I have mentioned before that my father was a Norfolk Police officer when I was a young child. Part of the time he was a police officer his partner was a K-9, a police Shepard by the name of Barney. My older sister Vickie and I would often have the opportunity to go with my father to the K-9 training compound and watch other officers train their dogs. My father would assist in the training of these dogs. I can remember watching from behind a very tall chain link fence and being very frightened by the intensity of the dogs being trained. They taught them to attack on command, there were men in huge protective suits being attacked viciously by those dogs when commanded and the dog would halt immediately when commanded to, they covered all the necessary commands needed in the field. It was hard to watch but although I was young I understood why they needed to learn. The dogs were taught to respond only to the specific officer as he was that officer's partner, he would be part of that officers family just as Barney was part of our family.
Barney was very large, HUGE through my eyes. Barney was a full grown German Shepard, a large dog and one of the most intelligent dogs I have ever known, however he did have a quirky personality. He hated the boy next door because the boy would throw rocks at him every time he saw the dog, even over our fence. Any time Barney saw the boy through the privacy fence he would nearly scare the boy to death with his vicious attack mode just to show his displeasure at being injured by the rocks. He never once touched the boy and would always obey my father or mother when they told Barney to hush.
Barney loved our family but seemed to derive some strange pleasure out of torturing me. He never did this to anyone else, only me. Most often my father would take Barney with him to work, but there where those occasions where Barney would stay home depending on my father's particular assignment for that day. Since my father went to work before I woke up in the mornings I would never know which days Barney was home and which days my father had taken him with him.
In my youth children played outside at least a part of every day, it was considered healthy and natural. We had a sandbox in the middle of our backyard that I loved to play in every day. Since Barney loved to torture me, that clever dog, I would sheepishly call his name from the back door every morning to be sure he was not in the yard. I would look around the corner of the house while calling his name to make sure he had gone to work with my father. I would yell and yell and he would not come. Each day I would do the same routine, each day with the same results, Barney would not appear in the backyard. I would get my confidence up that he was with my father so I would start out to the sandbox, I would get about half way to the box and out of no where he would come galloping from wherever he had been hiding. He HAD been hiding, he was smart enough to know he needed to hide the rascal. He would chase me to the large tree that was in the middle of the sand box while I ran screaming. He herded me to that tree, he never let me go to the door of the house or anywhere else, always that tree. Once to the tree he would place each of his huge paws on either side of my face then growl and pant at me for all he was worth he face just inches from mine. He would growl and grin and breathe all over me until my mother would come to pull him away from me. He was such an obedient dog but he would NEVER listen to her when she told him to get down from me or to hush. He knew exactly what he was doing. He never intended to hurt me, he just wanted to bug the snot out of me for his own personal entertainment. He knew he could and he did, every day he was home, I never learned and he loved it the rascal. He would have eaten anyone who tried to hurt me, he honestly would have probably killed them but he would have his fun at my expense.
We had Barney for years, when he retired he became or family pet, they didn't retrain them to another officer back then I don't know if things have changed now. Barney died a few years later from heart worms, something that was not treatable at the time. It tore my fathers heart up and he would never have another K-9 partner after that. We had many dogs afterwards for family pets and my father claimed he would never love animals again but I would catch him loving them I could see it in his eyes. He never lost his soft spot for animals. Barney, the evil police dog that would have given his life for mine if it had been asked of him. Crazy dog! Crazy lovable dog!
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