[Music, Applause]
And I'm standing by with Mike Goosby. He's a
Sergeant and the LAPD Chief trainer for the K9 program.
So what has your role been here? So I've been here
as the K9 safety consultant so to speak, you know these
handlers, these dogs are all very well trained
[Music] Over, over! Good boy! Here here here, here
but they're there taken out of their element right now
cause now they're against the clock. They're used to working
and their own time.
TRAINER: Fetch, good boy, go! They're not used to the clock
We say in the K9 community, everything goes down the leash,
so if the handler gets erratic or frantic or nervous it goes
So they're really challenged right now to keep control of
their dogs and stay on course.
How realistic are so many of these obstacles tonight
to every day and what your officers are going through.
I think they're very realistic, especially say
the car scenario behind us.
The dog has to jump in a certain to the car
and jump out of a certain window of the car.
And he needs to do that under a time and the handler can't put
his hands on the dog and the dog has to act on his own.
So the interaction between the handler and the training the dog
the dog has had before is really gonna be becoming showcased
at that point.
In the real world, if you had a police pursuit or if you had a
felony car stop and the car needed to be clear but it wasn't
safe for humans to approach, you can send the dog in there to
clear the car. The dog would jump in to the car and
essentially search the inside the car and return back to the
handler's side. Here that's replicated with the car
obstacle, the only difference is, the dog has to jump in one
way and jump out another way, and the dog is on the clock.
[Applause] [Music]
The fire escape replicates the real world because the dog has
to traverse many stairs and obstacles to find their suspect.
The difference here though is the dog can't go up the stairs
until he makes it available to himself. TRAINER: Here here
MIKE GOOSBY: He has to pull on the tug TRAINER: Yes good
MIKE GOOSBY: and pull the stairs down
[Applause] [Music]
The high jump, that's probably one of the best obstacles out
it really replicates the real world TRAINER: Good. Nice job
MIKE GOOSBY: If a dog is chasing after a suspect that's taken a
foot bail, and that suspects jumping over walls, the dog
has to jump over those walls behind him.
And in the real world, you don't get a chance to dictate
how high that walls gonna be. So here on the America's Top
Dog course, they have the walls, they have barrels at
different heights and different levels for the dog to traverse.
[Music]
The rope bridge, there's a space between the boards
the dog has to traverse over that space without falling
through and dogs don't have that depth perception so it's kind of
a challenge for them to do that.
TRAINER: Hup hup! Come on! [Applause]
Splashdown is a great challenge. That's where the dog has to now
jump in to the water and make it to the other side. In the real
world, again, we can't choose where the suspects decide to
hide. If the suspect decides to hide in the water or in the
brush the dog may have to jump into that water to go search
that brush for the suspect. TRAINER: Good job!
[Music]
The Boneyard is a course where the dogs have to go in to a maze
and it works out because when dogs go and search real houses
in real life, they don't know the layout of the house
the handlers don't know the layout of the house so
The Boneyard replicates that, but the problem is, again,
they're under the clock, so they have to do a systematic
detailed search in a very hurried manner to find that
get it out, get it checked, and make sure the dog is right
on target.
In the real world, time is on our side. There's no time clock,
there's no hurry for us to get it done. We go in, we take our
time, we do a systematic detailed search, we may even
search a room five, six times over again. Well here you're
under the clock and you can't do that, so now the handlers
nervous, the dog is nervous, and they're on the move.
TRAINER: Good boy. [Music]
MIKE GOOSBY: The Doghouse is where were really gonna find out
how much of a pack bond has really been enforced between
that dog and that handler, especially if they start
climbing through things and obstacles together.
The Spiderweb represents, TRAINER: Up! There's my boy.
you go in to a room and there's a lot of debris, there's a lot
of boxes and you gotta be able to clear all that area from the
front side to the back side and traverse through that with
the dog. TRAINER: Come on, come on. Up up, good boy.
So oftentimes when searching when searching warehouses and
you have to climb on top of obstacles and boxes and your
footing is unsure. The final challenge that the competitors
face is the takedown. It replicates what we call in the
K9 world a directed deployment. A suspect is running from you
and you or the suspect is stopped and you send the dog
to stop the suspect dead in his tracks.
JAIME: So what do you think of this whole thing, this whole
competition of Top Dog MIKE GOOSBY: I think it's
outstanding, you know, if you had told me 20 years ago
that the K9 community would be getting this kind of attention
I'd be very suprised. This is great. It's a good thing
for all of us. JAIME: Well thank you for your service
and thank you for being here. MIKE GOOSBY: Thank you.