If You Stand Still, The Dog Shouldn't Bite

I was kneeling in ankle high grass which was wet from a heavy down-pour that had occurred only moments earlier.

Feeling uncomfortable from the length of time I had remained in the same position, I shifted my weight onto my other leg and popped my head above the fence I was shielded behind. I could hear a dog on the other side of the fence in a garden, sniffing strongly and moving about. I looked behind me at the live electrical railway line which was just a number of feet away from me.

Its low humming got louder as a train in the distance approached me. Feeling slightly concerned that I might be spotted from the train and mistaken for a trespasser, I pulled my coat back in the hope that any sharp eyed passengers would see my handcuffs. I also grabbed my radio and pretended to listen into it, hoping that if the handcuffs didn’t reassure anyone that I was a genuine police officer, the radio might. As the train passed me, I couldn’t hear anything coming from the garden and decided to take a peak through the crack of the fence.

Looking through I came face to face with an eye looking back at me. I frowned, wondering how long someone had been staring at me without saying something and stood up to look at them. As I did so the eye disappeared and was replaced with ferocious barking, and a shaking fence as the dog tried to scramble over to reach me. I stood up fully hoping that the police dog would recognise my uniform as that of a police officer. It seemed that it did not, and continued to try to get to me, its teeth flashing just yards in front of me as it reared it’s head. I had an angry dog in front of me and 25,000 volts behind. And I couldn’t remember covering this role-play at training school.

I was working a pretty mundane early shift which had produced a couple of calls but nothing major when we heard a colleague come out on the radio. It’s easy to tell when a colleague is stressed or in trouble because of the tone of their voice, often they’re shouting or sound panicky. In this instance, a female officer had been driving down a residential road when two young men who had been walking down the street spotted her car and began running. One of them was detained by her, while her colleague chased after the second man. The female officer directed other units in using the radio and we arrived at a street where her colleague had last been seen chasing the suspect. We tried to contact him on the radio but got no reply.

“I think they’ve gone into the train station,” the female officer shouted across the street at us while she dealt with the man she had managed to catch.

Myself and a colleague went down onto the platform to look for our colleague.

Passengers stood waiting for an imminent train looked at us with surprise but none offered any insight into the whereabouts of our colleague.

“They can’t have come down here,” I said to my mate. “They would have told us which way they’d gone.”

As soon as I had said the words, we spotted him walking down the side of the railway line with his baton out which he was using to search bushes.

“Do you want a hand James?” we shouted. He looked up and nodded and gestured for us to come down.

“Should we walk down the side of the line?” I asked gingerly. “If the bloke running wants to get electrocuted then we should just let him.”

“It’ll be fine,” was the reply I got. “Just keep an eye out for where you’re standing and don’t go anywhere near any of the lines.”

We reached our colleague further down the track and I could see that either side of the line backed onto people’s gardens.

“He went over that fence,” he said. “I’m certain he went in there. I’m going to go in and have a look.”

“I’ll come with you,” my driver said. He turned to me with some instructions.

“Stay here and keep a look at down the line in case he pops out of another garden and carries on running.”

“Yep, no problem,” I replied, knowing full well that there would be a problem if he did re-emerge. No way was I going to get into a roll around with a bloke inches from a railway line. For all I cared he could run, I wasn’t going to go after him.
I watched the two disappear into the long garden and began to feel slightly lonely when I could no longer hear their voices.

My radio was in constant use as other units were directed around the area in the hunt for this mystery man. I wondered if he could be hiding somewhere near me. He might even be watching me and take his chances; the odds were better with just me to fight rather than three of us. I tried to show a facial expression that would indicate to him if he was watching that I was quite casual about this job and would let him go without a fight.

Suddenly my radio began ringing and I saw it was my driver private calling me.
“Bill, just so you know, stay out of the garden, they’re letting the dog in.”
With that he was gone and I was left wondering if the mutt might flush the hiding man out. Suddenly I realised that I was standing where my colleagues had told the dog handler the man had disappeared from. The dog would catch my scent and could potentially come after me.

I crouched down to remain out of sight while I wondered what to do. I thought about making my way back along the track to the platform but decided not to in case the dog ran after me. I was sure I had been told that running from a dog would make matters worse. What if I walked backwards so it didn’t think I was trying to escape? I didn’t fancy that idea, on the basis that I would be inches from the live rail. I looked at my radio and tried to private call my driver back for some advice. As I switched channel, I could hear another radio from the garden. I looked over the fence and saw the handler coming in with a huge German shepherd which was off its lead. I thought about calling out before realising that the dog would also hear me so quickly crouched down again, sweat now running down my forehead.

It was at this point that the train came past me and I decided to have another look through the fence, coming face to face with the dog as I did so.
Standing up, the dog became even more excited and I saw the surprised expression on the handler before she started shouting at her dog.
“Get back,” she screamed at him, unable to quite reach him herself as he scrambled to get to me.

I stood still, from fear rather than instruction.

“Get back here now,” she shouted at the dog again. He finally crept back enough that the handler could clip him back onto his lead, giving me the opportunity to climb over the fence.

“That gave me a bit of a scare,” I said to her as I walked back through the garden warily, as the dog kept staring at me.

“To be totally honest,” she said, “you gave me a bit of a fright. I thought you were our man.”

“Sorry about that,” I said sheepishly.

“If ever that happens, the best thing is to just stand still and the dogs shouldn’t bite,” she said casually. “Although this one is a bit disobedient at the moment,” she added in a strained voice, as she pulled the dog back on the lead once more to stop him going for me one last time.