Heaven’s Garden
September 26, 2007 by inspectorgadget
You may like to read this moving tribute by blogging dog handler, “Which End Bites”.
Whichend has not posted since 4th September, ‘a welfare check’ is needed. Please encourage him to come back with comments on his site, and let him know you came from here if you want.
(Canteen Culture dictates that male police officers are allowed to be soft over the deaths of children, police dogs and Top Gear presenters!)
It was a sad piece. Hope he’s getting by without his partner. Hope he knows we all like it when the land shark arrives on scene.
Yes, it was a sad post. I hope he’s ok
What about police horses though IG?! :p
What about ikkle fluffy furry purry poody tats? (Translation: cats)
How come you have a unique knack for making me cry…..
As a despatcher though I have to laugh at the amount of times a bobby gets in front of the dog and ends up getting his bum bit…
Listen to the radio guys, when we say dog is off lead, we mean dog is off lead and looking for a quick snack…
Smudged mascara; again.
yeh left comment yesterday asking how bearing up…. I’m not sure about being soft about the demise of Jeremy Clarkson though. Not sure at all.
Insp, I’m needing help finding a post that contained a link to a clip featuring a San Francisco (I think) cop getting into the media’s reporting of the death of an Officer there. He had a beard if that’s any help!
Hey pcmcgarry
is this the one?
http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2006/10/
Insp G, nice to know someone does welfare check when they don’t hear from a colleague for a while.
Old Softy
Benji - less of the “old”!
Dear Blogger,
I am an ex Met officer, now in my 3rd year of a full-time law degree. I have a research project underway and I really need the views of serving officers on one specific question (regarding s139 CJA 1988). I have created a small and very basic website which poses the question and allows officers to vote yes/no to the answer.
The site is http://anorhack.com (no’www’ – that’s important)
I’d be hugely grateful if you could pop a link to it on yr blog. For statistical purposes, the more replies I get, the better!
Thanks
Phil Bowles
Everyone’s sad when we lose a hairy exocet. Thoughts with one man with no dog.
Jaegerdude: Yep, that’s the very one. Ta.
Gadget I couldn’t find an e-mail address for you but I thought you needed to see this if you havent already
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9zNgGjuKHU&eurl=
Cheers
…and you have me weeping like a baby.
Funny how I cry over animals, yet people rarely get a second glance from me - I suppose its because of the unconditional love that anumals give us.
OLD as in ‘you daft old sod’ or ‘how are you old thing’
Affectionate. If I find out you work for my force, you get a big sloppy kiss. Whether you want one or not.
I can only express my sorrow to him. My companion of late is a bomb sniffing drop out who ended up a housepet and he is there for me, a warm heartbeat at my feet, at home, at the gun range or bustling around the kitchen hoping for a leftover. I’d be lost without him though as a girl, I’m allowed to say that.
Special Agent B.
United States.
By the way. this is really long - but I wrote it this week. If you think if will get a smile out of him, please pass it on.
—-
I will always be a “dog person”. Mayday the Cat is the exception, being like family. But my pet of choice will always be a dog. I’ve had several. Big Jake the golden retriever, who like his namesake was brave but unlike his namesake was possibly the dumbest dog I have ever known, though friendly. I should have named him Jessica Simpson, but Jake just seemed to fit when I got him from the shelter. There were other family dogs. My daughter’s German Shepard Zeus, Dad’s dog Charlie, and two other black labs - Bonnie and Clyde and my two huskies, a black and white Siberian named Shamu and a Samoyed named Sitka (which is Inuit for “hairball” I came to believe).
Yogi though, I have to say, is my favourite. He came from a distinguished line of National Field Champions and has a pedigree that would make him a show dog. That’s not why I selected him. A fellow I work in the field with had Yogi’s older sister, and she was such a great dog that I had dibs on a pup when they decided to have another litter with that pairing. Some of the other dogs ended up as working dogs, but Yogi, had no interest in sniffing anything other than a potroast and ended up a pet.
Though I didn’t train him to hunt or show, he is by far the smartest dog I’ve had. Every Saturday morning is big breakfast day. Where I cook, even if it’s just for me, a tremendous lumberjack breakfast. He usually begs, though discretely. One deeply snowy morning, at my old house, before my fence was built, I had just sat down with some peameal Bacon and a big stack of homemade sourdough pancakes and Yogi frankly, ignored me. Not even as much as a LOOK in my direction. Now that was odd. Maybe he had a tummy ache. I’d never seen such inattention to anything coming to the table since the ill conceived “tofu night”. In any event I sat down while he did a careful study out the window of his arch enemy Mr. Squirrel and ignored me and my plate.
Suddenly, he JUMPED up, scratching furiously at the door. He had to go. and in a bad way. But since the fence had not been built, I had to go with him with the leash as he would run off into the woods otherwise. My snow boots, of course being in the garage. He continued to scratch and whine desperately at the door like his little bladder was going to burst so I scurried out into the garage to find the boots. He as well knows they’re out there. I returned to an empty plate and Yogi licking Canadian maple syrup off his nose, then going promptly back to sleep, bladder quite fine thank you.
But he’s good company; a heartbeat at my feet on those nights I’m alone in the big house and a cold, lonely wind taps at my soul. He’s the uncomplicated creature I could be if I knew better. He challenges any threat with honor; to bark at a strange dog is the utmost of patriotism for him, and he quietly offers me an affection ignorant of my faults. He sleeps deeply yet watchfully and for his cunning seems to have no knowledge of death, and relies on me to do his worrying about that for him.
Yet, like most hunting breeds, with the instincts built into such bloodlines, he can also be self reliant and resourceful, a Knight with a tail. Such it was last night. It was high school homecoming with the obligatory dance, as one of the boys from the block who mows my lawn for me told me. I knew there’d be some parties, and activity, but the houses are widely spaced in this rural area and I expected a quiet evening. I was curled up with only a small lamp for illumination, just starting W.E.B. Griffin’s Special Ops (second in the Badge of Honor Series, from one of my favourite authors). I was chuckling over the paragraph “Mickey had his principles, among them that looney people aren’t funny. Unless, of course, they thought they were the King of Pennsylvania or something. Mickey never wrote about loonies who were pitiful”.
As I read, I hear Yogi huffing at the back window. The whole back of my house is windows overlooking the water. I didn’t hear anything, but he did. Then a few minutes later I hear it. Voices, way back behind my house, not making any huge attempt to conceal themselves, it sounded like normal, but purposely muted conversation. I’m concerned but not overly so. My house is locked, I have the work type 9 mm and a .45 handy if anyone was foolhardy to break in while I’m home. I have an alarm system that will summon the cops or the fire trucks only 2 miles away with a simple break in a microswitch. I have Sir Yogi.
He’s softly growling at this point. I’ve tried to teach him not to bark at each and every little thing, especially in the dark, in order to be a considerate neighbor. If I let him out and he barks at something innocuous, a leaf falling, a chipmunk, a six year old riding her bike past the house, he’s corrected. He’s well over a 100 pounds and though a lab, as friendly a breed as can be, his bark sounds like a full grown mastiff about to tear your throat out, and it’s loud. If he does it for no good reason I say firmly “Barking. . NO” and he doesn’t get a treat when he comes in when I call. He’s catching on. This is a dog that likes his treats.
The lights still off in my house other than the reading lamp, I pull to the window to investigate. It appears the neighbors across the water are having a little dinner gathering pre homecoming, and some teenagers have snuck off their property to have an illicit smoke (they’re underage). So they’ve snuck past the limits of their parents floodlight, around the water onto my property, into the darkness behind my back chainlink fence, and they’re sitting against it talking amongst themselves of normal teenage things and likely leaving their cigarette butts on my lawn. I hesitated opening the door to call out to them, they weren’t hurting anything other than their lungs, but I didn’t want them to get into the habit of roaming onto my property uninvited.
Yogi is opening growling, but quietly. I look at him, point out towards the fence and say “Yogi. . Barking GOOD”. He cocks his head at me, that isn’t a command he’s heard before and I’m not sure he understands but I quietly open the door. He rushes out, not making a SOUND as I expected. Normally, if he barks, he’s started in before the door’s even opened, but instead goes running in silent, full special ops stealth mood, glossy black invisible in the blackness until he gets to the back fence a hundred yards back, at which point he launches into a deep throated, full fledged ” BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK!!!! a foot or so behind their smoke shrouded heads.
The kids scattered like a covey of quail, squealing, cigarettes flying and I’m sure at least one of them wet their pants.
That’s my boy.
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