Why This DEA K-9 Veteran Never Throws a Ball for His Dogs

Cameron MainKeith, thank you for joining us. My pleasure. And thanks for having Rip join us as well. I didn't see him. No. Go let him know. We saw him. So tell us a little bit about yourself and what you did with dogs in your career.

Keith GordonI spent 25 years in law enforcement and 18 of it was on canine. And I had the honor of, I had three dogs on canine. I'm sad to say I had to, I had to outlive all three of them. And, none of the dogs lived till 10. We wore them out real good. And it was pretty sad. Sometimes some nights you'd or days you'd work a dog and you'd see him come up lame. Or he just was wearing down. It wasn't their minds. They're not like people. It's their bodies that give out. And, you know, a lot of supplements, the best food you could buy. We treated them like high-speed athletes. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Cameron MainYeah, yeah. I think so.

Keith GordonAll right. So I spent the last five years of my career with the DEA, Drug Enforcement Agency. I was on a height of task force in charge of canine units. So we were chasing dope. And the most exhausting thing, believe it or not, a dog has to do is use his nose. So you can only search for about 20 minutes. So what you're looking to do is keep these dogs cardiovascular fit, physically fit. We trained them all the time. Federal mandate for us is 16 hours a month. You've got to have training logs of what you're doing with the dogs. So this wasn't a career where you work four or five days, put the dog up, and that's the end of it. You're seven days a week, 24-7 responsible for that guy. So where you guys, for me, pop in is we were always looking for a supplement to enhance the dog, to give that dog the better quality of life. And for recovery, right? Prevention is always better than the cure, but now you get into an injury or something, we're doing anything we can to get them where they want to go. And of course, to get them back on the job, if somebody came in and said, hey, would you sell that dog? These dogs are invaluable. We put so much time and so much energy. And then you talk about the handler, somebody like myself, my heart's in that guy. When you talk about a guy that will save your life without even thinking about it. You know, people would ask, what's the best thing about canine, being a canine officer? Well, you know, that dog, if you hit me, he bites you. If I hit you, he bites you. I'm always right. I'm always right with the dog. People won't back you like that. People will not bag it. The dog doesn't care. So there's an honor that goes with it. But he's my responsibility. He's in my care and custody. And I want to give him the best quality of life. And now we've got a situation that, you know, my wife bought me a dog, an import, and he's nine years old. And I'm getting nervous, you know, because of what happened. So I'm very, very careful with him. But, you know, when you get into where I'm at, and I'm a little different than everybody else. I mean, my dog just doesn't stay home. He's with me all the time. Now I'm kind of handicapped, too. I call them my service dogs. You know, I'm not very stable from all those years working police. So now I have a dog or two, and I want to keep them going as long as I can. But, you know, you get to the tail end of their journey. Their quality of life is your responsibility. But you guys are stepping up with these supplements, and I'm always interested in a new supplement. Always interested. Because, you know, people think, you know, do they ever get bored of eating the same food? No. No. They're survivors, you know? Especially if they're working hard, right? You bet. You bet. And when they're working... As you'll see, you get in the field. You get in the field with Slade or some of these other people, and you see what these dogs do. We're asking a lot of these dogs. But you know what? The dog wants to work. That's his job in life. They enjoy it. Whether he's guiding for the blind, finding bombs, dope, chasing bad guys, herding animals, sheep, cattle. I mean, that's what they're bred to do. That's their mission in life. They need a mission.

Chris NobleYou know, most people think police dogs or drug dogs, you know, at the airport sniffing bags or, you know, searching a building for something. But stuff like Popeye having to jump up into those semis and search those semis in the middle of the night and crawl along the top of those, crouch down. It's not just sniffing bags.

Keith GordonCopy. Did you see that? Copy. No, I get it. I get it. So on the flip side, you know, when you work in a dog for dope, for example, and we're in Las Vegas, and this is like the FedEx for narcotics. They have drugs here? It's like the I-15 is like a thoroughfare. So the dope's going north and the money's coming south. So we're out there. and a task force of 10 of us. So we'll pull over an 18-wheeler. So we're talking big trucks, big dope. We find it, it's in there, but it's a load. So what we'll do is we'll go up and crawl that load, the entire length of that trailer, but we bring the dog with us. So as we're looking with a flashlight, that dog's doing a low crawl and looking for that dope too. Those dogs climb those loads. They're working their nose. Remember I mentioned the most exhausting thing they have to do is work their nose. The odor work is tough, but they're also working their bodies. And the dogs will fall. They'll trip. They don't care. They'll climb over a wall. They'll do whatever needs to be done to get the job done. You know, we have a saying in police and in military and in canine, train hard, fight easy. So the training's always on. The training's real strong, and we're always training. I say we're always training. I'm out. I'm retired. I still miss it like it was yesterday. I still miss it. I mean, these dogs are pretty well trained. You've got here.

Cameron MainYou still clearly put a lot of time in there.

Keith GordonIt'd be embarrassing for me to have a dog that wasn't trained. The only dogs that really aren't trained in my house are my wife's dogs.

Cameron MainHow long does it take for you to train like a puppy into an operational police dog?

Keith GordonIt's a good question. We don't start with puppies. Oh, you don't? No. We go out and we find young adults and we test them for the job. For example, narcotics work or odor work, bomb, whatever. We're looking for a dog that's just, we're looking for the hunting drive in the dog. What goes back to his DNA as a wolf to hunt and not give up on the hunt. And that hunt is, for example, if I throw two balls in the lake and the dog would rather drown than not bring both dogs back, that's a dog I'm interested in on the street. We'll put a ball or some toy in a tree. This is testing for these dogs. And if that dog doesn't want to leave that tree until he gets that ball out of there, that dog's up for grabs. for what we're doing. So now your next question is, how long does it take for training? These dogs are what we call maybe rough train. Maybe they come from a sport situation with the Schutzen or whatever they're doing or the ring sport in the Malinois. And what we'll do is we'll get the dog, we start an academy, we'll place a handler with the dog, and we'll do a six-week academy. Now you asked me how long do you train? You always train. You're training for the dog's life. Always train, train, train. And the dog likes that. The dog needs that. But here's a great, on my first dog, I threw the ball a lot for the dog. Well, the dog, as he's running, he can turn in different directions. The ball makes a turn. He makes a turn. They slip a disc. They ding an elbow. They rough up a hip. We stopped throwing the ball for the dogs. We swam the dogs. Where I worked, we had private lakes. The golf course people would let us use their golf courses just to swim the dogs. Other than cycling, bicycles, it's the best, you know, it's the best for, you can't get a dog to ride a bicycle, by the way, but it's the best for the dog. I was going to ask. No, no, you don't have to. I already caught you.

Chris NobleWhat are all the jobs that dogs do in the police department?

Keith GordonWell, it's explosives, narcotics, of course, what we call patrol, which is hunting a man or stopping a man. They're great for crowd controls, cadavers, finding dead bodies. The fire department will use them for arson, for sniffing for accelerants. So, you know, we used to believe that the last frontier for police and military, of course, technology is always evolving, but the real true last frontier is the canine. When I retired, there was over 60,000 canines, working canines in this country. Wow. Yeah. So we honor them. We honor them. They honor us. They ask nothing in return. They ask nothing in return. They just want to go to work.

Chris NobleI'd love to hear more about your partners that you had or your canines.

Keith GordonYeah, my first dog was Benny. He was a 115-pound shepherd. He was a big guy. We started a program with him at the tail end of his career. We were working him for institutional disturbances in jails and prisons. So all the dogs were trained in the prison. We put them in muzzles. If you went into the jail, the dog was in a muzzle. We call it a cell extraction. Some people just maybe don't want to come out of their cell. They'll strip down to their birthday suit or their skivvies, lather up with baby oil, and then dare us to come in and get them. And what we would do is we'd issue a couple of warnings, warning we have a trained police dog come out or you may get hurt. And once they hear that dog barking, usually they gave up, but if they didn't want to and they fight the dog in a muzzle, we teach the dog how to, that's how you teach a dog how to engage a man, how to actually fight a man. You teach him in a muzzle so he's not always biting, so he learns how to punch him with the muzzle. Rake him with his dew claws. This is him here, is it? Yeah, that was Benny. 115 pounds. This dog I've got here, dude, is 90. So he was a big shepherd. This dog was from Germany. He was a Schutzen III. Beautiful dog.

Cameron MainYou want to show the camera? just just say like oh this is benny or something this is benny yeah and so you must have seen some pretty crazy situations maybe it was with your dogs or with other people in the force what is the do you have one or two maybe outstanding stories that were just unbelievable that you saw dogs involved in something that maybe people wouldn't believe they were hearing

Keith GordonYeah, I just had a lot of fun with them. This dog in particular was big, and his body wore out. So at the tail end of his career, he was the very first canine for the department I worked for. It was the city of Las Vegas at the time. And they decided to attach a canine to our tactical team for the street and what I described as institutional disturbances. So at about seven, eight years old, we had a child abduction. So a guy ran off with a kid, and he was in an area, and we pulled the perimeter. And as I realized where he was at in this neighborhood, the neighbors were pointing, he was in the backyard. He had already... dropped the kid and took off in this neighborhood. So as I went to the first wall, there was two walls I had to go over, and they were six-foot block walls. As I went to the first wall, I thought, I hope he can make it. And before I realized it, Benny was already, went by me. And then made the second wall. And this particular guy was in the front of the house, and he was looking for us. He didn't realize I was in back of him. And he realized the dog was there. And he went to give up, screaming, please don't let the dog bite me. And I sent the dog. But the dog, there was what they call a hog wire, a two-by-four wire. And Benny bounced off that wire. That's a lot of times where I describe where a dog can get hurt, and he doesn't even know. We're in drive, what we call drive. We're hunting. We're going to get the deer. And I climbed the fence, and as I was climbing over the fence, Benny realized he was trying to get to me. He actually, with his teeth, ripped this chain link, ripped this wire. and then made it through the wire. And after that all happened, I was checking his teeth. Dogs break teeth. My second dog bit so hard, the veterinarian, the specialist said he bit beyond the integrity of his teeth. My second dog, Sharky, had four stainless steel teeth from that. My department was gracious enough to buy a grill. A grill? A grill. So he looked like a rapper. Dental work. Yeah, he was the dog that was referred to as the dog with the grill. Could you see it, like the front teeth? No, they were capped. They were stainless steel. Two of them were posts and two were capped. Yeah. Yeah, and then my third dog was Popeye, and that was strictly a narcotics dog. But Popeye was dangerous too. He was a black shepherd with yellow eyes. And all the dogs were imports from Europe. Why Europe? Or you mentioned Germany earlier. They breed more for temperament. The Europeans are looking for, you know, beauty is as beauty does, as the saying goes. So it could be a magnificent-looking dog like that Benny or any of these other dogs, but if they don't do the work and they don't have the drive or the temperament or clear in the head to do the work, too bad for the Americans. We breed for look. For ears, eyes, size, whatever. But the heart is everything. You can't put a heart in a man or a dog. He has to come that way. So they're bred for that.

Chris NobleWho's more driven? Is it the guy or the dog?

Keith GordonThey're about equal. They'll climb over each other to get in a fight. They honor each other. When you're working a dog in the field, you know he'll lay down for you and you'll do the same for him.

Chris NobleDo you think that as, so you, Benny was what, 30 years ago? Yeah, so do you think that the way that you care for dogs now, based on what you put into them and how you exercise them is different than how you took care of Benny?

Keith GordonWell, I don't let a dog jump. Back in the day, we had trucks, big trucks. I buy strictly vans, minivans. I call it the civilian canine unit. So as they get older, they can step in and out of it. Jumping in and out of a vehicle really wears a dog out. And you do that 30 times in a shift. It's hard on a dog. It's hard on his shoulders, his pasterns, his hips, mostly the front end, the shoulders. So, yeah. Again, I don't throw the ball for the dogs. I won't let anybody else throw the ball for the dogs. I like that one.

Chris NobleWhat's the difference between a working dog and, I guess, a regular pet dog in terms of the way you need to look after them?

Keith GordonWell, you got to remember a lot of people, you know, there's a lot of movies out there with these German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois, and then everybody wants to go buy one. And they just bought a handful. That dog needs to be trained. That dog needs to be worked. And then the sad thing about it, especially in this country, they buy these dogs and they think they want what they see on a movie or a TV, and then that dog winds up in the shelter. And it's a sad case. So there's really no difference, whether it's your pet. I don't like to call them my pet. They're my partners. They're my friends. But when people buy one of these dogs for a pet or just have a couch potato, they're not couch potatoes. You need to get up. and go work with your dog. And it's not work if you're into it. It's a relationship. If you look at nature by itself and the dog, the dog lives in the moment. He's not living in yesterday or tomorrow. He's right now, what are we doing? And if you embrace that, life is all about living in the moment. So you live in the moment with these guys. So when you're with them, that's the moment.

Cameron MainYou've always tried to supplement your dog's diets, I guess, to keep them in top physical shape. Of course. What was it to you when you finally discovered VidaDog? Why was that such an important moment to you?

Keith GordonI think where you guys are going and the ingredients and what we're thinking now, what we've learned... and you guys are on top of that for what we need, that always intrigues me. Because, you know, again, I talked to you about the canine's the last frontier. Nutrition seems to be the last frontier. So when you guys really are thinking outside the box of what these guys need, what their bodies need, what their hearts need, their bones, and you're putting it into one product, that's important. That's important.

Cameron MainThat for us was the entire brief. We took research papers when we went to our nutritionist and we said, we got to hit every single criteria. And on the back of literally every single bag, it says dog health made easy because people don't know, people don't have the information that maybe you do. So we've got to try and make it as accessible for dogs everywhere, I suppose.

Keith GordonI like what you're doing with the product. I like you guys' energy. I'm not going to back something I don't believe in. So I'm more than willing to, you know, I know you're kind of new to the game, but I like that part too because that puts you on the edge. We're not talking about a product that's 30 years old. This is the way we've always done it. You know, it's important that we're always on top of stuff and we're in front of it. This is the way we treat our own health. That's what we try to bring to the dogs. That's right. I believe that too.

Chris NobleThank you for that, by the way.

Chris NobleI'm sure you've got tons.

Keith GordonNo, that's no good. So we get the dogs, and we do every testing we could possibly do for these dogs. And to see what we're really looking for is a dog to jump through an eye of a needle for what we need. So there's some great dogs out there, but if they got a quirk, all dogs have quirks, so do people, then we got to watch that because we'll spend all this money on the dog. You know, I'm buying dogs 20 years ago, 15 years ago. We're paying $10,000 for a dog. Remember? So now you put the training into the dog. Now you put the dog in the field and the money just keeps getting crazy for what's invested in the dog. So we had a female at one point. I was with the city. I spent a number of years with the city of Las Vegas, and then I jumped over the state of Nevada, and that's when I was with HIDA, DEA. I was a trooper. So we had a female dog at the city. It just came on. We were a little iffy with her. She had a thing about chasing... We had tactical lights on our guns. So when we do our searching, instead of transferring from weapon to flashlight, we kept everything in one component. So the dog was a little goofy chasing the light, which is cute for a pet trick for a cat or a dog at home, but it's not good for police. So we're working through that. There's a... There's a property that the city owns. It's the museum. It's on Las Vegas Boulevard. And in the museum, you go downstairs and it's the Neanderthal period. It's the dinosaur period. So as we train in this building, so as you go down the stairs, now you got to remember all the lights are off and everything else. We're simulating a building search. And there's two Cro-Magnums in the hallway. like right there, you know, big hairy humans. There's something down there I've never seen before. And we had to send it back. Run for your lives. I would, you know, a story, one of my favorites is working in the jails. Because you'd have what we call an institutional disturbance, otherwise known as a riot. And the guys don't want to lock down. And there's some properties, Stuart Mojave. There's a couple hundred inmates. There are two stories. And you could actually go in there with a dog instead of bringing in 25, 30 guys in all tactical gear. And somebody's going to get hurt for sure. and the garbage cans are on fire and they're throwing stuff at you from the top tiers and you could go in there with a dog and you know nobody seems to want to get bit so we had a few of those so i always got a kick out of those i have one question for you which is if you could leave if you could leave dog owners with one piece of advice after all the experience you have what would it be watch your dog's weight the big one is the weight we would have guys, you know, we, we, there was a six to nine of us. So we wouldn't see each other. We're all working different shifts. So what would happen is we would have training night and that's when everybody shows up. So now we have a senior dog for maybe a week, maybe two. And then you get out of the car with your dog, one dog at a time. We'd run through a training scenario. And if your dog was a little overweight, all your other handler buddies would start making pig noises. And it would really piss the other guy off. And he says, I swear I'm feeding him by the description that's on the back. And it's just like us. What you eat for calories in a day might be different than what I eat. So it's not what's on the back. It's not what's on the bag. It's how the dog looks. So the number one thing is people, you know, as these dogs get older, especially as they get older, if they've got too much weight on, what does it do to us? The heart, the bones, the joints, it wears them out. It wears them out. Weight is critical.

Chris NobleYeah, they never forget.

Keith GordonThey never forget. We have memory loss. We forget how something works. Their job is to do that. So my wife's referring to a dog that was retired for two years. And we took her out for some training, for some work, for find some dope. And she, like she did it yesterday. Was that a mosquito?

Cameron MainThank you. Thank you. I can actually watch that.

Chris NobleLet's go. I have a question for you. I'm really curious because, I mean, you spend so much time with these dogs and you've said how close you are. These are your partners.

Keith GordonWhat did they teach you in life? Living in the moment for me is everything. You know, the true value of life. I mean, the Buddhists chase it forever. You know, it's in the moment. You know, for example, you know, it's... In the rain. In the rain. It's all right, but here's the point. We're in the moment. I'm not thinking about anything else. Why wouldn't we have a good time? At this time, this date, this will never happen again. Why wouldn't we enjoy it? No, you're not doing it with me. Yeah, I lost my dog as a kid. Oh, excuse me. My dog as a kid was, I used to get put on two weeks restriction for saying get him. You know, I learned how to, I've been doing this for a long time, maybe 60 years. So the dog got cancer and lost his front leg at eight years old. And I went to pick him up that night. And it wasn't like, oh, my God, I lost my leg. What are the other dogs going to think of me? Just go on. I saw that immediately. Just go on. These guys don't live like that. I've watched these dogs die. They've died in my arms and my lap. It's not like they're whining about anything. You know, we had a cute little dog here a year or two ago, and, you know, he had cancer. He had six weeks to live. My wife, he went 18 months, 18 months, you know, 18 months, $10,000. Ha, ha, ha. But you know what? That dog never said to me during the day, oh, my God, I'm going to die. He just lived every day. They teach us so much. If I could tell anybody that, people that call me, I get a lot of calls. I grew up in this town. I get a lot of calls with people with their dogs past. And here's the deal. They honor us. So why not honor them? And quality of life is everything for the dog. Your products, the way we feed them, even at the tail end of their journey, it's our responsibility to make sure they have a quality life. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Cameron MainYeah, we're doing all right.

Chris Nobleno no no everything is going to be said to you guys first but that's going to be one of those should we keep thank you so much i'm just going to ask you one more question because it sounds like your childhood dog had such an impact on the way you looked at the world why did you get into law enforcement and then specifically the canine unit

Keith GordonThat was a dream of mine as a kid, to be a canine cop. And I just never thought I'd get there. And I got on the police department, and it was the early 90s, and they just started bike patrol. I was an avid cyclist. I rode bikes for five years. I adored that job. That job wasn't even like... I never felt like I was going to work, you know, to working with the dogs. I love working with the public. I love talking to people. I mean, I just adored it, the whole thing, the whole thing. They sent me to schools and training, and I did a lot of communication in classes. There was something about it. The world's changed. It's hard to watch. It's hard to watch. Try to do this life wherever you're at in whatever part of the world without cops. Try that. See what that looks like. No, thank you. He's back. So it looks like we have got a little thank you for you. You know what, babe? Give me a light. I'm going to light this right now. I just tried to piss her off.

Cameron MainKeith. Just want to say thank you so much for coming on today. It's my pleasure. It's been amazing.

Keith GordonKeep it up. Save our dogs. Keep them living. We'll try our best. Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. I think we admire you a hell of a lot more. I'm old. I'm on the tail end of the journey. I'm watching you guys now. Epic.

Cameron MainThank you so much.

Transcript edited lightly for readability. Timestamps and captions will follow with the video release.