- A four-footed member of the Platte County Sheriff's Office in Wheatland developed a debilitating injury.

about a year ago.

The community stepped in and helped raise more than $10,000 for surgery that has cured the affliction.

Now, with rehabilitation and training, it's hoped that Poncho the dog might be able to get back to work.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is "Wyoming Chronicle."

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- Welcome to "Wyoming Chronicle."

We're here in Wheatland, Wyoming with the captain of the Platte County Sheriff's Department, Captain Will Kirlan.

Thanks for being with us - Yes sir.

- on "Wyoming Chronicle."

Now as interesting as you are to talk about, we're up here primarily to talk about the third character on the set here, and this is Poncho.

And how would you describe who he is for in your department, for example?

- So Poncho is a 6-year-old Belgian Malinois, just turned six September 12th.

He was certified in apprehension, which means get the bad guy, narcotics.

- And that's.

- The nose work, yes sir.

And then he was also trained in tracking.

So we've had him out on some tracks and tracking bad guys, and I've used him a couple of times on some other things and barricaded suspects, stuff like that.

He's trained in building clearing scenarios so he can go in and he finds a bad guy before we even get in there and he alerts barking and bouncing off the door and lets us know where he is at.

And then we get to go in and either send him in or we go in for him.

- I've heard since we've been here, a couple people use the term bite training.

That's not something that he does often, but if he had to, - He would, absolutely.

- He could do that too.

- Yes, sir.

- He does it all.

- Yes.

- And he is been a good, good partner.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- For you and you've been primarily the officer that he's worked with the most.

How long have you two been partners?

- We went into service together October 10th of 2020.

So roughly just over four, four and a quarter years almost.

- I'm not sure what sort of idea people have about the kind of training that he needs, but you both had to have it.

What does he go through, for example?

- So for him, he went down, he was from Guadalajara, Mexico, born there.

He was with a Hispanic family down there for a little while.

- A family dog originally.

- Yep.

So they train him that way so that they're a little more approachable.

And that's what we were looking for in our office is we wanted dogs that could be approached, have 'em out in public and let let people meet them.

From there, he moved, he was probably a year, year and a half, he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas.

Little Rock Canine Academy is where he was trained.

And then they did that for roughly six, eight months.

And then I got him when he was two, I finished his training.

So all the narcotics work, the apprehension work, we trained him on all the recalls and bites and commands and everything like that.

- So he had canine training obviously.

But you had canine training above and beyond your basic law enforcement training.

- Yeah, so we went down to Little Rock.

We spent approximately two weeks there.

First week we did a lot of narcotics work and learning the dogs and bonding with the dogs.

And then our second week was all apprehension work and obedience work.

- Could you tell something about him from the beginning?

Did he prove to be a natural at this or is that the way it's looked at?

- So the way I picked him was kind of weird.

We didn't go do a selection, we didn't fly down.

The Canine Academy sent us a picture and videos of the dogs working.

The Undersheriff and Sheriff, they were currently just deputies and the captain back then.

They decided they picked their dogs and they had theirs already picked out.

And I, for some reason he just, I was drawn to him.

- You were?

- Littlest handler, biggest dog.

Our other two are quite a bit smaller, one's 65 poundsish and the other one's probably 55 to 60 pounds.

- And he's about what?

- He's almost 80 pounds.

He was 77 pounds the last time I weighed him.

- That's a good size dog.

Now you had military background as well, you told me.

- Yes sir, I was with the Wyoming National Guard for about 17 and a half years.

Started in April of 2004 as a mechanic and then heard they needed volunteers to go to Iraq.

So I volunteered to do convoy escort missions there, like the unit I deployed with.

So I switched over to field artillery.

We'd just made the conversion to HIMARS, which is high-rocket artillery basically, is missiles and rockets off the back of a truck.

And then I went through those courses, started with that unit in 2010, deployed again with them to Afghanistan for a mission.

And that's where we actually got to do our mission.

And we were on Bagram Air Base for a long time.

- And then, what brings you to Wheatland, Wyoming?

- So I graduated high school just south of here in Chugwater.

- You did?

- 2005.

I've been with this agency since 2010.

- I see.

- And then just done the dual thing.

So I was citizen soldier, I guess is how they used to say it, so weekends and then work full time here.

- You said the biggest dog, smallest handler, let me tell you, not such a small guy despite what he says.

So there are other canine officers here and other deputies who work with him.

- Yes, so the sheriff runs a dog.

His name is Toro, he is a ball of energy.

If he's not moving, I would think something's wrong.

And then the other one is Piccolo, and he's the smallest dog.

- As to your knowledge, I think it's commonplace now for law enforcement agency of all sizes to have at least one dog on the force, right?

- They're super handy to have with us.

Immediate backup is always nice when you're working rural.

Dunno how many times I've been out on a traffic stop by myself and knowing that I've got him in the car with me to help me if things go bad is a great feeling.

- Just having him there, and I don't mean this necessarily in a negative way, but it sends a particular kind of message.

And he's also, conversely, I imagine he's great for public relations too.

- He is, he is a good dog.

We take him into the schools.

We do a science deal with the fourth graders here every year.

They go in, we hide some narcotics somewhere and let the dogs, they get to pick where it's hidden and the dogs get to go find it.

- I'm glad you mentioned that because that's, I wanna say as well, the reason we're talking about Poncho here is because he's had a medical history, which involves the community.

And it's a pretty compelling story.

We don't need you to tell me all about that, but I think people who've never really experienced or witnessed it or thought about it the sense of smell that he has, it's just almost indescribable really, isn't it?

- So it is, the way we describe it is you walk into a pizza parlor or shop and you smell a pizza.

He walks in and he smells every ingredient in that pizza, the yeast, the dough, the sauce, the tomatoes, pepperonis, everything.

- All at the same time.

- All at the same time.

- Not driving him crazy to smell it.

No, I remember being in, I dunno if it was a cub scout or junior high science project or something, but a dog more or less like Poncho came in and I think the guy had a two-pound can of coffee and then he had a big jar of peanut butter, and he took a big long eye dropper sort of thing and stuck it and in there and squeezed a little drop of something out and in the end and we turned our backs and he gave us two cans of coffee.

And of course we're, and it, you know, it was instantaneous.

The dog could pick which one was there and it just, we really, you can say what you just said.

I can't imagine experiencing what you just said.

- No, me either, it'd be.

- Out of this world.

- I think it'd be overwhelming for most people.

Is that the biggest, you have some statistics that we've talked about, but what has he done most during his, his... - Mostly, mostly narcotics, - Using his nose.

- Using his nose.

I've been called with the Wyoming Highway Patrol several times on I25.

That's probably who I've deployed him for the most is patrol deputies and people out on the street.

He's seized, oh, $25,000 worth of marijuana wax in four years.

Looks like 2000 and some change, almost 3000 I guess, in marijuana, green marijuana.

He's gotten some LSD, which he's not trained to alert on.

So there's other narcotics in the car.

So there's meth or marijuana, cocaine, heroin, something along those lines in the car.

He's been, this is prior to his injury, so 77 different detections, 10 patrol deployments, which is we're going out to find somebody or barricaded suspect or anything like that.

He has seven apprehensions, but he didn't get to bite.

So if he's there and he's out and he's in that role, he gets that apprehension.

He seized at least one firearm.

- Really?

- We were out, had a rolling domestic and there was a little bit of marijuana in the car and he alerted on the car and we pulled a stolen firearm out that had been missing for four or five years.

- I don't wanna get too geeky about it here, but how does he, if you're on a potential crime scene, suspected crime scene with him, and you want him to sniff something out, is it just something he knows to do now?

- Almost natural for him.

He knows the car goes fast, he may get to go to work.

- Really?

- So if I'm responding to something, we have a limited time to get there.

We can't extend the duration of the stop.

It violates Fourth Amendment rights and stuff.

So I've gotta get him there quick.

So we get stopped, I get him outta the car, he sees the car.

It's like he's almost instinctively knows what we're gonna do now.

He's been trained 16 to 24 hours a month for the last four years with me.

So as soon as we get out, it's like, well, let's go to work dad.

And he starts sniffing the car.

And if he gives me any indication of a change of behavior or gives his final trained response, it's okay, well we're gonna search the car for the narcotics or whatever's in it.

- I would imagine that he's almost never wrong.

- Very seldom, he has never had a false alert.

So I don't even like to use that term, 'cause.

- How does that compare to you, for example?

- I am not one to be able to smell methamphetamine like a dog can, so.

- He has this ability and you put it to good use and so that you can sure.

Where does he sleep at night?

- So he lives with me.

- He does, he goes home with you at night?

- Every night and gets up with me.

And he hasn't been coming to work here lately because of the injury ,but he's got his own little bed.

He's got his own little bedroom.

- He needs to be well taken care of.

There's a big investment in him, he's valuable to you.

And so yeah, he lives as well as he can.

This brings us to the injury.

You've mentioned it a few times, and the basic story is he developed a medical issue that's painful to him, debilitating to him, partially disabling to him and threatened his work as well.

And he needed treatment.

What was the injury?

- So he wound up, while we were in training in Little Rock when he was still a pup, they say Mals don't start to become adults until about three.

So he went in on a decoy for an apprehension training scenario and the decoy didn't give like he was supposed to and wound up jamming his neck kind of like you would on a basketball with your finger, eventually causing a bulged disc around C6 and C7.

And with him being a pup, we took him to the vet.

The vet said, "Here's some anti-inflammatories, he should be okay."

And then.

- For a while he was.

- For a while he was great.

And then about a year and a half ago, he started showing signs of weakness in the front end, dragging a back foot, some stuff that would make any person kind of feel really bad for him.

And I took him down to CSU, had several MRIs.

- Now this is Colorado State University, Fort Collins, were known for veterinary medicine.

- Yes, sir.

- A nationwide reputation.

- Yes, sir, took him down there.

He went through the MRIs.

They found a scar on his cervical spine area and the spinal cord.

And we were working on surgery stuff and cost and finances and trying to see if it was gonna be, if we would retire him just so he could live out his life as a pup or if we were gonna try to try to fix him more.

- So there was treatment that could be done Including surgical treatment.

But one of your problems is.

- Funding.

- That was never in, nobody puts surgery, spinal surgery for a dog in the budget at the beginning of the year.

You just don't anticipate it.

- We're a small agency, our canine budget's not a lot.

- So here's where the story gets even more interesting.

The community stepped in to cover the cost for this.

How did that begin?

- So he has a groomer that he's been seeing since we've brought him back.

Leah McGuire The Groomer is what she's called here in town, that's her business name, has been grooming him every month for the last four years.

She knew about his injuries.

She knew that we didn't have the financial stamina to keep up with occurring cost with him.

She did a GoFundMe for him, it raised $10,000.

- $10,000.

- Which ultimately helped cover the cost of the surgery and follow ups.

And then the community did a story in the Record Times and lots of people stopped by to drop donations off.

I was getting donations on the, well, I was out to lunch and stuff like that.

It was just interesting.

And the community support for Poncho has just been amazing.

I couldn't thank them enough for everything they've done for him.

- So this, the first signs where you knew something was wrong, roughly happened when?

- About a year and a half ago.

- And he had the surgery when?

- Just a little over two months now, he'll be two months, I think on the 23rd of November.

- September it was, okay.

And the idea being that of course, you wanna make him feel better, help treat the injury so forth.

How does the surgery seem to have gone?

What did the doctor say?

- So the doctor doesn't think anything's gonna get worse.

So what they did was they fused C6 and 7, and they put a couple of pieces of prosthetics in there to help space that out, a wire and then they call it bone cement.

And that'll have to, he'll always have that in him.

And that what they did was they extended that disc out to get the pressure off the spinal cord and then set everything up.

- In the meantime, when you have an injury like that, I know there's nerve damage too.

And the nerves are what tells the limbs how to move, sort of.

- And he still has that nerve damage.

He has a couple centimeter scar on his spinal cord.

They can't fix, I mean, it'd be like going in on a human and trying to do spinal cord surgery.

- The bones you mentioned, they went in through the front, is that what happened?

- Yes, sir, so they had a big incision in the front of his neck.

Went in, they moved some stuff around and got to where they needed to.

They scoped out the area with the scope, and then Dr. Kopf with the Alameda East Hospital in Aurora did amazing.

He was in surgery for roughly five and a half hours.

They told me it was gonna be three hours.

She came out and said I wanted to make sure it was perfect and it was going to work.

So, he stayed the night there.

He got to come home the next day.

And then we started kind of rehabilitation walks.

He's on a harness, he was on a harness for the first six weeks and had to be walked outside by that harness to go to the bathroom, walked back inside.

He was stuck, I don't wanna say stuck, but he didn't get to leave his bedroom during that part of the rehabilitation.

- How did he take to it?

- With these dogs, keeping their ambition and drive to come to work is difficult.

You make home too fun, they don't wanna come to work.

If you make work too fun, then they really want to come to work.

So I'm not gonna say they're isolated, but they are contained within the house.

He doesn't get to run around like a normal dog.

So when I throw a vest on or my gun belt on, he is ready to go.

He is standing at the gate waiting for me.

- What's the feeling about from you and the department and the veterinarians and so forth about what his prognosis gonna be for the rest of his life?

- We're all really hoping that he'll be able to get back to sniff work.

He won't be able to do any apprehension stuff.

It risks an injury that could permanently paralyze him or kill him, and we can't have that.

So we really wanna get him back to some sniff work.

- His nose wasn't affected by it.

- Not one bit.

If he was feeling better, I could demonstrate that, but his nose is still spot on.

- So in sniff work then he could go in the vehicle with you?

- Yep.

- And without running around too much, but he could get out and he could still.

- He could still go to work.

- Do those things.

- Might be a little slower.

But he's always been a very meticulous dog when it comes to sniff work.

If he is sure it's there, it's definitely there.

And his nose has not lied to me yet.

- I think people might have some misunderstanding about what they might refer to as a police dog sort of would be like, but you've said he is a very nice guy too.

- He is, he is friendly to everybody.

- You don't want people out seeing him out with you in a parade or something running up and.

- Eh, no.

- Putting you out too much.

But, he's okay with.

- Yeah, he's okay with people and pets and he loves attention.

He's just like a kid.

If he's getting scratched, he'll make sure that you keep scratch until he's done.

- He's a dog on top of everything else.

Your job would be more difficult, I presume, if he wasn't here or if the dogs weren't here.

Did you work in the department in Platte County, for example?

Were there canines here then already?

- So the Wheatland Police Department had a canine by the name of Onyx that was.

- That's the municipal police?

- Yes sir, and that was the dog I was most familiar with.

And then we had another handler that was here and he had canine, Coa.

I worked very, very side by side with him a lot.

He was my shift partner for a while, the handler and the dog.

So I got to see the dogs work.

And then my brother was a handler for the Wyoming Highway Patrol, Trooper Kirlan.

He's since retired, and just got me interested in it and watching it and I decided it was something I wanted to do.

And about 2019, we started looking and we found a place that the agency could afford and just went for it.

He actually has his own badge number as well.

His badge number's 863, mine's 83.

So we tried to line the last digit of the badge number up with the handler, so.

- Has he ever been in a scare in his work where you felt, oh, he is in trouble or he might be?

- No, I've never had that feeling.

I've had lots of people, you know, you're gonna need that dog and stuff like that.

And I really, - They try to talk.

- hope they understand - They try to talk tough, - They really don't want this dog.

- Push comes to shove, they'd rather not.

- So yeah, he's got switches and couple of words will turn 'em off.

A couple of words will turn 'em on, so.

- So a couple of people around the office that we've met today have obviously are fond of him as well.

He's popular with the staff.

- Yep, both of our secretaries, our detention staff, some of the detention staff, they've taken some apprehension bites from him and they have a respect for him.

But, he's always friendly.

- Yeah, without knowing it firsthand, I would think he'd be, just generally speaking, the sort of overall morale of the office would be higher if there's a dog that you like nearby, - It's like having a pet in the classroom that you gotta take care of.

- He isn't a pet, but he's got characteristics of it.

He likes to chew, I take it.

- He, so that calling is one of his rewards if he finds narcotics or does well on a track or does something.

And it kinda helps me keep his attention where it needs to be as well so he is not out messing around or doing anything.

Normally he wouldn't be allowed to have that all the time.

But he's on vacation or sick time right now, so.

- What does he eat?

- So he is on Purina Pro Plan.

It's a high-protein dog food.

The Wheatland Country Store has been amazing with us.

So they worked out a deal with Purina and they actually, Purina's providing our dog food for us.

We get one bag a month per dog.

We just walk in, let 'em know it's for the dog, and go to the register, they ring us up and we go out with it.

It's been very handy, especially with a small canine budget to have the dog food provided by a company has just been amazing.

- Having the good relationship for a small agency in a small community is just vital, isn't it?

- It is, it absolutely is.

Without our community, we wouldn't be able to do our jobs as effectively as we could.

The support in Wheatland, and, you know, we have Wheatland, Guernsey, Hartville, Glendale, Chugwater, we have all these small towns and there's only two municipal police departments.

And then it's us for everything else.

So having that community support is.

- And the counties in Wyoming are big, a lot of miles.

- Yes, yes, yes, I could be on a call in Glendale and then have to run a hundred miles south to, you know, Chugwater to go help Laramie County 'cause we have memorandums of understanding with the surrounding counties, so.

- You have to have it.

- We could be called anywhere to go help them at any time.

- You've talked about how he deploys sometimes with the Wyoming Highway Patrol.

We're right here on the interstate.

- Yes, sir.

- Wheatland, and that leads me to conclude or wonder about an increased number of drug offenses where not just on the interstate, but the reason they're on the interstate for a reason.

And one of those reasons is they can get into the community, something you wish weren't happening, the community wishes wasn't happening.

but he's super important in that kind of detail.

- He's very important in that role.

Just realizing how hard these dogs work and how vital they are to the community for not only just for morale, but for finding narcotics that are making their ways into schools or into jails or stuff like that, it's just vital.

The amount of overdoses on some of these narcotics, fentanyl is one of the big topics right now.

Humans can't really smell that odor of fentanyl or methamphetamine or heroin.

I mean, marijuana has a distinct smell and we're trained in the academy what that smell is.

But the narcotics that are sneaking in are, you know, your fentanyl, which is, I mean, that's killing people.

They're overdosing on it.

- Even here.

- Even even in Wyoming, heroin, cocaine, I mean all these drugs are making their ways into the schools or making their way into your community.

And these dogs and their handlers are there to try to deter that as much as we can.

- And he's proved to be talented at that.

- He is very talented at that.

We also use him with the state.

So Wyoming Department of Corrections, they call us to have him on their probationer houses and stuff like that.

One of his first significant seizures was on one of those where they had hid the stuff outside and threw it away.

And it didn't take him long to find it.

And it was found and there was a significant amount of paraphernalia and marijuana and THC dabs.

- In your experience, has there been anything that's ever thwarted him?

He always can smell it.

- He's pretty good.

I've never, you've heard of people hiding stuff in coffee cans or peanut butter or cellophane in the fuel tanks.

These dogs, their noses are so strong and so vital that he has no issues.

- To your knowledge, he's never missed it.

- Not that I know of.

And if he has, it's probably, I didn't notice that he noticed it, so.

- Well I was really glad to have heard this story about how the community stepped in to help.

And it's great to see him here.

He was a little unsteady in his feet when we got here.

And my experience with the kind of surgeries he's had is, I think you mentioned it, is that the thing they can pretty much assured it's not gonna get any worse.

And then with time and he's physically talented, they can just overcome so much and put up with so much.

Maybe he'll make some improvement as well ,I sure hope so.

- I hope so as well.

- Even if he doesn't, he's in a pretty good spot here with everybody.

- Oh, the staff here takes really good care of him.

- It's nice to meet Poncho and you as well, sir.

- It's good to meet you too.

- Good luck to you.

- Thank you.

- And thanks for being with us on "Wyoming Chronicle."