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The prisoners asked Russ Kelley if Renegade would bite. Renegade, lying on the pavement, answered for herself. "Without growling," Kelley says, "that dog pulled back her lips to bare her teeth. They didn't ask any more questions."

That incident occurred some years back when 30 troublemakers were transferred from a riot-torn Rhode Island prison to the Maine Correctional Center in Windham. Kelley, a Corrections Officer Supervisor and the K-9 Commander at Windham recalls, "They brought them with their SWAT team from a prison with firearms and high security to a facility with no firearms, and locked them up until they could find out who instigated the rioting. These very prison-wise inmates from a very strict prison immediately recognized how relaxed it was at Maine Correctional Center.

"Our guards didn't have weapons on them, they didn't carry mace. When we took them out for recreation, seven or eight at a time, we did it with Renegade and another dog for officer protection."

One of the toughest transferees, a rugged 250 pound weightlifter threatened to stab an officer. Kelley says, "When he threatened a second time we decided to move him. We responded with the dogs. Renegade was the dog who went to the door. I told this individual to get down on his knees with hands behind his back. He resisted. Renegade jumped up and bit right into the steel door. Then the prisoner complied, but had he continued to resist, he probably could have taken care of us and the dog.

"Nobody got hurt. And that's the name of the game; in any prison you never want anybody hurt, inmates and staff alike. It wasn't long after they started giving us firearms training and certifying us for firearms.

"But," he adds, "there's an innate fear most humans have of being maimed by a dog's teeth that doesn't apply to an officer's gun. There's a visual deterrence of dogs in a situation like that."

Apparently he manages to search some vehicles: A 1995 "Letter of Appreciation" from prison officials expresses gratitude to Kelley for "...assisting in the interception and detection of contraband (Heroin) during a search of civilian vehicle with your K-9 (Jake)."

But drugs do get inside. "I do speed drills when I search the dorms," Kelley says. "Just yesterday I searched 2 dorms with 98 inmates in each one, four inmates to a cell. You get the inmates outside quickly on a nice day, then you run through with the dogs. I searched both those dorms in less than 25 minutes. I run in a room, the dog is moving fast, then into the next room. If the dog does a secondary (double take) I do another turn around the room. If the dog picks up a scent, I don't have time to search right then. I lock the cell and go back later. We've found drugs in places like inside radios. If I find something, they usually go for a urine test based on the dog's indication. You can't just test them, you need a reason."

Benefits from Windham Correctional Center's K-9 teams extend beyond prison walls. They are often called on by other agencies municipal police departments without K-9s, for example to track burglars, locate lost people, or search for drugs.

"They broke into the Busy Bee Laundromat in Windham a while back," Kelley relates, describing an incident illustrating how focused a K-9 can be. "Police at the scene had an idea who the perpetrator was but I told them not to tell me. I let Jake smell all the officers so he could disregard their odors. We started tracking from behind Busy Bee, across Shop 'n Save pavement to a dirt road that goes way out back. We passed a jogger, swung down through the woods, past Norway Savings Bank, down the sidewalk to Pratt Abbott where Jake went to the front door, stood up, sniffed the doorknob, came back to the sidewalk then down another dirt road. We got to a locked gate, squeezed through it, tracked around the back side of Tar Heel Pond, through some four-wheeler trails in the woods, came out on a dirt road by the Red Sands Restaurant where there are some apartment houses. Jake crossed to some stairs where a house-cat ran off. Jake went right to the door of the culprit, who was then apprehended. It was the person the Windham police suspected it would be."

That tracking covered about two miles and involved several potential deterrents, including different surfaces and terrain, animal scents in the woods, other human scents, vehicles passing, and the cat.

Kelley and his first K-9, Renegade, helped locate a child lost in Gorham woods. A newspaper reported at the time "...the fire department and rescue squad responded .. along with several school bus drivers and members of the Maine Warden Service. While the near 50 member search party .. could find no trace of the child, a call was made to bring in Fritz and Renegade .. (the child) .. was found 20 minutes later."

This past winter, a commendation by the Bridgton Police Department read, in part: "Ofc. Kelley and his K-9 'Jake' played a vital part in the biggest motor vehicle related drug arrest in the Bridgton Police Department's history Immediately Jake alerted Ofc. Kelley to the presence of narcotics in the trunk area of the vehicle Ofc. Kelley then assisted me in the arrest..." Contraband seized included over $3600 in cash and $20,000 worth of marijuana.

While K-9s are not successful in every case, and tragedies do occur K-9s are killed or seriously injured by gunshots, stabbings, plunging from buildings after hurdling rooftop obstacles, and vehicle accidents success stories are common. Experiences related here are mainly of Russ Kelley with K-9s Renegade or Jake, but two other Windham K-9 teams, Officers Tom Hanrahan with Boomer, and Steve LaCourse with Katie, could recount their own accomplishments; as could handlers throughout the state, the country, the world.

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