I am a retired Police officer who served for 32 years in the Metropolitan Police (London UK) joining as a 16 year old cadet direct from school (1973 - 2005). Initially I was posted to central London as a beat bobby. I then tried various aspects of policing including a fairly unsuccessful period working undercover surveillance. Every police officer is drawn to a particular type of police work, for some its fast cars, for others it might be horses or becoming a detective others wanted to climb the promotion ladder. For me it was always about becoming a police dog handler. I grew up around large breeds of dogs as my father bred Dobermans & Rottweiler's and every chance I got, I made myself available to run or hide as a decoy whenever a dog handler needed a victim to help them train their dog.
In 1981 I was lucky enough to pass the selection process to become a dog handler and was given my first German Shepherd, an 8 week old female puppy called Metpol Sophia and so my love of this wonderful breed began. Sophia was a good police dog, easy to train and a joy to own, however at the age of 4 years she began to have epileptic seizures so severe that in 1985 she was put to sleep. I was absolutely devastated.
Life moves on and later that year I was given my second German Shepherd, a male puppy called Metpol Ashley. I had no way of knowing it then but Ash was going to prove to be the epitome of not only a superb police dog, but a perfect example of what represents the German Shepherd as a breed. He was imposing to look at, full of life, fearful of nothing and very capable of dealing with the most violent of people. And yet, when the occasion demanded it he would happily roll over to have his belly rubbed by members of the public, adults and children alike. As my dog handling career progressed Ash and I won a number of trophies and titles and brought in dozens of bad guys and football hooligans all over London.
In 1991 I was invited to join the permanent staff of the Metropolitan Police Dog Training School as a full time dog training instructor. Having achieved most things that I wanted to as a dog handler, and with Ash moving close to retirement age (and being convinced I would never have another dog half as good as him) I moved away from operational police dog handling and started my career as a dog trainer.
As an instructor you have to be omnicompetant. That is you have to possess the ablilty to train a multitude of disciplines. Starting off training dogs and handlers who are already operational, you progress to training dogs and handlers that are completely untrained, in fact in many instances, the dog and handler have only just teamed up with the dog having been a family pet the week before. Once you have proved your worth as a trainer of basic dog handling skills you progress to training the specialist disciplines such as narcotic & explosive detection, human remains recovery and tactical firearm support teams (similar to SWAT). As I had been one of the elite teams of dogs and handlers trained to work with the force firearms unit, I was handed the specific responsibility for selecting & training these teams.
I have trained a variety of breeds of dog including a Briard, Spaniels, Malinois (Belgian Shepherd), Labradors etc and although I am always impressed with the ability and skills of these other breeds, as a matter of choice I always come back to the German Shepherd which is why I jumped at the opportunity when I was asked to take charge of the extensive police dog breeding and puppy training programme.
The Metropolitan Police had been breeding their own police dogs since the 1960's however the programme was not without its problems as evidenced by the epileptic seizures of my dog 'Sophia'. My new job involved selecting stud dogs & breeding bitches, deciding which dog to mate to which bitch, supervising the matings and the eventual whelpings, ensuring that the puppies were well cared for during their first 8 weeks, selecting which puppies from each litter were to be allocated as police dogs based on a 'puppy character assessment', and just as importantly deciding which puppies didn't have the potential to be a police dog, choosing which puppy was best suited to which human and then allocating their puppy to them and then supervising the training & socialisation of all puppies until they were old enough to go into full time training (about 12 - 14 months of age)
As time went on I developed a specialist knowledge of the German Shepherd and the breeding of working dogs. The police dog breeding programme grew in size and we introduced new technology to assist us including a computer database that showed indicators of known genetic diseases such as epilepsy, pancreatic insuficiency, heart defects etc. (revolutionary in the early 90's). We also began to freeze semen from our stud dogs and use Artificial Insemination to ensure the best possible outcome from our matings.
Running such a large prestigious programme offered me the opportunity to travel to meet others that were interested in the work that we were doing in breeding our own service dogs. As a result I was consulted by various organisation worldwide including the US Military, US Customs Service, the Australian Royal Air Force, as well as various police & government agencies in the UK and overseas who wanted to emulate our very successful breeding programme and puppy training scheme.
In 2000 the BBC commisioned a TV series called 'Police Dog Academy' which followed a litter of police puppies I had bred from the moment of their birth to operational status. It was a six part series which led on to the opportunity to tour the UK with Intervet & Purina speaking on the subject of breeding, training and working police dogs. As a result of my position in charge of the breeding programme I was invited to appear on both radio & TV shows such as Animal Planet and in 2001 I was invited to be a key speaker at the International Working Dog Breeding Seminar at the US Air Force base in Lackland, Texas.
As you can see from our webpage, I like to write and I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to write for a number of UK and overseas magazines including Dogs Monthly, The German Shepherd Dog & Police K9 Magazine as well as being tasked to write the original chapters covering both Breeding & Tactical Firearm Support in the National Police Training & Care manual for police dogs
Breeding dogs, and in particular the German Shepherd has been my life. I understand that the breed, like many others are now divided into various 'types' to the extent that they very often represent a different breed from one another. It is with this in mind that I intend to breed puppies that I believe faithfully represent the German Shepherd as I knew it in my time within the police service.
Dogs characters and personalities are as individual as those of humans. No two puppies are going to be the same once they are adults due to both genetics and the influence of their environments and levels of socialisation, however a well bred dog should be capable of being a working dog, family pet or competitive obedience or sport dog. It is my intention to move away from the extreme or exaggerated 'types' available from breeders that produce the show or working type of GSD. Not everyone wants a dog with the conformation seen in many modern show German Shepherds and not everyone wants the extreme levels of drive and energy displayed in many working bloodline dogs. Everyone however wants a dog with good temperament, good health, sound conformation with courage and a brain. In short a dog that is well balanced with character, temperament and health.
As a breeder you can never give a guarantee about how the puppy will eventually turn out because the environmental and socialisation aspects of raising a puppy can have a huge part to play in both the dogs temperament and health, however the one thing you can do is to ensure that the puppies you sell are from health tested parents, have been raised on a quality food, given a clean warm living environment, have been socialised in the home and outside in the garden (weather permitting) and have been health checked by a vet prior to going to their new home. That is one guarantee I can give.
Steve Dean 2016