Commander Laurence Francis McDonald

They volunteered their time and we went into training. In the training, Al Johnson and Bob Gates were 100% behind discipline because this dog that’s told to attack people has to be highly disciplined. So, we went through all of the discipline procedures, we had our dogs behaving like you wouldn’t believe. Then we started teaching the aggressive work and the building searches. It became wonderful training. At first, people didn’t believe us. We got people to donate their parking lots or their buildings to let us train in, because everybody’s afraid of these wild dogs that will bite everybody.

At that time we were having trouble with break-ins in schools, because at that time there were no alarms on schools. There was a superintendent of the school maintenance and he was located down on Sherman Street, right across from the old Saint Luke’s Hospital [3] was. I went down and saw him, his name was Mr. Breedahl, and I said “You’re having trouble with your schools, what do you think if you let us use the schools to train our dogs in for building searches?” and, he went like that for it. [snaps fingers] He said, “I’ll give you a grand master key.” And, he said “All you have to do is let me knew what school and what time you’re going to be in and I’ll tell the custodian to get out.” We started going to the different schools where we would run the dogs through the schools at night. And, let me tell you, the word spread that you never knew when a dog was going to be in the school, and that reduced our school burglaries.

I’ll give you a picture of our first photograph of the police officers with our dogs. You’ll notice, if you’ll look carefully, that we are not wearing out gun belts. We are just there with the dogs on the leash with our uniform, but no gun belts. The reason for that was that with the gun belts, the Chief thought we’d look too awesome, too threatening to the public. So you’ll notice that we don’t have our guns. The guns and a dog would be too much.

Chief Proetz at that time was, I think, pretty skillful in saying we got to educate the public about these dogs, not to be fearful and if they get bitten, that the dogs are disciplined, and somebody got bit because they deserved it. So, what we started was a campaign of going to the schools. We went to, I believe, every school probably in Saint Paul, and started to indoctrinate the children as to how to react around this dog if they were in an area where we were searching for someone or in a building. We went to school after school after school.

My first experience I’ll tell you about. It was with Lieutenant Winterhalter [4], he was in charge of the school police. I went up to Linwood School the first day of this program. Lieutenant Winterhalter always trained the school police kids. Hank Winterhalter got up there and introduced himself and talked about safety and the signs that they held up and he said, “By the way, I brought Larry McDonald along with his dog Pal.” [5] He said, “He will give you an explanation of what the dog is about and what he’s about and what they’re doing.” Here I am in the back room, he never told me this, that he was going to put me on the stage. He said, “Larry, come up here.” I saw Lieutenant Winterhalter walk, I watched him for five minutes, in silence, walk off the stage and turn it over to me. It was unbelievable, I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do. That was the start of my public speaking career. [Chuckles]

After that we explained the age of the dog, the sex of the dog and how disciplined it was and we put on some tricks, you know, how the dog would respond and how if you became aggressive how it would bark. I went over like you wouldn’t believe. We started with that and then we went to the Kiwanis and Lion’s Clubs and PTA meetings. We laid a tremendous solid base for the acceptance of the police dogs. It was unbelievable.

The dogs did bite some people, afterwards. One morning I came to work and they sent me up to what was then the Saint Joe’s Academy off of Western and Marshall. There was an escapee girl from Shakopee [women’s prison], she was nineteen, twenty years old, and she had a short skirt on and she had escaped the police or outran them several times during the night. I came up there in the morning and they flushed her out for me and she come heading down Aurora Street at top speed and I yelled for her to stop and she didn’t. I unsnapped the dog and boy he put her down in nothing flat. You can’t outrun the dog, he bit her in the butt, knocking her down. I got a call a few hours later, I had to quarantine the dog. Take the dog home immediately, the dogs were kept at home, and quarantine. Because they found out when they checked her for the dog bite that she had syphilis. So the dog was quarantined.

I was told to keep my wife and my kids away from the dog in case we were bitten, that dog didn’t bite anybody else or lick anybody else that day, that morning. The dog was quarantined and it wasn’t until they went to the University of Minnesota Veterinarian Clinic out there, the top people, that found out a day or two later that the dog bite can’t retransfer the syphilis virus or germ to another person being bitten. So the dog and I got back in service.

Then, of course, the big proof-of-the-putting of the dogs was we had a burglar, a master burglar, by the name of Stanley McFarland. He had broken into the Albrecht Fur Company down off of Saint Peter Street. The building had been searched two or three times by regular officers. They knew he was in there because of the electronic alarm, there had been movement in there. Finally, in desperation they sent Swiger and they said, “Run your dog through there, he won’t find anything either.” Well, we did, Champ [6] was the dog’s name, found Stanley McFarland and gave him a good bite. At that time there was a program on television called Lassie. Lassie, of course, was a Collie dog, but they used to award an award every year for outstanding work for a dog and so Swiger and his dog won the National Lassie Award. So, we won the National Lassie Award.

There were other small arrests that we made. I arrested a guy by the name of Harlo Ridder up at a supermarket up on Selby and Fairview. Went down very effectively, searched the upper part of the grocery store, went down into the basement where Harlo was. I knew Harlo was there because he was yelling. And, we’ve never heard of him since. He, I think, was so reformed by that I don’t think he ever committed another burglary.

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[3] Saint Luke’s Hospital was located at 333 North Smith Street. In 1972 Saint Luke’s, Miller and Children’s Hospitals merged to become United Hospital at the same location.

[4] Henry J. Winterhalter was appointed patrolman November 21, 1938; promoted to sergeant October 1, 1949; lieutenant April 1, 1955; and retired June 30, 1980.

[5] Pal came into service in 1959; Larry McDonald was his handler. Champ came into service in 1959; William Swiger was his handler.

[6] Champ came into service in 1959; William Swiger was his handler.

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