K-9 program getting the most out of its Lab work

State dignitaries ringed the room as she walked in to be honored before retirement. During a distinguished career, she had saved senior citizens, rescued lost children and brought criminals to justice. She also never missed a day at work, complained or contradicted an order.

Unimpressed by the speeches, plague and applause, Lucy, a Labrador retriever, let out a long sigh and gave Jeff Goeckler a bored look that said, “I’d much rather be fetching a tennis ball.”

Lucy was a member of the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism K-9 program, one of 11 dogs that have lived and worked with game wardens since the program started in 2003. Most of the program’s best dogs came from animal shelters or from homes where they were problematic.

Lucy and Goeckler joined the team in 2008 and she quickly made an impact, helping Goeckler with wildlife cases and other law enforcement agencies needing her services.

Goeckler knew it was a tough challenge when he got her from his truck that first year. It was late at night, and deer poachers he’d been pursuing crashed their car and took off into the blackness.

“It was a real nasty, overgrown pasture, and hard for me to even keep up with her,” said Goeckler. “It ended up being a two-mile track. She was on the trail the whole time, even when they tried backtracking and when they separated. She stayed on the main trail until we caught the first guy. We went back to where they’d split and she got right on tracking down the other guy. It was a real ‘wow’ event.”

He has memories of Lucy finding illegal doves tossed out a vehicle window as they raced away across the countryside. One bitterly cold night Lucy tracked, and quickly found, an elderly woman with dementia who wandered from a care facility in only a thin nightgown.

There was the time panicky parents near Milford Reservoir called for help when their 4-year-old son was missing. The family lived atop a tall, steep bluff that dropped nearly straight down into deep water. Lucy tracked and found the child a quarter-mile away, safe, but trying to make it to the water. She was a pro at finding the empty shell casings from a poacher’s gun.

“She did that a lot, and she did it with speed,” he said. “You just told her what to do, then stood back and watched the show. We called her the chocolate rocket.”

Jason Sawyers, Wildlife and Parks K-9 coordinator, said the program looks for high-energy Labs, or Lab mixes.

“They’re hunting dogs, naturally,” he said. “We’re just teaching them what we need for them to find. It’s all already in them, we’re just changing the end result. They never quit on you.”

He said several of the dogs have from Wichita-area shelters. One came from a Wichita family that couldn’t control a rambunctious female Lab. Cooper is now one of the department’s top dogs.

Goeckler’s Lucy wandered the streets of Topeka for at least three weeks before she could be captured and taken to an animal shelter. All handlers, and their assigned dogs, have been thoroughly trained.

Sawyers said K-9 handlers, and their dogs, undergo about 400 hours of intensive training in Indiana, the state that pioneered such programs. Handler and the dog are trained in tracking, detection and searching. Some dogs have particular specialties.

“We have some trained on a particular kind of fish,” said Sawyers. “We had one in Wichita trained to sniff out trout because there were over-limit problems there. Another at Milford was trained to sniff out wipers. They could tell the difference between those and the smells of other fish. It’s pretty impressive.”

The program was initially started with donations. Though they now have a budget, Hills Pet Nutrition provides free dog food. Veterinarians often provide services for free or reduced prices.

The dogs, which live with their handlers and are usually left with the same family upon retirement. Since Goekler’s recent promotion means far less time from the office, Lucy has been retired to his home as a full-time member of the family. She had health issues that also would have made working afield difficult, and maybe dangerous.

All of the K-9s are an important bridges to the public.

“When we take these dogs to a sport show, they are the stars of the show,” said Sawyers. “We have one dog, Cooper, that in four years, has done about 200 programs. That’s one of the neat things about using Labs, is you don’t have to worry about somebody getting bitten. Some kid might get licked to death if we’re not careful, but that would be the only way someone would get hurt by our dogs.”

This story was originally published November 7, 2015 at 4:41 PM with the headline "K-9 program getting the most out of its Lab work."