To continue with my blog of July 5th I entered Philly PD K-9 in September of 73. Little did I know at that time it would be the hardest most physically and mentally draining training the PD had to offer. Let me explain, you see when you first get to the unit you are assigned a dog,totally untrained all this dog knows is yesterday he had a loving family and home and now for some reason he is placed in a kennel with some strange guy trying to hook a lead ( Leash ) on him. Well needless to say my Fritz was the last dog to exit his cage,it took me and 2 experienced handlers to get him out. one guy with the noose the other had his tail and I had the lead with instructions that when they leave go just keep walking, don't stop, go with him wherever he takes you, well let me say I wound up 5 miles away from the Academy, I don't know if I or he was more exhausted but we definitely had a mutual agreement that we had ran far enough, he pulling and me tugging. It was funny I knew then that he and I were a team. Upon arrival back at the kennel we were the laughing stock, most of the other handlers, I believe there were approx. 28 total in the class at least in the beginning had a day of actual training, sitting, downs,walking in a heal, but Fritz and I didn't care because we knew we would come out on top, at least in our minds we did. Training lasted 14 weeks it consisted of Patrol, agility, building searches, field searches, Tracking and of course what every Handler and K-9 lives for the attack training, oops I mean criminal apprehension.
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