You may know Radar for his continuous quest to refine his doggy palate through the daily, on-duty snacks supplied by his human (and handler) Sergeant Eamon O’Reilly. However, the 10-year-old Belgian Maligator’s primary occupation is fighting crime in the Portland, Oregon, area with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO).

In their nine years as partners, Radar and Eamon have tracked murder suspects,  rappelled from rooftops, and shared a lot of snacks. The duo has made a huge impact on their community’s safety and helped to create a connection between the WCSO and the humans (and dogs) that they serve. 

So, Eamon, how did you get into police work?

[Laughs] I tell everyone my journey into police work was boring: I just needed a job. My father, who was in the military, was just scrolling through job sites, and he saw that Washington County was hiring dispatchers. I looked to see what else they were offering, and they were hiring jail deputies. So, in 2004, I just went to the county and I applied to be a jail deputy. I got through the whole process on the first round, and so I started working in the jail. [Laughs] I’d never even set foot in the jail - I got the job before I had any idea what I was doing. I loved the Sheriff’s Office [and] I ended up being pretty good at it. I got hired by the patrol division in 2008, and I’ve been working in patrol since.

What is Radar’s specialty?

We call it a patrol dog. In general, that just means that he finds people. He’s a single-purpose [patrol dog] - “single-purpose” is a K9 handler term; you can have dogs that have multiple purposes, so we’ve had patrol dogs on our team that were patrol dogs and drug-detection dogs. We call that dual-purpose.

Radar’s a single-purpose patrol dog, so he finds people - suspects. I mean, he doesn’t know the difference. We can search for missing children, missing adults - he can search for any people. It’s just that… he thinks that his job when he finds people is to bite them. So, I have to be very specific when we’re searching for someone that’s not a suspect.

Did you get to name Radar?

I did, yeah. Most of the time, we get our dogs from 'vendors' who get their dogs from Europe, and they all come with names, but they’re basically just so that they can identify the dogs. They don’t call the dogs by name and they don’t train them. So, they come with names, but the dogs don’t know their names. 

Radar’s name was Bolo when I got him, and I personally didn’t like the name. I’m 49 years old and I think I’m funny, so he’s named after the character from the ’60s TV show MASH, Corporal Radar O’Reilly. I also thought it was still a good police dog name even if you don’t know who Radar O’Reilly is.

So, Radar was pretty much untrained when you got him, but he was a year old. That must be challenging - what does his training look like?

Eighteen to 22 months is sort of the range when we typically get our police dogs. Twelve months is pretty young - they’re old enough to be trained, but they’re really not mature enough to start doing real police work.

We start with a 400-hour K9 school: Four days a week, 10 hours a day, for 10 days straight, we just do nothing but train our dogs. It’s as much for me as it is for Radar because he was my first dog, so, they’re training me how to train Radar. The 400-hour certification is basically obedience, like proving that we can do heeling, sitting - all off-line (no leash), then obedience around a suspect, and then odor detection.

So, with a decoy (the guy wearing the bite suit) - we have to be able to do certain activities around him. We have to send the dog to bite that guy and then recall him. While the dog is biting the decoy, we have to be able to verbally get the dog to release without touching the dog - within two commands; I’m only allowed to tell him twice. [Laughs] If it takes more than two times, we don’t pass.

That’s impressive - that’s some serious training! 

It is. For the odor detection component, someone hides in a series of large boxes and the dog tells us which box the person is hiding in, which is proof that he’s searching for human odor. That’s basically what we have to do before we’re allowed to go out and work, but that’s just passing certification.

Now I have to train him to do police work. I have to train him how to track and how to do an area search or search a building, so that… it’s hard to quantify, but it takes, really, a couple of years before we're any good. A lot of dogs don’t make the cut, but Radar made it and now, he’s been working much longer than most police dogs. He’s really good at his job now.

It seems that you must be very good at training him, as well!

It’s a combination of good training and just keeping him healthy. And you know, dogs have different personalities and drives and work ethics. Radar also just loves to work, so it’s a combination of all of those things. I mean, I’m not going to take no credit; I’ll take some credit, but I’ve also had a really good team - my team has been very good at helping me train him and giving me the opportunities to train him, but he’s also a unique dog.

You seem to have a really special relationship with him.

Yeah, it’s interesting because he’s really my first dog. Not my first police dog - he’s my first dog. I didn’t really know how to train dogs, I didn’t know what a relationship with a dog was like. I joined the team because I enjoyed seeing handlers use their dogs to solve problems and I wanted to do that. I wasn’t really planning on having a relationship with a dog, I was just going to have a dog.

And that’s really how it started because it’s frustrating to train a dog - you have to have a lot of patience. If I had known how difficult it was going to be, I really may not have done it… but it’s also been incredibly rewarding. Really, [our relationship] just evolved over years of me learning his personality and his peculiarities, and eventually, I just realized what a goofy dog he was, and I started to appreciate his uniqueness. And then we built that relationship and kind of understood each other.

You guys share food! And the internet loves it. Tell us more.

Because he’s such a good car dog and he’s relatively gentle, I can share food with him. It’s funny because he’s gross - he’s a gross dog; he eats just about everything he can get his mouth on. But we share food anyway because we (people) come into contact with so many germs and gross things just while we’re out in the world that getting it from a dog is, I don’t think, any different from getting it anywhere else, so it just doesn’t bother me.

So, we’ve been sharing food for a long time and I started the Instagram account just because I thought that was what you were supposed to do! I think I got up to 2,000 followers and I thought that was pretty hot stuff.

Then I decided to film sharing food with Radar - we have a festival up here called the Verboort Sausage Fest and my agency goes and provides security for the festival every year. We were sharing some sausage and some sauerkraut, and I just filmed it, and then I filmed sharing some Pringles, and I filmed sharing some rice cakes or something.

Someone wrote in a comment that every time they go to Popeye’s, they get biscuits for their dog, so I filmed a video of Radar and I sharing some Popeye’s biscuits and I couldn’t believe how many people liked and watched this video. And I said, “Okay, maybe this is a thing people want to see.” And not too long after that, we got some Chick-fil-A fries, and that video went bananas. Ever since then, almost all I’ve been posting is just sharing food with Radar. [Laughs] It’s really the only thing a lot of people know about us.

Side note from Wilderdog - we don't advise sharing ALL your food with your dog - perhaps just some baby carrots or peanut butter ;) 

That’s fun. Does your department like his Instagram account?

Yeah. So, I started it without asking. We have a pretty lenient social media policy - it’s just basically don’t disparage the agency with your social media. Mine was a touch different, though, because I was filming stuff in uniform and on duty. So, for a while, I was blurring out my badge and making sure you couldn’t read Washington County or anything, and then I just decided, you know what? This is actually probably going to be good for the agency, so I just stopped blurring everything and I started tagging the agency.

The ultimate approval is the Sheriff follows me, likes my videos, comments on my videos. She’s one of my best friends, so I’ve got that going for me. She’s very supportive of the account and now, I actually do collaborative posts with the agency. They like what the account has done for the image of police officers [in general] but also the image of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. It’s done a lot to open up communication with the public.

Yeah! That’s awesome. So, Radar is trained for all of these crazy situations, right? What is the scariest situation that you guys have been in?

I personally, at work, have been in a lot of situations that are frightening. I’m also on the SWAT team. So, I’ve been shot at… Radar and I have tracked for murderers. It’s not necessarily that scary to track for a murder suspect because we don’t do it by ourselves. I’ve got all of these competent people keeping me and Radar safe, but you know, we’re still out front. Radar’s still out front, so there’s always that possibility that he’s going to find someone who is dangerous and get injured, or alert somebody that we’re searching for them because he’s not quiet. [Laughs] I get scared just like anybody, but the training that I get and the people that I work with give me a lot of confidence in doing my job.

We’re glad to hear that. What’s Radar’s best work day?

If I gave him the option, he would love to just go hunting. That’s his absolute favorite thing to do. But second to that would be building searching. He loves to building search because there are fewer parameters.

When we’re tracking, he’s on a leash because I need to control him. I can’t just let him run off because who knows what he’s going to go do? But building searching, he loves even more because he’s still getting to hunt and he’s still getting to follow that human odor to get his reward (a toy), but he’s doing it off-line. So, he doesn’t have me holding him back on the leash; he gets to go where he wants and he gets to climb on what he wants, dig in what he wants, bite what he wants.

He’s an aggressive alert dog. A passive alert dog, when they find the odor and what they’re looking for, they just stare at it. Well, an aggressive alert dog like Radar doesn’t accept just staring at something - he’s going to dig at it, bite at it, pull at it - try to remove whatever’s between him and the person. And he’s really good at it.

A lot of the dogs have environmental barriers that they just don’t appreciate or aren’t willing to work through, and Radar is absolutely fine with everything - he’ll crawl over stuff, he’ll crawl under stuff, he’s good at crawlspaces and attics because he’s fine with small spaces and no light, he just doesn’t care if he can’t see. He’s our favorite attic dog. If I have a choice, he’s the one going in the attic because he doesn’t care about insulation or low beams or unsure footing. He’s gonna find what he’s looking for.

When he’s searching a building, is there a pattern to his searching?

Kind of… [Laughs] There is one parameter when I’m building searching with him: we start off with the leash because if we’re standing at a door, I use a leash at first so that he can only go five to 10 feet inside the room and clear the immediate area. I know when I let Radar go in the room, the very first thing he’s going to do is go as far away as he can. That’s just where he’s going to start. His method is that he just runs around the room until he catches a pocket of odor, then once he’s caught the pocket of odor, he’s going to determine where the edges of the odor are, so I can see him going from side to side, wherever the edges are, and then he’s going to narrow it down until he finds out where the source is.

And Radar’s tell when he can’t find an odor is, he will destroy a pillow. [That’s how I know] it’s time to move on to another room.

That’s so cool. What happens when Radar retires?

I’ll keep him. Generally, handlers adopt their dogs when they retire. But a retired police dog is still a police dog [at heart], so, he’s retired, but I still don’t get to take him on leash-less walks or to the dog park because he’s still an aggressive dog. [Laughs] He just doesn’t know that he’s not working anymore. But I’ll keep him. I’ve got the home for it, my family loves him. He’s a good dog at the house.

We have to ask if you’ve ever had digestive issues after sharing food with him.

[Laughs] No, I have my own issues and he has his own issues, but none if it is the result of the food we’re sharing. 

This is probably hard to answer because he eats so many snacks, but do you have a sense of his favorite one so far?

Yeah, I think his favorite thing would be pizza. He loves almost anything. He’s not a fan of bananas - it took a while for him to even try a banana. Really, he likes any human food that’s warm. When I say human food, I mean like a chicken sandwich or a burrito, or a slice of pizza. Pizza - he’s wild for pizza.

Do people recognize you when you’re out and about?

Yeah, it’s fun. Just about everywhere we go.

That is fun. We bet you never thought that would happen becoming a sheriff’s officer!

Oh my gosh, no. So, two of my favorite things to come from the account: One is people will tell me that they were dealing with something, like they were in the hospital, and they watched my videos each day to help get them through whatever struggle they were going through, which to me, is just bonkers, but I think it’s so neat.

A teacher recently sent me a video of her second-grade class all sitting together, and you could see my video on the screen behind them, and they all thanked me for their daily videos in class - it was just crazy. It’s really neat.

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Follow Radar and Eamon’s daily snacking adventures on Instagram - @deputydogradar - and if you think you have what it takes to become a handler, be sure to check out Washington County Sheriff’s Office job listings!