03/22/2026
A new excerpt from my upcoming novel, A Company of Paws!
Canine Cops
Ken Eavenson was a sheriff’s deputy, one of Franklin County’s finest, and a frequent client at the clinic. Today, rather than a personal pet, he’d brought us his patrol dog, Armin, to be examined. Armin was a noble but rather ferocious-looking Belgian Malinois. A tall, lean, and muscular dog, he’d been purchased as a young adult from a breeder in Germany who specialized in training police dogs. Armin was initially trained for bite work and tracking, but once the sheriff’s department acquired him, he was also trained as a drug dog, and he was an important asset to the county. In addition to sniffing out drugs, he’d occasionally apprehended fleeing suspects, and as I stared at the dog across the room, I pitied anyone who found themselves in this animal’s crosshairs.
Standing stiffly by Ken’s side, his face masked by a heavy metal basket muzzle, he was a force to be reckoned with. Stare at him too long, and he’d quickly take a half-step in your direction with a low, menacing growl. Ken kept him on a short leash. As he had explained before, Armin was a one-person dog. When the department first obtained him, Ken had gone through intensive training so that the two could become acclimated and hopefully bond together as a close working pair. Ken also had to learn how Armin was trained, what he could accomplish and, very importantly, his specific command vocabulary. Armin did not “speak” English, and he only responded to commands spoken in German. But the dog was fluent in the most basic of natural languages, and his eyes and body language spoke volumes that I suspect no criminal had any trouble interpreting.
As I admired the powerful lean dog, I couldn’t help but contrast him with an earlier drug dog Franklin County had owned, back when I was in high school. Sniffer was a yellow Labrador Retriever who not only had a remarkable nose for detecting narcotics but also possessed the most gregarious personality, which befitted his breed. He was one of the first drug dogs owned by the county, and he did his job well; Franklin County benefited financially from his work assisting with drug seizures, particularly along the interstate corridor. When I was in high school, I spent many afternoons bathing Sniffer at the clinic and was on friendly terms with the dog. His handler, Jimmy LeCroy, another well-liked deputy in the Sheriff’s department, would drop Sniffer off at the clinic for minor grooming, and I was usually the one who gave him his bath.
Sniffer was an occasional visitor to the high school, too, when the deputies would conduct unannounced drug searches. I often saw Sniffer from a distance as he was led down the halls, sniffing at lockers, searching for contraband. The sheriff’s department used Sniffer as part of a well-publicized PR campaign, and all the students were familiar with Sniffer and knew exactly why he was there at the school. But I don’t think too many of my peers knew him as well as I did. I often worried that he might pass too closely and alert on me, not because I was carrying drugs, but because he recognized me from the clinic. I hoped his reputation for a superb sense of smell meant that when he was working, he knew to ignore familiar scents. As a rather shy, introverted student, I was a little paranoid and shuddered to think that he might pause by my locker, simply because he recognized a familiar human, causing the officers to mistake his congeniality for something else. But it never happened, and I now know these dogs are highly trained animals that search for very specific substances and ignore everything else when working.
I’ll never forget one memorable afternoon when I was leaving the high school, and I drove out the back entrance to take Stone Bridge Road home. This road was a country lane that led the back way into Lavonia several miles to the north, and I usually traveled this way to and from school once I was licensed to drive and had a vehicle of my own.
I was driving my very first truck, a used Ford Ranger pickup. It had rained earlier that afternoon, and the asphalt roads were still wet. The small truck was a dark greenish-black color and only had a four-cylinder engine. Just down below the school, past the Franklin County Livestock Sale Barn, there was a tall hill. My weak little engine just could not get up speed quickly, and as I shifted gears, pressing down on the accelerator to coax the truck along, my speed picked up more quickly than I realized. As I rounded the curve before the ascent up the hill, I urged the little truck faster and faster, trying to take advantage of the acceleration in the curve. By the time I crested the hilltop, I was going over seventy miles an hour. And there, down at the bottom of the hill by the bridge over Turkey Creek, sat a deputy’s patrol car. I immediately hit the brakes, but he’d apparently seen me and clocked my speed, because he flipped on his blue lights immediately. I glanced in my rearview mirror, but there was no one else on the road at that moment, either behind or in front of me.
My stomach lurched with dread as I simultaneously registered the police car and pushed the brake pedal. Resigned to my fate, I groaned as I slowed down descending the hill. I passed the deputy parked on the shoulder just before the bridge and pulled over several yards in front of him.
I recognized Officer Jimmy LeCroy immediately as he stepped out of his vehicle, adjusted the hat on his head, and slowly walked up to the driver’s side door. I really hoped he recognized me from all the times I’d seen him at the animal hospital.
No such luck, though. I already had the window down when he approached, and he didn’t acknowledge me or show any sign that he knew me.
“License and registration, please,” he said, a little too gruffly for my taste. I had the distinct feeling that I was about to be in a lot of trouble. I’d never been stopped before.
I already had my license and insurance card out, and I passed the two documents to him through the window. He studied them for a long moment, quietly, and the silence was more than a little unnerving.
Then he looked up at the overcast sky. Drops of rain were beginning to fall again, sprinkling my windshield and splattering of the brim of his hat.
“I tell you what, son, why don’t we go sit in my car for a few minutes.”
I gulped. Sit in his car? Why? This was just a routine traffic stop, wasn’t it?
But it had been a command and not a request, and I slowly got out of the truck and meekly followed him back to his vehicle. Meanwhile, cars passed by, a little slower than was necessary. More students, some of whom I knew, had taken the same route home as I had, and they were rubbernecking as they passed us. I’d be hearing about this from more than one person tomorrow. This was assuming I wasn’t about to be carted off to jail! Had I done something else wrong, worse than speeding?
We got into the cruiser and I settled uncomfortably in the passenger’s seat. The whole dashboard was stuffed with various communications equipment, some with flashing LED lights, and I felt like I’d stepped onto the compact battle bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. I recognized what I thought was a radar gun mounted near the rearview window. Other than an occasional squawk from his radio, we sat in quiet for a few minutes.
Jimmy finally broke the silence. “Son, do you know why I stopped you?”
“Yes, sir. I was speeding.”
“You sure were. I clocked you going over the hill at seventy-six miles an hour.”
I was never going to forget that number. But I kept silent. It was no good trying to make an excuse, no good trying to explain how I came to be going so fast.
“You understand how dangerous that is, and on these wet roads at that?”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, my voice timid and low.
Eyes narrowed, he studied me for a long moment, as if I somehow looked familiar. I silently hoped and prayed that maybe he did recognize me after all.
“Haven’t I stopped you before for speeding?” Nope, he definitely wasn’t remembering me.
“No sir, I’ve never been pulled over,” I answered hurriedly, shaking my head rapidly back and forth. “Ever.”
He continued to stare as if he didn’t believe me, a scowl on his face. How was I going to explain this to my parents? If I got a ticket, my dad was going to let me have it.
Jimmy then began to tell me about a previous wreck involving a car filled with four teenaged students. They’d apparently come speeding down the road, just like me. The driver lost control when he hit the bridge and flipped the vehicle over the railing. The car rested upside down near the creek bank, and several boys had died.
“Them boys were going so fast, they were thrown from the car. That wreck ripped some of the clothes off their bodies when they were ejected, and we found several shirts hanging from the tree limbs overhead.”
I gulped again, imagining what the scene might have looked like. Jimmy seemed to think this was a well-known incident that I would already be intimately familiar with, but I had honestly never heard of it before.
“You know I could write you a ticket for eighty dollars? Is that what you want me to do?”
Startled, my eyes grew wide. It was 1990, and eighty dollars was a lot of money. My insurance on my truck cost me that much every month. Although by now I was resigned to my fate, still, I never imagined he’d ask my advice, and I don’t know what came over me next.
I blurted out, maybe a little more flippantly than I had intended to sound: “You do what you have to do!” What was I thinking? Who says that to a police officer?
“Boy, don’t you get smart with me!” Jimmy replied angrily, his tone more than a little threatening.
I swallowed hard and stared forlornly at my little truck sitting lonely just a few yards ahead. But it might as well have been halfway across the universe, and I wondered briefly if I’d ever see it again. I was sure now that I was about to get a ticket for far more than eighty dollars. The way things were going, I was probably going to have my license revoked and be hauled off to jail. I glanced nervously at Jimmy out of the corner of my eye. How could he not remember me, and all the times I took care of Sniffer? But I was not about to remind him, that was for sure! Sufficiently cowed, I intended to say as little as possible from this point on.
After another brief pause, Jimmy continued. “Tell you what, son, I’m going to let you off with a warning this time.” Then he leaned over me, his bulk towering over my head in the tiny, cramped space. “But if I ever catch you speeding again, I’m gonna let you have it.”
“Yes sir,” I replied, more than a little shocked. I couldn’t believe he was letting me off the hook.
That story is extremely humorous today, nearly forty years later, but that afternoon, certain parts of my anatomy were puckered tighter than a purse-string suture on the pr*****ed re**um of a steer! I got out of my seat and hurried back to my truck, but I made sure I crawled back to town. Jimmy followed me all the way to Lavonia, too, increasing my nervousness so that at times I could barely maintain my lane. That afternoon aside, I am naturally a rule-follower. And from that day until now, I have never been pulled over for speeding!
Today, I grinned at the memory as I stared at Armin. But apparently, I had maintained eye contact with the dog for too long, because while Dr. Hitchcock and Ken were talking, the big dog suddenly moved in my direction.
“Bleib!” Ken said in a harsh guttural voice, pulling smartly on the dog’s leash. Armin immediately obeyed and moved to stand back at his partner’s side. But he continued to eye me threateningly, too intensely for my liking, and I carefully stepped toward the door to the pharmacy, behind Dr. Hitchcock and out of the dog’s immediate line of sight.
Armin was the perfect police dog, built and trained to carry out his precise mission, but lately he’d had several episodes of vomiting, and Ken was worried something more serious might be wrong. When he led Armin onto the scale out in the hall, his weight was a little off. Even though he was still eating and had a good appetite, he had lost several pounds. Ken brought him back into the exam room and hoisted him onto the table for Dr. Hitchcock to examine.
Vomiting is a common complaint with dogs, and there are many causes for it. Thankfully, it is often benign. A frequent culprit is what we refer to as dietary indiscretion. The dog eats something that disagrees with it, causing digestive upset, including a mixture of vomiting and diarrhea. There are more serious diseases that can produce vomiting, ranging from foreign body ingestion to infection, pancreatitis or other metabolic diseases, but often if the dog is otherwise stable, we treat symptomatically with medications to help reduce vomiting and diarrhea, combined with a bland diet. Since intestinal parasites are also common, we often give a dewormer prophylactically, and the majority of cases will resolve within a few days with this treatment. Dogs that are lethargic and febrile, have bloody stools, or won’t eat require more aggressive diagnostics, like bloodwork and radiographs, but on this first visit with Armin, Dr. Hitchcock prescribed a bland diet for a few days, and he gave Ken some kaolin and medication to control the vomiting. Other than his primary complaint, Armin still looked well. He felt fine, and Ken hadn’t noticed a decline in his energy level. He felt like the dog was still working at his normal intensity.
It wasn’t until about a week later that Ken brought Armin back in for a recheck. He’d improved for a few days, but then his clinical signs returned and now he was vomiting even more frequently than before. When we rechecked his weight, Armin had lost yet another few pounds. Clearly, something more serious was going on. He was still eating, and he still seemed to feel okay, but his re**al temperature was slightly elevated on this second visit. When Dr. Hitchcock tented the skin along his back, it stood briefly in a ridge before slowly settling back down, indicating dehydration. Armin was a big dog, but he was also lean, and when Dr. Hitchcock palpated his belly, it was mostly empty. But the dog tensed slightly with the least bit of pressure.
Worried, Dr. Hitchcock decided to radiograph Armin. With Ken’s help, we carried the dog back to the treatment area and laid him on his side while we x-rayed both his chest and abdomen. About twenty minutes later, we stood over by the light box, poring over the dripping film. But the radiographs were unremarkable. The heart was of normal size, and the lungs were clear and free of fluid or other abnormalities. The abdomen was also normal, with no indication of a foreign body or other unexplained mass.
Since Armin’s clinical presentation was worse compared to his first visit, the next step was to try to rule out infection or any metabolic causes for the vomiting and weight loss. Ken led the dog outside to collect a urine sample, an analysis of which showed very dilute urine. Normally when dogs are dehydrated, the urine should be very concentrated, and this result suggested a kidney issue. Dr. Hitchcock asked Ken to return the next morning for bloodwork. In those days, we didn’t have equipment in-house to perform blood testing, so we used the hospital lab over in Anderson, South Carolina. The lab would send couriers by each morning if called, and we usually received the results by fax early the next day.
Ken brought Armin back in and helped restrain him on the exam table the next morning. While I rolled off the cephalic vein in his long, slender front leg, Dr. Hitchcock drew a sample of several milliliters of blood. Later, after Ken left, we spun the blood in a centrifuge to separate the serum from the clotted cells and then submitted the sample to the lab. The courier, a familiar elderly gentleman we’d become well-acquainted with over the years, came by around ten o’clock that morning and picked up the sample. And then we waited. Today, with modern equipment available at our fingertips here in the office, usually capable of completing bloodwork in less than thirty minutes, we still find ourselves getting impatient while we await results. It’s all too easy to forget how long we were forced to wait back in those days, sometimes twenty-four hours or more.
When Dr. Hitchcock came in early the following morning, the report was already waiting for him on the fax…
Excerpt from A Company of Paws © 2026 Jason K. Macomson All Rights Reserved
A Company of Paws is expected to be released this summer. In the meantime, if you haven't read it yet, look for my first novel about veterinary medicine, Red Barn Tales, on Amazon and other online retailers. Red Barn Tales is also available to order at Walmart and Books-a-Million.
Pictured is former Franklin County Sheriff's Deputy Ken Eavenson with Armin. Photo courtesy of Probate Judge Ken Eavenson.
Pictured is Sniffer with Sheriff Foster and Officer Gary White. Photo courtesy of Martha Addison.
