POLICE DOG CASEY LOVES HIS JOB

SPARTANBURG -- Valedictorians may envy the study habits of a Spartanburg
graduate who recently moved to the head of his class. The top student never
took a note, cracked a book or sacrificed spare time to cram for tests. In
fact, 4-year-old Casey's handler, Spartanburg County Sheriff's Deputy Joel
Raines, said the German Shepherd sleeps in his off-time and, quite frankly,
is pretty laid back. But he's good.

Just weeks after Casey snagged the "Top Dog in the Class" trophy from his
14-week school in Charlotte, he showed off his keen sense of smell and
refreshed skills. He detected as little as an ounce of marijuana during a
car search, Raines said. Then Monday, Casey deciphered the scent of drugs
from hidden illegal substances packaged in pepper and aluminum foil to
disguise the odor. In that case, investigators discovered 142 pounds of
marijuana in fake box springs at an auto shop. But Casey hasn't complained
about the workload.

"Just sirens on the car get Casey excited. "He knows he's going to get to
play," Raines said.

Casey wasn't totally new to fighting crime, having had previous experience
with a different handler at the office. But every time a dog gets a new
handler, he goes back to school. Raines and Casey drove daily from the end
of September to Jan. 11 for the 14-week class with the
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Canine School. Casey's and Raines' training -
along with three other handlers and dogs from the Carolinas - began with
basic obedience to voice and hand commands. Sit. Stay. Casey then practiced
more difficult skills. Climbing. Jumping. Walking on slick floors. Crawling
through a pipe-like area. From there, the lessons moved on to marking a
spot where he gets a whiff of an illegal substance such as marijuana. When
he gets wind of something awry, he scratches and bites where the smell
comes from. Then Raines, without Casey seeing, rewards him with a toy.
Though Casey skipped the section on legal cases for dog searches, letting
Raines take care of that, he still won the top prize, judged on such skills
as obedience, agility, apprehension work, article searches and box
searches. Though Casey already has plans to go back to school in a few
months, Raines doesn't think it will take much to spark his hunger to
learn. "I don't have to do a lot of encouraging," Raines said.