Police Dog Olympics: Games That 2 Can Play

Santa Ana Police Officer Anthony Bertagna and his partner, Frei, are usually busy sniffing out criminals, but Monday the team had a far different assignment.

Bertagna and Frei, a 6-year-old German Shepard, left for Munich, West Germany, to represent the United States in the 35th International Police Dog Olympics, to be held Oct. 9-11. The road to the canine Olympics covered nine months of intensive training, on and off duty.

“I spend more time with him than I do with anyone else in my family,” said Bertagna, 28. “He goes everywhere with me. When he sees me leaving, he jumps in the car. He gets upset when I do something without him and paces back and forth around the house.”

Frei and Bertagna are one of five teams that will make up the U.S. entry at the Munich competition. The others who lasted through the nine months’ training are from San Diego, Riverside, Anaheim, and Oregon. (Only West Coast teams have responded so far to invitations to train for the event.)

“It’s just like the Olympics . . . the best 100 dogs in the world competing for the championship,” Bertagna said. The event, which features competitions in obedience, jumping and tracking, has Olympics-style opening and closing ceremonies, with dogs and handlers parading with flags to the strains of their national anthems.

It’s the second trip for Bertagna and Frei, who came in 21st of 50 in 1986. “I hope to do better than I did last year,” he said. “If we made the top 15 or top 20, I would be elated because of the caliber of the teams. They (the Germans) can’t even try out for the (national) team until after five years working. Last year’s winner was a handler for 27 years.”

Bertagna and Frei, who has his own police badge and identity number, have been partners for two years. Bertagna said Frei has saved him from injury more than once in confrontations with street gangsters. “I feel very fortunate to have him,” he said.

“You have to keep it in perspective that he’s not a human being, he’s a dog, and that’s hard because you are so close to him. A lot of times you send him into dangerous situations because that’s his job, but you worry.”

Bertagna will be joined on the flight to Munich by Santa Ana Police Sgt. Raul Luna, 37, who will be a competition judge. Luna was one of the first trainers in the Santa Ana program, which has the largest canine unit of any police department in Orange County, with 50 specially trained dogs.

After the three days of competition, Bertagna and Luna will train with expert canine officers in the German state of Hessen, which took the Santa Ana department as a sister team in 1983.

“You can’t get this type of training anywhere because you’re meeting with the experts,” Luna said.

There’s an exchange of information, a brotherhood, he said: “It’s very educational and a plus for the individual trainers getting all this at no cost to them.”

Trip expenses for Luna, Bertagna and Frei will be paid from private donations and Orange County Canine Assn. funds.