Clyde quickly picked up a scent. Heckman alternated commands in English and Dutch. Circling the site, Clyde barked wildly.

“Show me,” Heckman said.

Clyde tapped a nearby industrial sink with one paw and sat down next to it. Heckman tossed him a tennis ball. He found the bomb.

Heckman, the unit’s trainer, was paired up with Clyde in 2008. Last year he also got Gauge, a dog trained in narcotics tracking. It’s rare for any officer to work with two dogs at a time, police said.

Heckman joked he initially took on another dog out of “pure stupidity.” But now, he said he can’t picture life as an officer without his two dogs.

“You do all the same duties as a police officer, with the added responsibility as a K-9,” Heckman said. “Everyone who gets in a K-9 (unit) does it because they want to. They’re not forced … They wanna be here.”

As training progresses, Heckman said the dogs and officers in the unit become a family.

Gauge was added to the family last year when he was donated from the Southfield Police Department after sustaining a back injury.

Similar to a herniated disc, Gauge’s injury renders him incapable of performing tracking duties, leaving Heckman to use him strictly for narcotics.

But when he’s on the job, Heckman said he’s just like any other dog.

“In the last year I’ve found what causes the pain and inflammation, which is tracking, so he can’t track,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything with his injury that has prevented him from doing narcotics work — he jumps around, and you could just never tell.”

Until recently, Heckman kept Clyde and Gauge separate at home and on the job because Clyde tended to “bully” Gauge.

He said he had to transition them to spending time together slowly to avoid aggression.

MSU police Officer Adam Atkinson said it is common for dog specialties to change.

He said many are trained for more than one skill and can alternate between them easily.

But to the dogs, Heckman said, it isn’t just a job.

The work is based on a reward system where the dogs are given toys and play time for successfully picking up the scent of drugs, bombs or runaway suspects.

“This isn’t work to these dogs,” he said. “This is play. All we’re doing is we’re manipulating play to get the outcome that we want. All the dog knows is, ‘If I go find that odor, and I sit or I scratch, I get my toy’ … They’ll exhaust themselves trying to get that toy.”

MSU police Officer Brandon Murphy said the abilities of the dogs help officers accomplish feats they couldn’t otherwise.

“The most rewarding (feat) would be actually being able to find somebody that can’t be found by anybody else,” Murphy said.

“The dog can do work that no other person can do.”