Dita – the Hair Missile

Justin Melnick, one of the actors from the TV series SEAL Team, hosted our recent fundraiser on Oct 3rd and brought his dog Dita, the “Hair Missile” along too. After all, CIK9 is all about the dogs and she was invited in addition to the other three dogs who attended.

Whether law enforcement officers or actors playing the role of a K9 handler, while they value the training they go through, the adrenaline pumps their heart rate, but the humans know that this is training and even if they fail, they will be fine in the end.

The thing about dogs is they don’t have the higher sense of reasoning as humans do.  With these high caliber working dogs, when we as trainers do our jobs correctly, to the dog a training scenario and a real-life deployment look the same. Dogs also don’t understand the concept of “pretend” or “make-believe”.  To a working dog like Dita, the “Hair Missile” every time she jumps out of a helicopter, or charges through a hail of gunfire [blanks], or is running down a fleeing terrorist [decoy] she is doing it for real and with a singular purpose in her mind; to complete each task as she was trained and to the best of her ability in hopes of getting that reward she so highly covets.

These dogs genuinely love to work and would do it all day sometimes if we would let them.  So even after multiple takes when filming a scene, for Dita each and every time, this is the real thing!

by Nate Hibschman