Originally published in the spring edition of CDC Today, the departmental newsletter. This dog thinks he goes to prison every day to have fun. For Major and his K-9 colleagues at the other prisons, the serious business of sniffing out drugs is one big game. Whitfield and his dog wait outside while the rest of the team clears the inmates from a bunk dormitory on the upper tier. Then, with inmates in the housing unit watching from a distance, Whitfield leads Major upstairs into the dorm.
Where is it? Straining against his short leash, Major scrambles around with his nose to the floor and stands on his hind legs to sniff an upper bunk. Whitfield then points Major to the rest of the dorm.
At the other end of the tight space, the dog starts scratching again at the foot of a pair of bunks. Major completes his inspection in less than three minutes and Whitfield tosses him his toy. Major catches it in his mouth, wrestles it to the ground, and then dares Whitfield to try to get it back. They peer into shoes, pat down clothing, roll back bedding, inspect toiletries and medications, and thumb through stacks of books, magazines and papers.
The hour-long search produces a syringe as well as an inmate-made stabbing weapon. The four inmates who sleep in the two pairs of bunks where Major altered agree to undergo a drug test. Forget the Hollywood stereotype about dogs in prison. They have no contact at all with inmates. The five dogs working at the three prisons got their start as part of a statewide pilot project to test various drug interdiction methods. When the project ended several years ago, the three prisons elected to maintain their own K-9 programs.
Whitfield and the other K-9 officers receive a monthly stipend to cover the expense of feeding and caring for the dogs, which officially are prison property. Whitefield also credits Warden Tom Carey and his associates with making the program possible. When Garcia separated the envelopes, the dog alerted on the middle envelope in the which, which contained only marijuana residue, still enough to justify a full search.
