“There’s never a perfect dog,” K-9 handler Mike Cantrell said. “There’s always something to do better and that’s what makes it fun.”

Cantrell said he believes the K-9 Unit is one of the most desired units in law enforcement.

“If you love law enforcement, love being a cop ... and you love animals, it’s like combining the two things and creating the ultimate tool, ultimate team,” handler Adam Atkinson said.

Every dog specializes in either finding narcotics or explosives and seven of the dogs are dual-purpose dogs. This means in addition to finding narcotics or explosives, they are also full patrol dogs. Cantrell provided his dog, Koda, as an example.

“He’ll bite bad guys, tracks them, does building searches, anything with human odor, he’ll do,” Cantrell said.

Gauge is a single-purpose narcotics dog, so he only finds drugs and does not do tracks. He is one of two dogs in the unit that are not dual-purpose, his handler Heckman said.

The MSUPD K-9 Unit has also has a vapor wake dog, Cora.

“A vapor wake dog, they see people as productive areas of searching,” handler Adam Atkinson said. “What would happen with a vapor wake dog if they were to detect an explosive on an individual, is they would actually trail that person as they were moving and then they would sit behind them. The term vapor wake comes from when we walk as individuals we have heat that comes off of us and it forms a heat plume that comes off in the shape of a wave and if you combine that with explosive odors or the vapors coming off of an explosive, it comes off in ... the wake of the heat coming off of the person.”

Labrador Retrievers are used as vapor wake dogs for two main reasons. Labs have strong noses and they tend to be less intimidating than German Shepherds, Atkinson said.

Meet the dogs

All nine dogs in the unit have their own distinctive personalities.

“He’s a nut job,” his handler Heckman said. “Clyde just marches to the beat of his own drum, but I figured out how to work with him. He’s kind of weird in that way but he’s a good dog.”

The oldest dog in the unit, Clyde will celebrate his 10th birthday on May 11, and if Clyde stays on the road until May 12, he will have served MSUPD for 9 years. Heckman said he believes Clyde will retire in late spring or early summer.

Heckman said Clyde enjoys searching for explosives.

“Out of everything, his favorite thing is to find explosives,” Heckman said. “Scent work to him is just a game, it’s fun.”

In addition to Clyde, Heckman also handles another dog, Gauge.

Four and a half years ago, MSUPD did not have a narcotics dog. Gauge worked at the Southfield Police Department and he suffered a back injury. Southfield police decided he could still do narcotics work and because Heckman knew someone who worked at the police department, Gauge was donated to MSUPD, Heckman said.

“Gauge is a lover. He loves attention,” Heckman said. “Gauge is really a good one for when you have kids around.”

Handling two dogs was unknown territory for Heckman. He said he was the first handler in the area to run two dogs.

“You’ve got double the responsibilities because you’re taking care of two dogs. You’ve got two dogs in your house, you’ve got two dogs in your vehicle, you’ve got two dogs to feed, two vet bills,” Heckman said. “I try to do everything together, but it’s easy now because they’re both older, they both know their jobs. It was a lot of work in the beginning.”

Heckman had to buy a different vehicle in order to fit two dog crates in it so he can transport both dogs to and from work. He now drives a minivan.

Atkinson is the only other handler in the MSUPD K-9 Unit with two dogs, Cora and Wolf.

Cora, the only vapor wake dog on the MSUPD force, joined the unit on Oct. 1, 2016.

“Cora’s personality is pretty much a on-the-go work, work personality,” Atkinson said. “I have not seen a dog or worked a dog that has not stopped as her. All she wants to do is work, work, work, work, work.”

Wolf’s personality is more laid back, Atkinson said.

“He has always had a great ability to transition from doing a demo with kindergartens and being off lead and rolling around and letting them pet him, straight into chasing down a wanted felon and barking at them and doing what needs to be done to apprehend them,” Atkinson said.

Atkinson and Wolf traveled to Alabama to pick up Cora and for the two dogs, a bond was immediate.

“When I brought them back to the hotel in Alabama, it was almost instantaneous,” Atkinson said. “Because Cora is so energetic, at night time she’s always in a kennel and because Wolf is so well-behaved, he’s free to roam the house and they sleep right next to each other, he won’t leave her side. They’ve grow a friendship ... I don’t ever have to worry about them together.”

At 16 months old, Jax is the youngest dog the K-9 Unit has ever had, his handler Jeff Kurtz said.

“One of the first things that caught my eye was how social he was, an extremely social dog,” Kurtz said. “He’s a stereotypical puppy. He’s got unlimited amounts of energy. He’s always bouncing off walls.”

Kurtz and Jax joined the unit seven months ago and it has been a learning process.

“I think that’s been the biggest adjustment, just trying to get used to having another living, breathing thing with you,” Kurtz said. “I spend a lot more time now training the dog, taking him with me on foot beat, kind of doing two things at once.”

With paws that are “too big for his feet,” Loki is three years old, still acts like a puppy and “lives up to his name,” his handler Sgt. Brandon Murphy said.

“He likes to think that (my kids) are toys but he’s not aggressive or anything, he just wants to play all the time,” Murphy said.

Work is always a game for the dogs, Murphy said.

“Everything we do with the dogs is fun. It’s all a game to them no matter what it is,” Murphy said. “Everything is fun, everything is for a ball. That’s what they like the most, their reward at the end.”

Murphy said he believes the ball Loki loves most is a kong.

“He goes through about two of those a month at home,” Murphy said. “They aren’t indestructible, even though the packaging says they are.”

While Loki goes through multiple kong balls every month, Bane usually goes through “three or four” a year, his handler Kim Parviainen said.

Contrary to his name, Bane is an extremely amiable dog.

“He really likes people and he’ll run around to everyone in the room,” Parviainen said. “He’s very, very, very friendly.”

A dual-purpose explosives dog, Bane loves tracking bad guys, Parviainen said.

“We’ll run a scenario and put a pretend bad guy at the end, or his favorite ball so once he gets to the end he’s like ‘oh my favorite toy, my favorite toy,’” Parviainen said. “They really think that we always know where the bad guy is and it’s a game, even though most of the time we don’t unless it’s a training scenario. But it kind of builds them up like ‘oh mom knows where that ball is’ or ‘mom knew it was there the whole time’ and it’s cool to see how much they want to make you happy.”

Koda can be profoundly loyal and friendly, Cantrell said.

“At home he’s a lot of fun to be around,” Cantrell said. “If someone were to knock on the door or come close the house, the hackles come up on his back and he’s just a completely different dog. He’s protecting the house first and foremost and he’s a different dog. It’s a German Shepherd thing. They’ve got triggers, good dog one second, handful the next second. It’s what makes it fun.”

Justus tends to be a quiet and mellow dog, unless he’s at work, his handler Shaun Porter said.

“When it’s time to work you see the energy and excitement come out of him and he wants to go out and he doesn’t know he’s working, he thinks he’s playing,” Porter said.

Porter said he believes the idea that dogs take after their handlers, especially when they’ve worked together for a long time.

“I think I’m kind of the same way,” Porter said. “He’s a very social dog. He loves people. If you hear him barking around other people it’s not an angry ‘I want to go after this person bark,’ it’s a ‘hey there’s somebody outside and I think I should go play right now.’”

Handlers' stories

Every handler has unique stories from calls they have attended with their dogs, from tracking a suspect for more than two miles, to big drug finds.“I did over a two mile track for a B&E suspect/parole absconder for Shiawassee County,” Heckman said. “That was just this last summer so he was an almost nine year old dog and he did that.”

For Parviainen, a track is also her favorite experience with Bane.

“I just remember I got back to the car and he jumped up in the car and he looked at me and he had a smile on his face,” Parviainen said. “I almost thought that I was going to cry because I was like ‘wow, a year and a half of work and you just found some guy that punched a girl in the head and could’ve killed her.’ That was definitely my favorite one .. we would not have found him if it was not for the dog.”

One time Koda found 10 grams of marijuana hidden inside the central heating vent of a car, Cantrell said.

“Usually if he points where drugs are, I can usually see it but these people put it in the vent of this car and I could smell it but I could not find it,” Cantrell said. “He kept pointing towards these vents in the radio area ... I looked as hard as I could down around the corner of the vent and I could just barely see a plastic baggie ... I turned the heat on really high and like 10 baggies came flying out. That was cool because I never would have found it. I had no idea where they were.”

Sometimes the teamwork is better than a specific track, Porter said.

“I think my most memorable would just have been a track,” Porter said. “I don’t have one that out trumps any of the others, working as a team, we’ve got a great crew working and they set up a perimeter and they have somebody and they’re locked down and we start the track. I trust my partner, the dog, to get on that track and .... that we can find the person at the end. Where, if the dog wasn’t there this guy would’ve never been found.”

Working in the K-9 Unit is a special experience.

“After 10 years of doing this, I’m still amazed every time that they find anything to do with human odor or, for him, drug odor,” Cantrell said. “I couldn’t imagine doing this job without a dog behind me. After 10 years, no.”

The K-9 Unit is the best job in police work, Heckman said.

“I wouldn’t know how to be a cop without a dog anymore,” Heckman said. “I really wouldn’t. It’d be really, really weird.”