Pet Sit 9

Meet Betsy, a 10-year-old German shepherd by day and a retired rock star by night. OK, she’s actually a rockstar 24/7 as she’s a retired 👮‍♂️ police dog. She was at the upper end of her working life when she stepped back, doing a few extra months so that she and her handler could retire together 😍 .

Have you ever wondered what happens to police dogs when they retire? Although Betsy’s story has a happy ending, it’s not the same for all retired service dogs. When working they stay with their primary handler. As they lead full, active lives, this can mean that joints are worn: for example, Betsy’s joints can be tender due to all the jumping off, down and off things that she routinely did while working. Plus, they’re no longer spring chickens when they step down and age-related health problems may start. All this comes at a financial cost and, perhaps surprisingly, there is no pot of funding to support retired service dogs. This means, heart breakingly, that handlers and their 🐶 dogs sometimes separate on the dog’s retirement. This is very sad 😢 indeed. ( 👀 READ more: Thin Blue Paw Foundation .and London Retired Police Dogs Trust.)

Meeting Betsy in retirement was an utter privilege. She has her own party trick involving her 🥣 food bowl. Ask her to go and find her metal food bowl and she races off to fetch it. She arrives back with it in her mouth, letting it fall at your feel with an almighty clatter. This means: ‘Feed me, please’. Sometimes, she combines this with another hint: plonking herself down, snout facing the food cupboard – a canine arrow ↗ pointing in the desired direction of her next meal! Dinner demolished, she then picks up her bowl again, goes to her bed, props the bowl up with her paw and  finishes licking it out. The best advice from her owner – never put her water in a metal bowl 😉 .

One final story about something that happened when we were out on our regular walk up a country lane. I heard the clip clopping of 🐴 🐴 🐴 horses. Not being sure how she’d react to horses in a narrow country lane, I decided to get her off the main drag as a precautionary measure. We wedged ourselves next to a field gate that was slightly set back. Imagine my surprise when ‘a few horses and their riders’ turned out to be the entire hunt – a pack of dogs and about 20 horses. Betsy was unperturbed. I’m used to reactive dogs, so I’d expected the worst. However, it makes complete sense knowing that she’s trained to stay calm and deal with the unexpected. Wow – what a girl!

I asked her owner about what she got up to in a typical working day. This blog post about another police dog is a good description. ( 👀 READ more: https://www.college.police.uk/article/working-police-dogs.)

👉 This is part of Annie's Pet Sitting BIG Adventure - to do 24 pet sits by the end of 2024, raising £2024 for Mums In Need (#2024in2024). Please donate: https://www.givey.com/anniespetsittingbigadventure 👈

❓ Want to read previous updates? You can catch them here:

https://www.mumsinneed.com/get-involved/annies-pet-sitting-big-adventure/updates

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