Safety Saturday: Introducing Sergeant Shepherd!
Sergeant Shepherd will be participating in #SafetySaturday by providing civilian tips, advice, and most importantly fun throughout the In the Spirit of Giving Foundation™ campaign Protecting Those * Protecting Us™. Sergeant Shepherd is gearing up for the National fundraising campaign assisting police officers and law enforcement on multiple social media platforms.
The German Shepherd dog is respected and admired throughout the world for its flexibility, intelligence, and loyalty. In 1889, Captain Max von Stephanitz began the standards of the breed. It all started at a dog show in Karlsruhe, Western Germany. A medium sized yellow and gray wolf-like dog caught his attention. The dog was powerful. He possessed endurance, composure, and intelligence. He was born with this ability, requiring no training other than direction to become proficient at any given task. This dog, Horand von Grafrath, was purchased by von Stephanitz, and became the first registered German Shepherd dog. The breed was named Deutscher Schäferhund by von Stephanitz, translating to “German Shepherd Dog”.
The first German Shepherd dog exhibited in America was in 1907. With the end of World War I, came a new appreciation for the breed. The German Army had made good use of the breed as a war dog. In America, Dogs for Defense was formed, providing thousands of dogs to the army.
One of the first real attempts to use dogs to aid police in the detection of crime and the apprehension of a criminal was made in 1869 by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police of London, Sir Charles Warren. Today, even the smallest of departments operates a K-9 team of at least one dog, while the officers of more metropolitan cities can be used to working with dozens of dogs at a time.
German Shepherds are usually the only police officers that are routinely called “cute.” They are the four-legged officers of the K-9 unit. The first recorded use of dogs doing police work was in St. Malo, France in the early 14th century, when they were used to guard dock installations.
Today, the duties of most K-9 officers are often used to search for drugs, weapons, and explosives. Some dogs also fulfill roles in arson investigation, using their sensitive noses to locate chemical fires. Others are trained specifically as cadaver dogs, to locate the decomposing remains of accident and murder victims.
Due to their more sophisticated roles in day to day police work, K-9 officers undergo training that is more intense and difficult than the training received by human officers. This training begins not long after they are separated from their mothers. A police dog is teamed with an officer, and the dog and the officer will work as a team. To forge a bond between the dog and the officer, the police dog usually lives with the officer’s family. This not only encourages reliability, but it also helps to ensure the dog remains welcoming and sociable.
What most civilians don’t realize is that K-9 officers are truly considered police officers. Assaulting, injuring, or killing a K-9 officer carries the same punishment under the law as the same crimes committed against human officers. Dogs killed in the line of duty are given a complete police funeral.
Stay tuned for Sergeant Shepherd’s fun adventures and advice throughout the Protecting Those * Protecting Us™ campaign.
