WEATHER
For years, Chet Dennis has been interested in breeding and raising dogs. In 1999, not longer after he finished serving in the U.S. Army, Dennis hoped to raise Dobermans, Rottweilers or German Shepherds. He didn’t have a chance then — he eventually became an officer with the Gig Harbor Police Department — but he kept the idea in the back of his head.
About a year and a half ago, after talking with a colleague at the Pierce County Sheriff’s department, Dennis thought of a way to combine his interest in dogs with his own career: He decided to raise a working line of German Shepherds, a breed of dogs well-suited to become police service animals.
“It’s a dog with a lot of drive,” Dennis said. “They have a desire to work.”
Dennis wasn’t the only person in Gig Harbor who realized the importance of having service animals in the police department. Two years ago, when longtime harbor resident Lillian Jaycox died, she left $10,000 to the GHPD. Her husband, Loren, had been a 20-year veteran of the New York Police Department, and both were avid supporters of local police.
The GHPD used the donation to establish the Jaycox Gig Harbor Police Benevolent Fund, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that assists members of the community in need, especially youth and the police department.
In past years, the money has provided scholarships to Gig Harbor students and funded the annual Holiday Helpers program, which provides Christmas shopping sprees to children in need.
But throughout her lifetime, Lillian Jaycox also had strong interest in animals, and one of her survivors had mentioned Jaycox was interested in supporting police dogs.
So, when Dennis came up with the idea of raising service animals, using money from the Jaycox fund seemed like a perfect fit.
“(Dennis) has had, for a long a time, an interest in training dogs. When he came to work here, he carried that passion with him,” said Gig Harbor Police Chief Mike Davis, a chair of the Jaycox Fund Board of Directors.
“We found we had this foundation that could support his community project.”
Dennis offered to volunteer his own time to breed a litter of German Shepherds and to recruit two or three families in the Gig Harbor area that would each raise puppies for 14 to 16 months.
Once the puppies are old enough, they will be sold to other police departments throughout the state to work as service dogs.
The money from selling the dogs will be put back into the Jaycox Fund.
“My interest is, from working in Gig Harbor and getting to know people and raising dogs, to produce really good dogs for police departments,” Dennis said. “It’s a good foundation, too, if they are raised and trained in our community.”
Right now, the potential police dogs live with Dennis, his wife and their 7-month-old son on the Key Peninsula. The puppies are only 4 weeks old — big enough to open their eyes but young enough to be closely guarded by their mother, Tabor, Dennis’ 3-year-old German Shepherd.
When they are 8 weeks old, three puppies from the litter of 10 will be placed in carefully selected foster homes. Six of the puppies will be sold as pets, and Dennis plans to keep one himself. He said it is too early to tell which puppies will make successful police dogs and which will be better as pets.
“One day, this dog” — he said while carefully holding one of the puppies — “could be the laid-back one. The next day, it’s the rambunctious one.”
But every member of the litter has the potential to be a police dog because of their bloodlines and training.
Dennis’ dog, Tabor, underwent an intense, two-year training to be certified as a “Schutzhund,” a process originally developed in Germany in the early 1900s to prepare dogs for police work.
Although Schutzhund training is now more of a dog sport than a breed test, it remains a standard to measure tracking, obedience and protection skills among dogs.
“When you really understand dog behavior, you can take that and mold it to get whatever result you need to get,” Dennis said.
Because of these standards, choosing the right foster home for the puppies is important. Foster parents must fill out an application with the Jaycox Fund before an animal can be placed with them. The parents and puppies will also attend weekly training classes instructed by qualified police service dog trainers, both inside and outside Gig Harbor.
While raising the puppies can involve a great deal of work, Dennis stressed how important it is that police dogs be raised by foster parents. Dogs selected for police service work adjust more easily to the outside world when raised in normal home environment, he said.
To make the foster process easier, all the supplies needed to raise the puppies — food, veterinary care, leashes, kennels — were donated by local businesses such as Ducky’s Carpet Cleaning and Purdy Veterinary Hospital, and by Seattle-based Darwin’s Natural Pet Products.
Dennis said he understands how difficult it might be for foster parents to give up the dog after raising it for a year, but he hopes parents will recognize how important these animals will be to the community.
When the foster program is complete, a graduation ceremony will be held at the Gig Harbor Civic Center, where the foster family can give a small presentation and describe their experience before the dog is placed with its new police partner.
Each dog will be named after a fallen Washington State Police Officer who died in the line of duty.
Davis said he is unsure if the GHPD will take one of the Jaycox animals, even though the police department plans to submit a proposal to the Gig Harbor City Council in August, requesting funds for a drug-sniffing dog.
For now, the focus is on supporting Dennis’ project — and in the process, building the Jaycox fund and honoring Lillian Jaycox’s memory.
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