We recently learned how important K-9 officers are on the job.
A police dog named Axe was killed in the line of duty when St. Clair Shores police were moving in on a man with a gun.
Michigan State Police Trooper Denis McGuckin and his dog Jax have shown they can get the job done when humans can’t.
We put Jax to the test, looking for me hiding out in a basement. I could be a killer hiding out. He found me by scent.
Dogs play the game of hide-and-seek. The reward is simple, the tennis ball to chew.
“I always say if we can’t find it, it was never there,” Trooper McGuckin said.
Police dogs can do tracking, building searches, narcotics, and bombs with the odds stacked against them.
Jax searched a storage unit and found a pound and a half of heroin and $400,000 cash.
Two people have been charged in Saginaw County.
Four years ago, Jax and Trooper McGuckin did the impossible, finding a needle in a haystack, what several searchers on foot, on 4-wheelers and in a chopper could not do.
They found 2-year-old Brooklyn Lilly who wandered off in the woods in Tawas and had been missing almost 24 hours in November's cold, rainy weather.
Jax and Tropper McGuckin have been a team five years. But the partnership could last only a couple more.
McGuckin says, “As long as he says healthy. We demand a lot out of our dogs. They go through a lot of agility, jumping, running inhaling foreign substances.”
In other words, Jax will get time for retirement and a lot less stress.
“Let the dogs be dogs at the end of work,” Trooper McGuckin says.
