The Dog Lover Unit by Rachel Rose

Author:Rachel Rose
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

5

Chrisa—The Dog No One Wanted

Chrisa is an outlier. A large, solidly built black-and-tan German shepherd, she is one of the few female police dogs in the RCMP. Even a few females is a step up from the number of female working dogs just a few years ago: zero. Female dogs were considered a liability. Word was, females just weren’t tough enough to come through in a crisis situation. Recently, however, breeders and trainers in Innisfail realized that such a blanket policy excluded those female dogs that had the right characteristics and temperament to be an ideal police dog. Now they test each pup as an individual. The fact remains, however, that few female pups make the cut.

Constable Jamie Dopson, Chrisa’s handler, is a bulky, solid man with a ruddy complexion. He is a former rugby player for Canada. Constable Dopson exudes confidence. He is one of the few handlers who just doesn’t care if his police dog is male or female; all he asks for is a solid working dog.

“At one point, Chrisa was one of only five female dogs working in Canada,” says Constable Dopson. “I think now we have four in the Lower Mainland alone. There’s been a shift in regards to thinking about female dogs. There was a time they thought the aggression in a female dog wouldn’t be up to the standard. But now they seem to have found a nice mix in the breeding process, where they are getting really good results.”

“So how did they come up with the evidence to start using female dogs?”

“They didn’t really. They used them at one point in time. Then—this was a number of years ago, at least ten years ago—during training, a couple of females just turned and ran.”

That, of course, would put their handlers at serious risk when they most needed defense. “At that point their blanket policy was changed to pull all the females. Now it’s let’s look at each dog individually. For the longest time the females were just brood, just for breeding, not really giving them the chance. Then they started putting them out in the field, and they seem to have worked out.”

The first time I met Chrisa, it was during a group training with nearly a dozen police dog teams. We were in the huge lot where totaled cars are stored at ICBC. Chrisa was extracting quarry out of the interior of busted cars. She jumped in through a door or open window and pulled the suspects out with her jaws as they yelled and fought and held on to the door handle, resisting her every step of the way. At that time I was struck by Chrisa’s focused efficiency. She didn’t get revved up even a little bit—she went right into the car, attacked on command, and got the job done.

Today she’s equally quiet. I step into Dopson’s Chevy Tahoe to silence. Chrisa’s not a barker. She moves closer and inspects me through the grille, and then proceeds to ignore me for the rest of the shift.

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