Dog Whisperer Turns Animals Into Weapons

Dave Reaver could be called the founding father of police dog training in Southern California.

He started working with dogs for Santa Monica and other Los Angeles County police departments in the mid-1970s -- those were the first agencies in the Southland to have K-9 units.

Now, the firm he founded, Adlerhorst International, trains police and service pooches for more than 500 domestic and international organizations, including almost all law enforcement agencies in Orange, San Diego, Riverside and Los Angeles counties.

The dogs are valuable not only for their ability to locate and take down suspects, but for their keen sense of smell to locate drugs, explosives, fugitives, missing persons and cadavers.

"Dogs have an olfactory capability 1 million times that of a human," Reaver said. "It's something that Mother Nature is pretty much done with, if you think about evolution."

Thursday afternoon, Adlerhorst hosted a class of police dog handlers from all over Southern California -- Riverside, Irvine, Vernon, Alhambra, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego County.

Reaver and his Adlerhorst trainers were teaching current and aspiring K-9 officers to work safely in bite suits -- big, padded outfits used to train the dogs to subdue suspects.

After lecturing the class, Reaver took his position as "agitator" in a small shed inside the fenced-in training course. A K-9 officer entered with an unmuzzled dog and enacted a standoff situation.

"If you don't come out, I'm sending my dog in after you," called out Kevin Laing of the Alhambra Police Department.

After a few seconds, he released his dog, Enzo, who raced to the shed's open face where Reaver waited, wearing only a jute bite sleeve and wielding a soft nylon crop.

"He's crazy," said one of the Adlerhorst trainers, Lazlo Brasko, admiringly. "I've been doing this 30 years, but I wouldn't go in there with just a sleeve."

Brasko pointed to his crotch and leg.

"Sometimes, even with the sleeve, they try to bite you here," he said.

Despite precautions, dogs can injure trainers during the intensely physical exercises. Brasko pointed to a round, puckered scab inside his middle knuckle where a dog's tooth punctured his flesh and hit a nerve.

Still, there's a difference between accidents that happen in the rough-and-tumble training course and the normal demeanor of police dogs. Many police dog handlers treat their animals as family pets when they're off-duty. The dogs are trained to be aggressive only on command.

Adlerhorst, in addition to its training course in Jurupa Valley outside Riverside, leases kennel space in Europe where the Belgian Malanois and German shepherds are bred.

Reaver imports them, continues the training they started in Europe, and sells them to police agencies in addition to training handlers.