Jeff, Detector Dog Handler

Lift Me Up

Every institution is different with different needs and different problems. At Drumheller we've got a super supportive senior management team that is very pro-detector dog. So we get a lot of motivation here to go out and do our job and to find what we can do to try and prevent the drugs from making it into the institution.

On the search

Jeff
Detector Dog Handler

I'm Jeff Hood and I'm a detector dog handler, institutional search specialist at Drumheller Institution.

The main role of the program is narcotics interdiction. It's to stop drugs from getting into the institution and if the drugs are in the institution is to find them and remove them from the offenders as much as we can.

Generally speaking, I mean the day starts at about five o'clock for me. I'm up with a feed and a cleaning of the kennel and taking care of the dog. Once we're into work, we'll sit down and we'll go over our emails and then we'll go have a meeting with the security intelligence officers and chat with them and find out if there's any potential targets to hit or if we've had any drug movement or drones over the weekend and then we'll base our day off of that. So visits start at 8 30. We'll search every visitor when they come in. We have 12 15 as well when the next round of visits come in. So we'll search the visitors when they come in as well. So the day can is really it's a fluid day. It depends. I mean you might have visitors and then we might go down and do two or three ranges on the unit and see if we can get some drugs out of the unit or some contraband.

I've been dog handler now for just about 15 years and over the 15 years I've had four canines.

So every dog's different but you try to get that seven to nine years with your dog and you'll work exclusively with that dog.

The government owns them, but he's your partner and your responsibility for his care and taking care of him. They spend their off time at home. The Service comes and builds a kennel in your backyard. So the dog is either with you or at your residence.

The program is relatively new. So, one of the newer handlers had come to our institution just as the program started and I saw what they did and I'd always been a dog lover and it just looked really interesting to me. So, I went out and I volunteered with the handlers. Go out and spend time with them and see what the dog did. See what they did. See what their roles were in the institution. And the job just seemed really interesting to me and I pursued it and I was lucky enough to get a spot doing it.

I think the best part of the job is you're paid to play with a dog. Like you're with a dog all day long. So if you're a dog lover that's the best part. The next best part is probably when he does his job and you catch what you need to catch. Whether it's successfully retrieving an item from an inmate or from an inmate's cell or stopping drugs from coming in and you catch a visitor. I think those are probably some of the most rewarding aspects because you're seeing a visible impact on what you're doing when the dog does what he's trained to do and then you stop the drugs and get the drugs.

That's pretty positive.