“Mike was a police dog. On the very day he retired he took ill, spending the next four days on a drip in the Vet hospital, near death. After those four days he pulled out the drip and began to improve, but slowly. 

I asked the Vet for her best guess and was told I would be lucky if he lasted 6 months, she was being optimistic but she was wrong.

Mike was donated to the police at 8 months, his owner was in remission but his cancer returned with a vengeance and he also was given 6 months. His family and friends all offered to take on the pup but he decided he would have a better life as a police dog.

We don’t normally keep in contact with the people who donate our dogs but this was a little different, I visited regularly, taking Mike with me. He also confounded the medics surviving two years after his terminal diagnosis; some of that tenacity must have brushed off on Mike.

As a General Purpose Police Dog, Mike’s initial training course was fun and he took to the game with gusto, qualifying easily. He was just over a year old when he hit the street.

Mike soon made a name for himself; his first apprehension was in our home town after a guy tried to steal a car. I happened to be in town and was on scene in a couple of minutes. I set him to track and off he went, along the street, up some steps to another street and round the corner, about a quarter of a mile at most. Suddenly he looked over a low wall and I knew by his body language he had found something.

He didn’t bark, which surprised me as he did it every time in training. I commanded the suspect to come out and told Mike to ’speak’, which he duly did.

I had become separated from my backup and began to march the handcuffed suspect back towards the vehicle, telling Mike ‘watch-im’ as we went. The suspect eventually asked: ‘is this a training session for your dog?’ to which I replied in the affirmative. ‘Oh, OK’ he said and off he went to jail.

He was a large, long haired dog and I always knew when he was homing in on the bad guy, he seemed to grow 4 inches and his tail went straight up like a flag! When I saw that, I just used to start running as I knew he would soon have an apprehension.

His next find was a 93 year old woman, missing from a nursing home. When he found her in the area already searched by nursing home staff she was suffering from hypothermia but due to Mike’s timely arrival, she survived relatively unscathed.

There were numerous apprehensions and a couple more missing persons as the years passed. I even acquired a police badge (US style, for his collar) which he wore to displays and sometimes on patrol, sad eh? It had his name and such on it and I thought it was cool.

He was wearing it one night when he found a bad guy hiding in some bushes. This idiot had tried to break into a car but had been disturbed. When Mike found him and barked, the bad guy lashed out at him with his feet. That was a very bad idea and he suffered the consequences.

After the usual kafuffle getting the guy under control, handcuffed and generally arrested I asked him why he had not come out when I called my warning and why on earth he had kicked the dog.

He maintained he had not heard me, and indeed did not know it was a police dog. I shone my torch on Mike, lying 10 feet away. ‘Didn’t know it was a police dog, did you not you see his badge?’ I asked. The guy looked crestfallen and swiftly apologised. The other cops thought this was a hoot, and big John christened him ‘The Sheriff’ right there and then!

Every time he called for us after that he asked for ‘The Sheriff’ to attend.

I suppose if he had a fault it was his food fixation, he would have eaten till he burst if I had let him. He even discovered how to open the refrigerator! I came downstairs one morning to discover he had done in £40 worth of Tesco’s finest. It had not agreed with him and there was a bit of a mess on the floor, enough said.

I thought it would be good if he could get a really good criminal apprehension as he approached retirement age but we were in a lean spell. He had a few finds but they were pretty run of the mill, nothing special.

Then one night we were sent to our local hospital where a woman in her 40’s had absconded from the supposedly secure psychiatric unit. She had previously attempted suicide so there was an obvious concern for her safety, it took us about an hour but eventually Mike found her in the middle of rhododendron patch.

I thought we were too late, I have seen a few dead bodies in my time and I was not hopeful. Luckily I was proven wrong and she moaned as I approached her. I swear Mike knew he had saved her life the way he was carrying on, he seemed as elated as I was. That was his last operational find.

He wasn’t just a ‘GP’ dog, he specialised in Tactical Firearms Support, clearing buildings before the team would enter and backing up Armed ResponseVehicles.

On one occasion we had to place ourselves between the ARV crews, who were arresting two suspects at gunpoint, and a hostile group of relatives who were unhappy about the situation.

On another he lay on a stair landing for over an hour, covering the upper floor while the team forced entry to a basement through a wall. He would have given us an early warning should anyone have tried to approach from that direction. The team trusted him and often said they felt a lot safer when Mike had cleared a building.

He actually worked a year past his retirement age because we were short of dogs with his specialism. It was after my new dog qualified as a TFU support dog I put both of them into kennels for the weekend while I left for a short break.

On the Sunday I got a call to say he had to be carried into the vet’s.

Mike is gone now, he lived for another year, but I know as long as there are cops who still remember the night Mike caught their bad guy he will not truly be gone.”