The Next Stop: METRO's Podcast
Episode 61: Meet METRO PD's K-9 Unit — Your Safety is Our No. 1 Priority

Officer Armstrong:  The canine handlers we work with, you know, are just—they are really great. We have some of the best people that have some of the best dogs actually in this nation.  

Doug Delony:  I’m Doug Delony. On this edition of the Next Stop: METRO’s number 1 priority is to keep you safe, and part of the team that makes this happen is the METRO Police K-9 Unit.  

[Introduction music plays]

Doug Delony:  On this episode of the Next Stop, we are on location with several METRO police officers and their canines. We’re joined now by Senior Police Officer Ted Armstrong. Thanks for taking the time to visit with us here, and who do you have with you? 

Officer Armstrong:  This is K-9 Dotji.  He has been in service since the summer of 2019.  

Doug Delony:  And K-9 meaning officer with METRO Police, correct?  

Officer Armstrong:  He’s a K-9 Officer, and his job is finding explosives.  

Doug Delony:  Wow. So, trained to find—sniff out? 

Officer Armstrong:  Sniff out explosives. Search for explosives. We do a lot of different things, major events, World Series. You know, Super Bowls and stuff. And we go and actually sweep stadiums before the games start. That way, we make the rest of the citizens feel comfortable and safe in our city.  

Doug Delony:  We cover a large area across the Houston region. We have the rail, the buses, and whatnot. So, we’re often, I mean, stadiums, the rail line, I mean, where is the…?  

Officer Armstrong:  Our main focus for METRO is conducting platform sweeps, LRV sweeps. If need be, we do bus sweeps and stuff across the service line. So, we’re actually anywhere our buses and train systems go, we in the K-9 Department, we take our canines also.  

Doug Delony:  And how old is this canine here? 

Officer Armstrong:  He is six years old.  

Doug Delony:  How old is a K-9 Officer go within METRO or in police work in general?  

Officer Armstrong:  I kind of explain it like a human being. Some people can work up to their 60s or 70s, 80 years old. Some people, you know, medical reasons or different things of that nature, they’re done at 40 years old. So, you know, we try to take them as long as they can because we do have a lot of time and money working and training these dogs. So, we try to get as much service life as we can out of them. But, you know, we as canine handler because we live them. We’re around them 24/7. We try to watch the dogs and notice if they start slowing down and start having problems, and then we look at retiring them.  

Doug Delony:  And how long can you…I’m just kidding!  

Officer Armstrong:  [laughs]  

Doug Delony:  [laughs]

Officer Armstrong:  I’m looking at two years—two and a half years!  

Doug Delony:  Okay.  

Officer Armstrong:  As a matter of fact, today is my anniversary date for METRO.  

Doug Delony:  Oh, wow.  

Officer Armstrong:  I just finished up 31 years.  

Doug Delony:  Wow. That was gonna be my next question, how long. So, have you always been an officer or working with the K-9 Unit, or were you…?  

Officer Armstrong:  I’ve been in K-9 since 2005. But I was an officer. I started July 12th of 1992.  

Doug Delony:  Rewarding place to work, here at METRO?  

Officer Armstrong:  I love it. You know, I love it. You know, I sit back and look sometimes, and you wonder where these 31 years have went. Some of it has passed by slow, but some of it has went so fast. I mean, you think about 31 years here. It’s a long time, so. And some days you just wonder where did the time has went, you know? I just feel like I just started almost sometimes. And now the end of my career is coming up.  

Doug Delony:  So, it’s rewarding and enjoyable, and that’s probably why time flies.  

Officer Armstrong:  It is, you know. And we’ve had a change, you know, the last few years. You know, the policing industry has kind of changed a little bit, but it is still a rewarding job, you know? You have to love what you’re doing to come here this many years over and over and staying in the same location, same place. So, you do have to love your job. You know, you have to appreciate your job. And just meeting new people and different people, and you know, just all aspects of it. I work with some of the greatest people around, you know. So, it’s just very rewarding.  

Doug Delony:  And greatest canines around, too, right? 

Officer Armstrong:  That’s it! That’s it! You know, if you go look at the trophy case up on the 13th floor, you’ll see the different competitions that we’ve taken our dogs to and things like that. So, we have had some really, really, really nice canines over the years. This is my third canine here at METRO. So, it’s been really enjoyable. I love my job. I love coming to work every day.  

Doug Delony:  So, out of curiosity, as an outsider perspective, how do you distinguish the line between co-worker, colleague, fellow officer, and a pet? A beloved, you know, family member, perhaps.  

Officer Armstrong:  You know, it’s very hard. You know, they can consider this a working tool like anything else, you know? They’re out there to do a job, especially if you have your patrol canines and stuff. They have a job to do. So, they’re just another tool within your arsenal. But it’s hard to distinguish between them and a pet. Like I tell people, I’m around my canine more than I’m around my family. You know, he lives with me, so he goes home with me. So, I’m at the house with him every day. He comes to work with me every day. So, I’m around this guy right here. He’s the best partner to have. The best partner I’ve ever had, you know, as a K-9 Unit.  

Doug Delony:  And I know we could probably talk for hours about how K-9 Officers are trained. How many K-9 Officers do we have here at METRO?  

Officer Armstrong:  We have eight total K-9 officers. So, they have different jobs—all of our K-9s have different jobs. All of our K-9s are explosive dogs. We have some that are doing—we have a couple of dogs that do patrol work. So, they do your tracks. You know, if you have a lost child, you know, somewhere, they can actually run those tracks. They don’t have to go out there and be aggressive if you want to say that, so. But our dogs have different jobs. You know, all of them are explosives, but then some of them have the patrol training part of it.  

Doug Delony:  And do we train internally? Do we have outside partners?  

Officer Armstrong:  We have a certified trainer that’s with the school. He was the original one that incepted into K-9. He started in K-9 in 1998 with a narcotics dog. And so, he’s our lead trainer. And so, we’ve gotten a lot of knowledge over him, and through all the schools and training that we’ve been through over the years. You know, we just gained a lot of knowledge ourselves, so. And we’re trying to pass that on to our younger generations that are moving up so that when we do get ready to leave or retire and move on in our careers that they’re well-versed and they’re ready to go and, you know, step in our footsteps.  

Doug Delony:  And for those listening to the podcast and can’t see it, our K-9 Officer here is playing around with a little toy. I mean, he’s still, still a dog, an animal. A puppy, perhaps.  

Officer Armstrong:  You know, thank goodness our dogs are pretty social. So, you know, they can be around other people. And especially being a big metropolitan city like this, you have to train the dogs up and socialize them to be in major events, major sporting events, where you have several hundred thousand people there. So, the dogs have to be used to being socialized and being around those. So, our K-9s are fairly well-versed being in the big city and being around a lot of people. You know, being around people, you know, they want to play. They want to play ball with everybody you see. This is actually how we do all of our training is that ball in their mouth. They’ll do anything we ask them to do for that ball, for their reward, for a toy, whatever that reward toy is, and every handler’s got something different they use. But all the K-9s work for that reward toy. And so, that’s how we actually conduct all of our training is through that reward toy kind of thing. If you can see, this is actually a podcast and not live—[speaking to dog] Sit. Sit. Shake. Stay. Down. Sit. Sit. Up. Sit. Oh, good boy. 

So, they do all of the things. We do all the things for this little right here. He’ll watch this thing go wherever it goes, and so they do that reward toy. [Speaking to dog] Get it. Get it. Get it. 

But they do everything for that reward toy. And so that’s what makes training a lot easier for the dogs because they do love this toy reward.  

Doug Delony:  And for those who can’t see it, head on over to METRO’s YouTube channel to see some of these dogs in action in a photoshoot. Normally, we wouldn’t have our K-9 Officers inside 1900, which is METRO’s Administration Office. It’s like an office building here in the middle of Downtown. Normally, we don’t have the K-9 Officers here, but why are we here today? 

Officer Armstrong:  We are actually here doing a photoshoot. Actually, METRO’s creating baseball cards for us, so we can pass out to the public, kids, different people, and so we’ll have a package of baseball cards. And it talks about the dogs, how old they are, how big they are, what jobs they do, what language we speak to them. And so that way we can—once the baseball cards are made—so we can actually, you know, kind of mingle with the general public and pass out our cards to, you know, especially little kids. You know, all little kids love having those trading cards with the dogs. They don’t care about the officer, you know? They want to see the dog. They want to play with the dog. They want pictures of the dog. So, that’s what METRO’s creating for us.  

Doug Delony:  That’s great.  

Officer Armstrong:  You know, I’ve only worked for METRO for all these number of years, but we have intertwined between HPD, Harris County, different things of that nature, you know? So, we work with a lot of different officers. I love our atmosphere here. We’re not so big—we’re not so big that you don’t know from one person to the next, you know? Pretty much, it’s one big—I call it one big family here, you know? Everybody knows everybody, you know? We’re all friends. We’re all trying to do a job, you know? But these are our friends. You know, these are people we work with. We care about them, you know. The K-9 program ____ (09:35-09:37) and the canine handlers we work with, you know, are just—they are really great. We have some of the best people that we work with. Have some of the best dogs actually in this nation. Like I said, you can see from our trophy case and different places we’ve been and different competitions we’ve been in. We’ve taken home a lot of trophies with our dogs. So, I’m really proud of our K-9 program here.  

Doug Delony:  This K-9 Officer is just sitting here looking up at you, waiting for the next order.  

Officer Armstrong:  He’s waiting—he actually wants to get out and stretch his legs a little bit.  

Doug Delony:  Yeah.  

Officer Armstrong:  You know, we’ve been sitting here…

Doug Delony:  Ready to get outside.  

Officer Armstrong:  Yeah, he wants to get out. And wants to throw that ball about 100 yards, so he can take off running after it, you know.  

Doug Delony:  Right. So, no desk job.  

Officer Armstrong:  No. No desk job for him. 

Doug Delony:  [laughs]

Officer Armstrong:  But, like I said, it’s the best career that I could ask for as a police officer.  

Doug Delony:  I really appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us.  

Officer Armstrong:  I appreciate your time, sir. [speaking to dog] Dotji, you’re a movie star now. We’ll sign autographs later, baby. Here ____ (10:27). 

And if you can see on the YouTube, this is like candy to a child here. He’ll do everything for this little piece of candy right here. You get him to stay or watch it. He’ll follow this ball wherever it goes.  

Doug Delony:  And as Officer Armstrong said, you have to check out METRO’s official YouTube channel. It’s there. You’ll find some of the video we recorded during this very fun photoshoot. You have to see some of these cute faces. And don’t forget, if you ever need METRO PD’s assistance, you can dial #MPD on your cell phone, or you can chat message with police dispatch on our official METRO Police app. Just search for “MPD Connect” app. We also have buttons you can push on our rail platforms and many of our transit centers. In an emergency, though, you’ll always want to dial 9-1-1. To learn more about METRO Police, check out ridemetro.org/police.  

That wraps it up for this edition of the Next Stop, so thank you to you, the listener, and all of our riders out there. I’m Doug Delony. As always, drive less and do more with Houston METRO.  

[Music plays to end] 



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