometimes I wish he could do paperwork too.
az346610@ohiou.edu
