Years ago, Gary ‘Claude’ Silinzieds did a training course with a bunch of other police officers, and on the course they were all given a nickname from the then-popular children’s show Shirl’s Neighbourhood. Gary’s nickname – Claude, after Claude the Crow – stuck, and he has been Claude ever since.
As a youngster, Claude grew up surrounded by pets. His European grandmother had always had German shepherds; she had also bred them for a time. Claude loved playing with the big dogs whenever he visited her, and quickly developed a sense of which ones to avoid. His own dog was a little Australian terrier. Claude trained the dog to hold on to a rope near the local river, and Claude would swing his dog into the river so he could play like all the other kids. Even as a young lad, Claude found it very satisfying training a dog to do what he wanted it to.
Claude has a vague childhood memory – part his and part filled in by his mother – of a family trip to Canberra when he was around five or six. He approached a uniformed guard on the steps of Parliament House who asked Claude what he wanted to be when he grew up. Claude’s mother remembers it like it was yesterday. Her son said, ‘I’m going to grow up to be a policeman and I’m going to have a police dog.’
Claude doesn’t remember where this idea came from, but for him, the proclamation to the Parliament House guard turned out to be prophetic. That was exactly where he ended up.
After two decades as a dog handler, Claude is part of the selection process for new squad members. He looks for cops with a good grounding in police work; officers who can work independently, and who have quick-thinking skills and quick reflexes. The job also requires extroverts, because it takes that kind of person to bring out the best in the dogs. Handlers have to be assertive in front of the dogs; otherwise the dogs will stand over them. All in all, the Dog Squad consists of extroverted members who rely heavily on each other, but also, more importantly, on their dogs.
‘It is a strange relationship,’ Claude reflects. ‘You develop a strong relationship with the dogs, but at the same time they are a tool of the trade. The dogs are not foolproof. And it’s up to the handler to put the dog in the best position to be useful.’
Claude lost his first police dog, Kaiser, to a snakebite. What had begun as a regular training exercise up at Sydenham ended in tragedy. After the training was over, Claude noticed that Kaiser was a little wonky on his feet, and took him to the vet. The dog’s symptoms were consistent with a snakebite, and the vet administered a broad-spectrum antivenin. While Kaiser rallied overnight, the next day, Claude got a call to say he hadn’t made it.
Because of the fast-paced nature of the squad, Kaiser was quickly replaced by a black-and-tan German shepherd called Rex. Rex had been donated to the squad by an elderly couple in Morwell, who had found the active dog too much for them. His pedigree name was Honeywood Gunrunner. On the way to the squad to donate Rex, his owners stopped at Red Rooster and bought the dog half a chicken and can of lemonade for his last meal with them. After being accepted into the Dog Squad, the Red Rooster was the last taste of takeaway food Rex ever had.
The big difference between Kaiser and Rex was that Rex was very focused on tracking. During training, the dog had shown a strong ability to track when a huge mob of kangaroos had hopped across the scent trail he’d been following. Claude wasn’t sure that Rex would be able to pick up the scent again. But he did.
Rex was consistently disciplined and focused. Claude saw this on their first job together. A milk bar in Ringwood had been robbed by a man wearing a balaclava and armed with a knife. The terrified owners had little information for police; they had not seen which way he’d fled. It was around 9 p.m. and there wasn’t much traffic around. Claude decided to let Rex off the lead. ‘Find him!’ commanded the handler.
And Rex was off: tail wagging, nose to the ground. Claude jogged off after him. At each house, Claude got Rex to sniff around in case the armed robber had gone up a driveway and over a fence. After fruitless searches of a number of front yards, all of a sudden Rex’s demeanour changed. Head up, tail up – there was a purpose about him. Claude clipped the dog’s lead back on and the two made their way cautiously up a driveway. Both handler and dog knew there was someone there.
Claude cast a professional eye around the yard and saw that there was a pretty good chance of containment. He issued a command – not for the dog, but for the crook. ‘I’m a police member and I’ve got a police dog here. Come out.’
There was silence. Beside him, Rex strained and whined. ‘Let me at him!’ the dog would’ve said if he could talk.
Keeping his excited police dog on the lead, Claude let Rex guide him to a car parked in the driveway. At the car, Rex started barking – a sure sign that someone was close. Claude kept enough distance between him and his dog and the car; the offender had been armed with a knife. Using his torch, he could make out the outline of a man lying underneath the car. This was not the resting place of choice for a law-abiding citizen.
Claude moved Rex back and radioed for the locals to come and make the arrest. Claude let his dog bark at the crook until the man was safely in handcuffs. The knife was found later, under the car. Rex had found his first crook and Claude had begun to establish his faith in them as a team. Each crook captured helped build a stronger bond.
Claude had been a dog handler in the Dog Squad for four years when he was called to a job in Barnawartha, south-west of Wodonga, in 1992. A 22-year-old woman had escaped a vicious abduction and attack by a 57-year-old family friend. The man had asked the young woman to give him a lift, claiming that his car had broken down on an isolated road off the Murray Valley Highway. He asked her to pull over in a remote location, and before the woman knew what hit her, the family ‘friend’ had pointed a knife at her and bound her hands. When the man got out of the car to move around to the driver’s side, the young woman was able to slam the door behind him and lock it. Enraged, the man kicked at the window, but the young woman managed to start the car and drive off.
On the three-hour drive to Barnawartha, Claude didn’t know whether he would find the man, but there was always a chance that he might find something. Police dogs often found balaclavas or stocking masks or weapons – items that could all be used as evidence.
Claude arrived at the lonely stretch of country road about six hours after the offender had been left on the side of the road. Claude had faith in Rex’s abilities as a tracker, but he worried that time was not on their side. He was briefed at the scene in the early hours of the morning, and took a good look around. The area wasn’t exactly isolated; it was dotted with small farmhouses. Another handler attended the scene too, and offered to search farm sheds and outbuildings.
Claude cast Rex near a wire fence that separated the road from surrounding farmland. After searching for a scent for 100 metres or so, Rex suddenly became very alert and headed straight to a fence, sniffing intensely at a fence post. That meant someone had either gone over it or leaned on it.
Claude jumped over the fence with Rex, and cast the dog again. There was a lot of mud and water around; it wasn’t raining, but it had been. The torchlight picked up puddles and saturated ground.
A police dog’s ability to track a human scent in tough conditions can be impressive, but Claude wondered if the amount of water would stop Rex. It took two casts to pick up a scent. After a couple of sweeps in an arc as long as the tracking line would allow, Rex indicated he’d found something.
When Rex picked up the scent, the two took off through the squelching paddock. The dog quickly turned into a muddy mess, and Claude knew there would be a bath at the end of this job. While there were other police officers in the area, Claude and Rex were moving through the paddock alone. Because the Dog Squad had been called in, the local cops had remained in their cars so as not to disturb any scent. Watching the dog and watching his footing – and keeping clear of electric fences, which can give dog or handler a nasty zap – kept Claude’s mind off the potential danger ahead: facing an armed offender.
Claude and Rex cleared two paddocks and moved into a third, which had more grass and less saturated mud. The third paddock took them to the Murray Valley Highway. At the road, the dog lost the scent. Claude cast Rex on the other side of the highway in the hope that the man had kept walking and not hitched a ride. Fifty metres up the road on the other side, Rex picked up the scent again. Beauty, thought Claude. We’re in with a shot.
They tracked over a fence and into another paddock, but this one was different from the muddy ones they had already travelled through. The ankle-high grass, which had been sewn to make hay, was perfect for tracking. Scent stays on the grass as it is crushed down underfoot, and this seems to trap the scent for the dog. It’s a handler’s dream to get a surface like this – Rex’s dream too. He indicated strongly, and Claude followed quickly behind.
Another 50 metres in, parallel to the highway, Rex led Claude to the next paddock. Claude knew the crook was close. And in the distance, the red and blue flashing lights of the police cars trawling the roads gave Claude a small sense that he had backup.
In the middle of the next paddock, there was a cluster of gum trees. In the torchlight, Claude could see an old dead tree lying among the upright trees. It was to this log that Rex made a beeline. Rex put his paws up on the log and started barking – deep, solid, loud barking. From a distance of a couple of metres, Claude began issuing instructions: ‘Keep your hands where I can see them!’
A pair of hands rose up from behind the log.
‘Good boy!’ Claude said to Rex and gave him a pat and a scratch, switching from his gruff crook voice to the excited dog voice smoothly. Rex puffed out his chest and seemed very proud of himself.
Claude yelled out that he’d found the guy, because he didn’t have a country radio. Cops in the cruising cars nearby had their windows down, so they could hear him. Two detectives and some uniformed locals arrived to take over while Claude and Rex looked on from a distance. The mere presence of an excited police dog can keep things calm. One of the detectives picked up the man’s bag, opened it, and spread the contents out on the fallen log. The contents were ominous: a long carving knife, rope and some spare clothing.
‘She was lucky she got away,’ Claude murmured, shaking his head.
The thrill of the chase is all well and good, but the detectives take over once the dog and handler have done their work. Often handlers don’t hear much once their job is done, but this job made front-page news in the Border Mail.
Because of the lateness of the hour, Claude stayed overnight in Barnawartha. The next day, he got a copy of the Border Mail to see the story featured on the front page. His mum, who lived in Beechworth, got the same paper each morning, and read about her son catching an abductor. And then she told all her friends about his fine work.
Claude never found out what sentence the man got, and he wasn’t really interested in following the story. This is typical of the work of the dog handlers. They come, they catch crooks and then they drive off into the dawn, with their tired canine colleagues in the back of the car.
After a working life of jumping fences, Rex developed a back injury and retired to Claude’s house. He enjoyed his new status as a family pet with the run of the backyard and the affection of Claude’s family.
One goes, and another one comes. Kruze was a short-haired black-and-tan German shepherd, a little shorter and lighter than some of his canine colleagues, weighing in at 33 kilograms. A small dog with a big heart and a big character.
Kruze was known as a junkyard dog – he’d been tied up in a backyard that was adjacent to the path to a local school. He would bark at the kids, who would run sticks along the fence to stir up the dog until he was out of control. The owners brought him in to the squad, which assessed him as suitable for police work.
Kruze proved to be a good tracking dog, and he was good for critical incident work. When Kruze was in work mode, Claude had to have eyes in the back of his head, the dog was so quick and agile. Because he was a bit smaller, he became a little dynamo. He was also a one-person dog and would ignore others in favour of Claude.
While Rex and his replacement Kruze got along well, Rex did feel a little jealous when Claude went off to work, and would whine every time they left him behind. One day, Claude was home washing the work car. He’d left the gate open, and went inside for a minute. When he came back, Rex was gone.
Claude found him in the back of the squad car, waiting to go to work. ‘Enjoy your retirement, buddy,’ said Claude, leading Rex back to the backyard.
Once Claude and Kruze were called to an aggravated burglary in Sunshine, where four shots had been fired inside a suburban house. Reports at the scene described two offenders, possibly both armed. Facing down an armed offender makes the dog handler vulnerable. While the handler carries a weapon like every other police officer, it is not usual for them to wield it. They use both hands to hold on to the dog’s lead, and handlers have a natural reluctance to fire in the direction of their dog.
Witnesses at the shooting had said that one offender had escaped out the back door and over the back fence. The other offender had fled out the front door. Claude set off after the crook that had gone over the back fence. Kruze picked up a scent straight away – up and over. Six backyards later, Kruze’s head went up and he started pulling more strongly on the lead. Claude knew that the crook was in the next yard. Using the radio, he gave his approximate location in a low voice.
Suddenly, there was a bang. It could have been a shed door banging. Claude unclipped the lead, and sent Kruze over the fence, following quickly behind him. There was a second bang. Claude ran down the driveway. No sign of the dog; no sign of the shooter. Sweeping the area with the torch, Claude saw a piece of Kruze’s tracking line caught under the tyre of a trailer parked in the driveway.
Claude guessed that the long tracking line must have snagged under the wheel and broken with the momentum of an excited police dog flying past. At least, that was the best-case scenario. The second bang that Claude had heard . . . he hoped it wasn’t the gunman firing at his dog.
Claude ran out into the street, where he could hear a whining sound. His heart beat faster as he raced up the driveway. If his dog was injured, he was dangerous to anyone who went near him; in a panic, an injured animal will lash out.
Luckily it was a whine of frustration, not a whine of injury. With a huge sense of relief, Claude found Kruze scratching and clawing at a back fence too high for him to scale. The handler climbed up and hoisted his dog up and onto the roof of a shed adjacent to the fence. Claude and Kruze made their way through yet another yard, across a road and up another driveway. They reached another fence – up and over. Across another street they went, up another driveway, through another yard.
Kruze was frantic. He loved catching crooks and this one was close but elusive. Claude didn’t let go of what was left of Kruze’s tracking line. He didn’t want to risk losing the dog again. They tracked through another backyard and over another fence. In the next yard, Kruze led Claude down a narrow side path. The dog stopped at the corner of the house, and then did the dog version of a U-turn. Often, if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, the dog follows it and then turns when he realises that he’s overshot the scent. Which meant Kruze had overshot the gunman.
As his dog started heading back in his direction, Claude’s eyes widened. He turned to his side and all of a sudden could see the crook right next to him, crouched down in a daisy bush. Without hesitation, Claude issued the command for Kruze to take him down. In a swirl of fur and crook and daisies, growls and barks and screams, Claude grabbed the back of the man’s jacket and dragged him clear of the daisy bush.
Claude called off the dog, as the man lay sprawled on the ground with his arms outstretched. Kruze did his job by standing sentinel and barking his head off. Claude praised his dog as he called for help over the radio. The problem he faced was that he didn’t know where he was. Handlers had ways of helping direct backup to them; they could radio in the numberplate of a car parked in a driveway in the hope that the car belonged to the house occupant, which meant the address would come up on the computer. But in this case, Claude couldn’t risk leaving the sprawled gunman even for a second. Here’s how they found him. Cruising police cars turned off their radios and wound down their windows and listened for sounds of the dog barking. Kruze played his part by barking up a storm.
It took around five minutes for the local police to locate Claude. Nowadays, all handlers are issued with iPhones with GPS locators, which will give their location in an instant. Once the locals got to the backyard, Claude moved his very excited German shepherd away from the scene. Until a police dog calms down, he can’t be relied on not to bite anyone in the vicinity.
Some dog handler jobs do not end well. Claude has been involved in many jobs where he and his dogs have searched for missing people who have never been found. A business manager from Warrnambool disappeared from work, leaving behind his credit cards and wallet. Extensive searches failed to find him, and the man never turned up. On occasions such as this, the dog handler and his dog can’t save the day.
Luckily, there are many other occasions where they can.
CLAUDE’S TRAINING TIPS