How Police Dogs Work

Police dogs have been used since the 19th century - one WWI German defector became a major movie star. But in the US the post-9/11 era has seen a K9 unit boom and questions and concerns have increased as well.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and the Stuff
you Should Know in the long running, never ending Law
Enforcement Suite. Boy's got to be close to dune. Huh.

(00:28):
I think that every time. In fact, I had to check.
I was like, I could have sworn we had done
this one. No, but we didn't. I guess we just
did service dogs. We didn't service dogs or service talks
in general. To be these service talks are guide dogs.
I don't remember. Remember that was a great, great one.

(00:48):
I always left talking about dogs. In fact, we should
just do one on dogs. Very interesting. I can't believe
we haven't. Yeah, it's pretty pretty fascinating, the history and
the breeds and how that all works, and so yeah,
this is about specific dogs more often than not, German
shepherds and Belgian malwaws. Don't forget about the beagle brigade.

(01:12):
Oh yeah, there's so cute, the cutest little service brigade
on the planet. Love little beagles until they start howling,
But other than that they're very cute. That's right, do
they howl more than most dogs. Beagles. No, but when
they do, they can howl. Okay, they're like a hound.
They remember the hounds. Yeah, my too. Um how at

(01:32):
the sirens they go by? Yeah, because it's like and
howling machine to the I love it though. I think
it's great, gotcha because it's over before you know it,
and it's I just like it. You have a beagle,
do you know? But they how Yeah? Most dogs how huh,
it's not like a beagle trade. I thought it was

(01:54):
beagles and hounds and bassa hounds blood. I grew up
with basset hounds. It's pretty great at your house. Yeah,
that was boh, he was awesome. He used to trip
on his ears. He's step on them, those poor dogs. Yeah,
that's back when I knew better and got like, you know,
I want this breed of a dog. Let's go buy

(02:14):
one now. You know you rescue the much from the kennel.
That's how you should get a dog. All right, I'm
off my soapbox. So, like I was saying, Malonois, German shepherds, labs,
police dogs and how and little um beagles mainly German

(02:36):
shepherds though, Yeah, from what I've seen well, apparently the
Belgian ones are pretty Um, I'm pretty sure I'm saying
it right. Malon Wis, Well, that's where it all started
in Belgium. Yeah, let's start with the history of police dogs, man,
because while they are pretty ubiquitous here in the United
States these days you always see like a car that

(02:56):
says like canine unit or whatever. Um. They like to
release the dogs a lot these days on protests, which
is pretty disheartening. Um, it's actually fairly recent, at least
in the United States. Europe has been doing this fred
at all time. Yeah. The first recorded police dogs were
in France uh in the fourteenth century that guarded duck installations,

(03:21):
and then UH in eight London the London Metropolitan Police
Force first to use bloodhounds to work the Jack the
Ripper case. Really, man, A lot of stuff came out
of that case. Yeah, A lot of things like forensics
that we're using today still and shouldn't be came out
of that case. And they still couldn't catch them. No,

(03:41):
never figured it out. Did you ever see that? Um? Oh,
what was the guy from Night Rider's name? I can't
with the half what's his full name? Yeah, David Hassle
he goes by the though. Yeah, um, he did it
one where the Tower Bridge or the London Bridge was
um re built in at like um in Arizona. What's

(04:04):
that famous lake in Arizona, the resort like habits. Yes,
they rebuilt the London Bridge at Lake have a sou
and Jack the Rippers ghost came with it and started
killing everybody like a TV movie. I think it was
made for TV. It certainly has the production value made
for TV movie. And Hasselhoff is the police detective with

(04:25):
the bad attitude who's the only guy with the chops
to solve this case, and everybody thinks he's crazy because
he's like, it's Jack the Ripper's ghost. It was. I
saw it when I was a kid, and I think
it's on like Amazon Prime, so it's coming for free.
I don't remember what it's called, but it's on there. Man,
I gotta seek that one out. Uh. That's crazy. And

(04:46):
that was back in his night Rider hey day. I
guess yeah, he was clearly righting high pre Baywatch even
I guess yeah, Oh, I forgot he was on Baywatch.
Wasn't name I mean that's oh, he made his name
all over the place on stage screen. Yeah, now he's
just uh so Belgium in Ghent g h e n T, Belgium. Um,

(05:07):
they first started using about ten years later than London
in eighteen ninety nine, and they actually had a program
set up, Yeah, like the first real police dog program
and it was a big success. Uh. And in October
of nineteen o seven, New York Police Department Chief I
guess George Wakefield went to Gahant in Belgium and came

(05:28):
back with five dogs. They just followed him home. Started
using them in New York City in nineteen eight Yeah,
and then uh, New Jersey followed suit very quickly, and
so did Detroit. The thing is, all of these um
police canine units were disbanded within a few years because
they didn't know how to train the dogs properly. Yeah.
I think the thing I saw said, from nineteen fifty

(05:51):
one to nineteen fifty four there were no police dogs
in the United States, and then later in the nineteen
fifties they started coming back. In the nineteen seventies they
became really widespread as far as many municipalities having a
canine unit. Yeah. Um. And initially it was like, oh,
I need a police dog. You have a German shepherd

(06:15):
and uh, leave it to me in your will. That
was like a police dog arrangement for a while. And finally,
law enforcement agencies around the country Apparently two thousand one
set off a huge boom in demand for police dogs.
That's one of the big reasons why they're so ubiquitous today,
although they've been in use a lot longer than that. Um,

(06:35):
but in any small town now you're gonna find like
at least one canine unit post nine eleven. Right, So,
but at some point they figured out the ones that
they're doing in Europe, let's just import them from there
because they know what they're doing in Belgium and Holland
and in other areas where they have these long standing
police training programs where you can buy a certified dog

(06:58):
and then you act teach the trainer how to how
to deal with that dog, rather than the trainer training
the dog, because the dog already comes trained and ready
to go. Well, there's still a lot more training you
have to do once you get them over here. But um,
from what I read, it's like bucks to buy the
certified dog and then another tin grand to train them.

(07:20):
In the United States, Yeah, but they pay for themselves. Well,
they do because they're usually paid for with drug money
that has been seized sometimes by um by drugs that
have been sniffed out by police dogs. So the police
dogs are generating income to bio police dogs. Among other
things yea, and fat doghouses and great treats like the

(07:44):
frozen ice cream treats that dogs love so much. I
bet canines get those. Why do they use dogs? One
good reason is because their sense of smell is about
fifty times more sensitive than the humans, which that you
don't need any more reason than that, Right, they can smell.
They I think this is the grabster wrote this one, right. Uh.

(08:05):
He actually interviewed a canine team, the human part of
that team and New York and he said that his
dog Breaston found a shipment of marijuana and heat sealed
milar bags inside plastic line crates sealed with foam silent
inside a closed storage garage with a cold Yeah, half asleep.

(08:30):
So that's that's a little bit. Uh, that'll tell you
a little bit about the sensitivity of a dog's nose.
It's pretty amazing. They don't get confused. You can you
can bury your drugs and coffee or wrap them and
perfume and the dog will still go no, no, I
know it's in there. Let's try now, let me bite
your crotch. And the reason they are they knows as

(08:54):
oars since was they had something like um, like old
three receptors where we have something like five million. Yeah,
we're dummies in the smell department. So um. Dogs are
also used not just for sniffing stuff out, whether it
be drugs or bombs or whatever. They're also used as

(09:14):
patrol dogs UM, which basically means that they're attack dogs
at the ready. UM. And apparently just the very presence
of a dog can keep a physical confrontation from taking
place or escalating. Oh yeah, I've seen it on cops.
When they get that dog out, you most often see

(09:35):
the dude go okay, I'll get where do you want me?
Because they've got that dog barking and they don't. I
don't know. It's weird that being beaten down by a
human isn't enough, but let dog is is scary. You know, Well,
you can't really reason with the dog. It can't be
like enough. Yeah what am I saying? I don't know

(09:58):
if you can reason with the CoP's keating me down there.
So with the um with the dog, actually they fall
into this um spectrum of escalation of violence that's allowable
among law enforcement and actually come after the baton, but
before the cop draws this gun. Right, So baton doesn't work,

(10:20):
you can release the dog. The dog doesn't work, you
can pull your gun, and then if that doesn't work,
you can pull the trigger. That's the continuum of violence,
continuum of force. I'm sorry, big difference. Let's just call
it violence. Um, they're not lulla buying people to sleep

(10:43):
and putting them in the police car, you know what
I mean? Uh, Like we said, it's usually German shepherds. Um.
Sometimes they use labs now labrador retrievers. Uh what is
that called again? You said it once before, the Belgian
malonois melonoi and of course the beagles would we'll talk
about here in a bit. They're all well suited to
police doggery work and they can uh get them all

(11:10):
over the place. Like you said, sometimes they're donated. But
by and large, if you want a really cracked police dog,
you still need to go to Europe. It's where it's
worth the money. Yeah, apparently because if there are issues
later on in court, about the dog. Apparently the first
thing defense attorneys will say is your pay post please? Yeah,

(11:30):
and like they want to see this dog's background. As
far as the Supreme Court's concerned, which we'll talk about later,
is of two thirteen. That's all they need to say. Uh.
And the reason they get these dogs from europe um
is because their standards are just way more strict and they,
like you said, basically like let's just take this dog
and train them like this dog has been bred from

(11:52):
this lineage, right, I don't like that that light patch
on that dog's ear. Kill it. Don't say that, well,
they don't breed it, yes, kill it's genetic line right.
As far as Richard Dawkins is concerned, they might as
well be saying kill it, neuter it. Well, and that's
a big thing. As they leave these mail dogs they're
usually male dogs, and gave them unneutered because that will

(12:13):
keep that aggressive streak intact um, which took them to
the cop. It's sort of the same thing. You want
the best of the best, right right, Yeah, I mean ideally, yes,
this is all like in ideals and and hypotheticals, it's all.
It all makes utter sense. And I think that's how
it works out most of the time. Yeah, they there's

(12:34):
not any cop can go be a canine cop. It's
you required. You're required to be at the very top
of your class, very strong, energetic personality, very outgoing, willing
to work very long hours. It turns out I did
not realize this. Yeah, well, well we'll talk about in
a minute. But they say sixty hours a week and

(12:55):
they and that's just working. The dog lives with you.
It's your dog, seven dude. Yeah, so they have such
a tight bond. You were that dog's handler for its
whole career. Yeah, and I think the time these cops
keep these dogs after they're retired as well, Oh, I
would guess. So, yeah, it'd be hard to be like,
all right, go live with someone else. Good luck in

(13:17):
your retirement. Al Right, let's take a break here and
we'll talk a little bit about dog basic training right
after this. So, Chuck, the first thing that I'll police

(13:48):
dogs go through is obedience training. Kind of basic and simple,
but it's also probably the most important training they go through,
especially when they're patrol dogs, because they have to listen
to their handler or else things can go um really bad,
really fast. Because their handler is going to tell them

(14:09):
when enough is enough. Uh and if the dog isn't
understanding this and doesn't have that basic obedience, then you
can get in big trouble. Yes, as a as a
police force and as a canine unit. Lawsuits arrest. Well,
I'll probably not arrest um Ed points to dog. Can't
you end? Point? Now you can't? Um? Well, I guess

(14:29):
you can. In a way the dog catcher arrests dogs.
Um I thought that was an apt analogy. Uh so
Ed points out or Ed dispels a myth here actually
where um I guess a lot of the dogs that
come over from Europe take commands in their native language, right,

(14:50):
which makes total sense. But apparently there is a myth
that the reason why is because they don't want people.
Besides the handler acts ofly or purposefully setting the dog
off to attack by saying the word not true. No, Apparently,
it's just it's easier for the dog to retain the
training it had and for the handler to just learn

(15:13):
a few words in a foreign language. Yea, it makes
total sense. You're not gonna get a German shepherd that's
fully trained and say all right, now, forget all that
because I want to say sit and not zitsen zits
in is um sit in German plots, plots has laid down.

(15:33):
My friend Clay has a German shepherd he bought from Germany,
and uh he gives commands in German, which is pretty interesting. Yeah,
you hear a lot of plots around his dog. I
grew up with German shepherds. A couple of them. Plots
is more efficient because it's one syllable and lay down
as two. Yea makes sense. Germans efficient. Uh what else

(15:58):
they can get into specialty training? They need to be uh, well,
they need to have endurance and be super agile and
be you know, physically fit dogs. But then they go
through specialty training like whether it's drugs or bombs. Um.
I know arson is a big one now to have
them seek out accelerants. They can even track people, um,

(16:19):
which I didn't quite get and getting how they do it,
but I don't understand how they actually do it well.
When I've seen it on cops, it's been like they
have a piece of clothing from a guy and then
there's like he's in this attic in this house somewhere
to find him, so they have to have something to
to scent the dog. Yeah, I think, so, Okay, that's

(16:40):
I did. That's what I didn't get. I mean, like,
if it's just some guy who ran, then the dog
wouldn't really be of any use right now, Like just
a description of the purp wouldn't help. So um. This training, actually,
the secondary training or specialty training, is actually really simple
and kind of clever and fun. It is so the

(17:00):
first thing the dog learns to do is to love
a towel more than anything else on the planet. It's
it becomes its toy, a towel that's been washed to
remove any kind of scent, so the towel doesn't have
its own scent, and the dog learns to love it
by playing tug of war with it, right, And then
in very short order, the cop gets his hands on

(17:21):
a little bagging of pot and rolls it up with
the towel and they keep playing tug of war, and
now the dogs like, hey, my favorite toy smells a
lot like pot. Okay, Now the next step is for
the cop to hide the towel filled with pot, and
the dog finds it, and then they play tug of war,

(17:41):
and eventually the dog will learn that anytime it smells pot,
it thinks it's toy is hiding, and it goes after
and starts digging in the place where that it smells pot.
And hence the dog has just sniffed out pot, which
means that drug sniffing police dogs are playing, which I
didn't realize until pretty awesome. They think about when you

(18:03):
see a dog clawing at the trunk of that guy's car,
he's like, my toys in there, my toys in there. Uh.
And then they will replace that pot with all manner
of drugs to cross strain the dogs, so they can
basically they'll stuff that suitcase that um that Hunter Thompson
steels please conce into a towel. And yeah, they can

(18:27):
also do like explosive components too sure for bombs and
then accelerants in the case of arson. Arson sniffing dogs
are a big thing now. That's all the rage. They're
so hot right now. And there's two ways that can alert.
The aggressive alert is what we were just talking about,
is when they think there's that toy and they're just
clawing and pawing and trying to dig it out of

(18:49):
your suitcase or wherever. And then there's the passive alert,
and that is when you don't want a dog clawing
all up in your junk and you need a little
more delicate situation, which is the case with the Beagle Brigade. Yeah,
they just come and they sit next to the person.
That's how they alert. That's the cutest alert alert. Yeah,

(19:09):
And that's the kind of cut their toward the person.
The Beagle Brigade works with the U. S d A
and they sniff out illegal produce. So you might have
seen them at the airport here and they were like
little um best. Yeah, but not bulletproof fests, but like

(19:31):
patrol dogs to you. In fact, they have I think
ed mentioned a fundraiser. They had to get bulletproof fest
for the dogs at this one, and they like people
just flooded them with money, right, you know, because it's
not cheap. No, I have I have no idea how
much bulletproof vest is for Kena and unite do you
you just know the one that you have? How much

(19:51):
that cost? No? I don't know. My guess is a
bulletproof fest is probably a couple of grand Okay, I'm
just throwing that out there. That's what i'd pay, That's
what you pay, well, my friend, you would be taken
for a ride because I a canine tactical mole vest

(20:12):
for a hundred. That's a dubious and apparently Miami Heat
star Ray Allen has a side business where he supplies
canine protection and safety products. And this is a segment
called Josh reads his phone on the air. You've done
that before. Don't even play holier than now. Yeah, you're

(20:35):
looking at the name of the impossible the other day
while I was yapping. That's like the only time I've
ever done that. So, uh, let's talk about a day
in the life of a dog, a canine dog. I
didn't know this before. They even go on patrol from
four pm to midnight. They're gonna be going to high

(20:56):
schools and going down the hallways sniffing ackers. They're gonna
be sniffing businesses. If you need a business sniff, you
can call them and say, hey, I'd like to pay.
I guess you can pay, right, you just requested. I
guess the request. The cops are like, it's an investment
in a bust, right, good point. Uh, some days you

(21:19):
have to go to court and then the dog has
to go to court as well. And then eventually they
will actually work their shift. And this is why they
worked such long hours because they're busy during the day
and then they go to work at night when they
need to be banging the streets and you're so tough,
but uh. And when they're on the streets, what they're

(21:41):
doing is um just like any other cop. Basically, you know,
you do a lot of sitting around and waiting on
calls to come in. Then when that call comes in,
you might be sniffing out a car. You might be
chasing a purpose. Yeah, you could be doing both. Yeah,
the dog that is um and when you are snoop
in a car if you're a dog. The Supreme Court

(22:03):
ruled that a dog alert is enough for probable cause
for a police search like that in and of itself.
So if the dog alerts it's trainer, who is or handler?
I should say, who's the only person on that scene
who can read the dog's behavior necessarily um that then

(22:25):
that officer has a um a right to search that car. Yeah,
And that's very delicate matter because there's a lot of
claims of false signals that a cop will make the
dog react just so they can Basically that the canine
dog is a prop used to get search whenever they want. Yes,

(22:49):
and those some people say that those are um, well, yeah,
and I guess we'll talk about it later. The false positives, yeah, well,
that'll be quiet for now. We can talk about no. Well,
false false positives are the thing that you, um are
most concerned with with police dogs because they usually do
not miss drugs the presence of drugs when they are present.

(23:13):
Police dog, when it's brought around to like a car
or something like that, it knows the score. It knows
that it's supposed to be looking for its toy, so
it's gonna start sniffing around. Um. The thing is is
thinking about sniffing its toy. We're sniffing for its toy,
and that's this whole thing. It's entirely possible that it's
going to detect the presence of its toy, meaning drugs

(23:35):
are there when it's not there, um, and then it'll
give it an alert and then a full search will begin,
which is not a problem when that actually results in
the the the discovery of drugs. But that apparently happens
generously speaking, only um like forty six percent of the

(23:57):
time they find drugs when a police dog says there's
drugs there, which means like fifty percent of the time
the police dog is saying that there's drugs there when
there aren't, which means a lot of people innocent, A
lot of innocent people get their their property searched. Yeah,
and there's a Chapel Hill, North Carolina law professor named
Richard Meyers who in two thousand and six wrote an

(24:20):
article on the George Mason Law Review where he basically
said the controlled testing to get UH numbers on these
dogs is terrible. Um. And he he did some math
based on something called the Bayesian probability formula where he
said he thinks it could be as high as eighty
five percent failure rate or false positive rate. Yeah, supposedly

(24:42):
there was UM in Florida. There were some dogs that
were being used on a stretch of highway where they
put up roadblocks a lot that were like wrongent of
the time in the eighties or something like that. Yeah,
And I think they said one of the big issues
is when they're doing that like random, not like pulled
someone over. But hey, I'm at the border and there's

(25:02):
three cars in this line, sniff them all, right, Because
the The idea is that most of those cars are
going to be free of drugs, but the dogs like
looking for drugs. This whole thing is it's looking for
its toy, and the context is different for the dog
than the average person who's just trying to get through
the border. You know, it's very slippery slope, it is.
And then it gets even more slippery when people when

(25:25):
juries convict based on evidence from dogs. So, for example,
there was a guy named I think his name is
Paul Yell who was convicted of intentionally burning down his
own house, killing one of his kids inside because a
police dog um detected accelerants. Well, the lab went behind
the dog where the dog said there's an accelerant here

(25:47):
and tested the area and in zero of those six
did it find the presence of accelerants. The jury is
still convicted of because the dog said that the guy
had used accelerance, even though the lab couldn't verify those results. Um.
And there was another guy in a state trooper in
Florida in the eighties named John Preston who had a

(26:08):
dog named harrass too, And it turned out this guy
helped put away like more than a hundred people and
it was basically like a framer for hire. You could
bring him along and basically let him know what you're
looking for, and he would say that his dog had
had found whatever evidence you needed. And at least two
people were exonerated of murder um who were convicted in

(26:29):
part by evidence detected by this dog. Harrass too who
was handled by Preston. And there's two really good documentaries.
One is um a killing in Canova Beach. Remember when
Paulson was on our episode or podcast for the Innocence Project.
It's a documentary about that. And then there's another one
called An Innocent Man. It's about a guy named Michael Morton.

(26:51):
Both of them feature this guy, John Prestons is notorious,
infamous dog handler. Even among dog handlers. He's despised because
he gave the idea of of um canine units. It's
just a really bad name because everybody's like, well, if
this guy is doing it, how many other people are
doing it? Right? And then all of a sudden, you
can't use canines anymore? All right, Well, we'll take one

(27:13):
more break and come back and talk some about Uh, well,
what are we gonna talk about? Let's talk about dogs,

(27:43):
all right? So here's a little stat for you. UM,
on a drug sweep a canine, they're very efficient a
canine unit. The dog can cover ten times as much,
uh ten times quicker to search an area than a
human cop goold, and be way more apt to find
the drugs than a cop might. Which again, it makes

(28:05):
sense because if if you can't disguise a shipment of
drugs very well from a dog's nose, then you're in
trouble first of all, but also most people are trying
to disguise it from humans, which means you're trying to
make it so it doesn't look like drugs. But even
if you go to the trouble of disguising the scent,

(28:26):
it's still probably not gonna work for a well trained dog.
Police dogs are considered they're kind of treated like regular
cops as far as protections and the law goes like,
if you shoot and kill a police dog, they treat
it as if you had shot and killed a police officer. Yeah,
a guy in Pittsburgh recently got three and a half

(28:47):
to seven years for stabbing a police dog to death. Um,
so I guess it's not just like it because if
you kill the cop, you'd probably go to the chair, right,
you wouldn't get three to seven years. UM. In Tennessee,
they recently passed the law called Erin's Law in honor
of a police dog that's mentioned in here that went
down and during a bank robbery. He was killed the

(29:10):
bank he kept he kept going after the bank robber
that was shooting at him. Uh. And apparently he's credited
for distracting the robber enough for the human cops to
get the safety and eventually they the swat team killed
the bank robber, but the dog was killed in the process.
But that was and it wasn't until this year two

(29:31):
thousand fifteen that Tennessee passed a law called Aaron's Law
that makes it a felony to kill a police dog.
And and intentionally kill a police dog. I'm surprised it's
just not a felony everywhere. Yeah, it is kind of surprising. Uh.
And then in terms of being treated like regular cops
as far as the use of force, the justification is

(29:52):
the same with the dog. Uh. And they said, and
it says in this article that in court typically use
of force is justified if the suspect is armed, if
they have not yet been searched by officers, or if
they are fleeing a serious crime scene, that's when you
can release the hounds. Yeah, and so, like we said,

(30:15):
usually just the the certificates of training are enough for
a court to be like, Okay, it's fine that that
dog probably didn't overstep its bounds, despite what the guy
who's now suing the police department because he got bit
by this police dog is saying. Because he's a he's
a trained dog, trained European police dog, um, and the

(30:38):
track record doesn't have to come into account. It's just
that's enough for most courts to say, Nope, excessive force
was not used. Yeah. I think we're going to see
a lot more stuff about this in the future. False
triggers and well rulings. Forensic forensic investigation as a whole
is under a microscope like now her before and and

(31:01):
very appropriately. There's a lot of stuff that's still just
based on hunches that's being passed off as science and
courtrooms and people are being convicted on. Even DNA can
can be very easily misused when it's not done properly. Yeah,
so I think it should be agreed, So, Chuck, there

(31:21):
is a very famous police dog that you may have
heard of. Rentintin, that's right, was a German dog who
fought who fought for the Kaiser in World War One.
But then the guys who were UM, the unit he
was a member of, abandoned him. So an Americans said, hey, boot,
come over here, and Rentintin followed him and ended up
becoming a movie star in the United States. About that,

(31:44):
did you know that? I did not know that. I
mean I knew about Rentintin, but I had no idea
that he was a service dog. Yeah, pretty neat. So
there are actually, um, there's a group called the Connecticut
Police Work Dog Association and they are involved in honoring
and tracking UM police dogs who have died in the
line of duty. And a surprising and very disturbing number

(32:08):
of police dogs die in the line of duty because
they're left in hot cars and forgotten about what in Uh.
Since nineteen forty two thousand dogs police dogs have died
in the line of duty. Um, and then since two
thousand seven, twenty nine have died from being left in
sweltering cars. Cow. Yeah. And the reason why is because

(32:32):
there are um special compartments for them to ride in. Ye. Yeah,
that aren't necessarily air conditioned. Yeah, they need to outfit
those since then, yeah, that's that should not happen. It's
two thousand seven. That shouldn't happen once because it's easily preventable.

(32:55):
It surious. You got anything else? I got nothing else,
and this one was chuck full of stacks sets, random
lots of stuff. I was surprised when I first saw
police dogs. I was like, okay, and it was very
much more complex and interesting issue than I initially assumed
it would be. If you see a police dog, do

(33:15):
you not go up and pet it? Um? It's working,
especially if you have drugs on your person. That's right. Uh.
If you want to know more about police dogs, you
can type those words into the search bar at house
to works dot com. And since I said search bar,
it's time for listener mayo, I'm gonna call this meat pigeon. Hey, guys,

(33:37):
have been hooked on your podcast since the first episode
I listened to. I've been hooked on meat pigeons even long.
I never thought I'd have anything worth writing in about,
but when I saw two day's episode about pigeons, seemed
too coincidental not to This past weekend, I received a
random text from my boss asking if I wanted a pigeon.
It's not as odd as you would think, because I
work in a pet store not known for being an

(33:58):
animal lover, animal loving vegan with an affinity for birds.
As it turns out in sumter, South Carolina, wear my
boss that's as a pigeon processing plant where they raise
utility pigeons for meat and research. My boss were easily
caught a lucky escape ee as he bathed in the sprinkler,
unaware that he's being stalked by a resident cat. So
after a few days of rooming with William the dub

(34:21):
I took home when it was abandoned at my work.
The pigeon now as a coop to call his own,
replacing his temporary name of meat. Pigeon is a proper name, Ramsey's.
I guess William was thin her boss. I'm a little confused. Yeah,
the introduction of the name Ramsey's makes me think you're
probably right, unless her boss's name Ramsey's. No, no, No.

(34:41):
The pigeons the namy gave himself when he became manager.
It's a tribute to Ramsey's, the third in pigeon history,
but has consequently led to my husband and I frequently
singing Nacho libra quotes too poor Ramsey's. I don't remember
Ramsey's and Nacho libre, do you. I didn't see that.
They didn't know it's cute. The next step is to
seek out some pigeon companionship for Ramsey's. Thank you so

(35:06):
much for the greatest podcast ever. I'm hoping there will
be a southeast toward you will past to Columbia, South Carolina.
Maybe you might just have to drive to Atlanta. Let's
not do it. And that is from bree Uh Bagnal
in Columbia and she sending pictures of Ramsey's in the coop.
He is one cute pigeon. Yeah there are Yeah, he's cute.

(35:27):
There are some cute pigeons out there. I learned, as
long as they're not carrier pigeons usually fairly cute. That wattle. Uh.
If you want to get in touch with us and
tell us your amazing story about whatever, you can tweet
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You can send us an email to Stuff podcast that

(35:47):
how Stuff works dot com and has always joined us
at our home on the web. Stuff you should know
dot com for more on this and thousands of other
topics because how stuff works dot com. Hm hm