By Marie Hughes, director of the Chambers County Museum at Wallisville
“When I became sheriff, the canine program was just spinning up,” said Sheriff Brian Hawthorne of Chambers County. “Joe LaRive had started the program and Carlton Carrington was chosen as the first canine handler. When I became sheriff, I left Carlton in that position.”
Hawthorne soon recognized the value of the program, along with some of its limitations.
“I started seeing the usefulness of the canines in the law enforcement function, whether it be drug detection or searching buildings where possible burglary suspects were. The problem that we immediately recognized was that Deputy Carrington had the right to have days off just like everybody else. When you only have one canine and the canine is truly attached to the handler, somebody else couldn’t go get the dog if its handler was on vacation or had already worked all day long.”
That realization prompted Hawthorne to begin expanding the program.
“So, I suddenly realized we needed to add additional canines. That’s what I have tried to do over the years, slowly but surely add canines to the program. It’s been effective. We’re going to continue to add canines. In fact, I plan to add another one this year.”
The Price of a Partner
“In this day and time, just the purchase of the trained animal runs about fifteen thousand dollars. The program itself is where the real expense is. It’s like having the baby is expensive, but raising the baby is what is really expensive,” Hawthorne added with a laugh.
Beyond the initial purchase, maintaining a canine program requires a considerable investment in training and certification.
“The canine program, if you’re running it properly and you’re running it professionally, your dogs have to stay certified, and your handler has to stay certified. When you do the training hours, and there’s a lot of training hours, then they get tested to keep their certification on whatever they do, whatever the dog is trained to do, whether it’s a patrol dog, a drug detection dog, or a multi-purpose dog. I like multi-purpose dogs,” he added emphatically.
Training is only part of the expense. The department must also make arrangements for the dogs when their handlers are away.
“So, there’s a lot of hours of training, and then the upkeep of the dog is kind of expensive, only because, one, we’re really careful when the canine handler is going to go on vacation. We prefer the dog be housed at the veterinarian clinic. So, it’s not that easy to be the person that goes to feed the dog while his handler’s away. Those expenses tend to run up because, obviously, we don’t expect the veterinarian clinic to do it for free.”
Those costs, along with the dogs’ daily care, must be included in the department’s budget.
“All those things need to be calculated into our budget on how we manage the canine program, from the food, the training, the upkeep of the dog, the boarding of the dog in times of absence of the handler. We also provide very nice professional kennel operations and everything for the handler at his home to manage and take care of the asset.”
Although the dogs often win people over with their personalities, Hawthorne emphasized that they serve an important law enforcement function.
“Everyone sees them as a very loveable, lickable, kind dog,” he said with a smile, “but from a sheriff’s perspective, and the chiefs, we see them as an asset. They are a working dog, not much different than a car or a gun. They’re an asset that the sheriff’s office owns as a tool. Now, do we treat them like pets and some people just like humans? Yes, but from a management perspective, we see them as an asset. We’ve got to take care of them. Taking them to the veterinarian is kind of like going to get an oil change,” he chuckled.
Like any other animal, the dogs can develop health problems that require veterinary attention.
“It’s very important to take care of his health and his training. Just like people’s pets at home, there are all sorts of interesting issues you deal with. We’ve had some that had to have surgery on their tails, we’ve had some that have had teeth problems where they have issues with their bite, we’ve had some that have skin problems, allergies. All the things that people have problems with their pets at home, we have them with our canine program. All those things need to be taken into account at Commissioners Court and tax dollars.”
“Most of our canine program we try to fund out of our asset forfeiture fund. That is the money that ultimately is recovered from drug operations, whether it be from interdiction of the highway or some other form of assets that the sheriff’s office ends up seizing or ultimately being forfeited through the district court system where it becomes an asset to us and we use some of those funds to maintain our canine program,” Hawthorne explained.
“As the sheriff, I try to be really careful about how I use the tax dollars, what I call the general fund money that comes over. We really try to focus it on law enforcement operations that the taxpayers fully expect. They don’t necessarily expect us to be buying dogs and feeding dogs with it, so I quite often try to use asset forfeiture money.”
While the general fund does contribute to the program, Hawthorne said he prefers to find other sources of funding whenever possible.
“Not saying that the general fund doesn’t help support the canine program, because it does, but we try to get the bulk of it elsewhere. That’s why we’re very careful when we purchase dogs, we try to purchase them through the Shane Detwiler Foundation or some other means, versus using our general fund from tax dollars.”
Beyond the cost of purchasing a dog, considerable time must be invested before the animal is ready for duty.
“The dogs go through an unbelievable amount of training, I mean months and months before they ever come to us. We then send the canine handler, that’s been selected to handle that particular canine, to school with the dog. Most of the schools we’ve been using are all out of state, so I would say that probably a dog does not become particularly useful, fully trained, and out in the field for about a year and a half to almost two years.”
The handler’s training alone can take several weeks.
“Just our handling training where we send the handler to train with the dog will run anywhere from six to eight weeks. They’ll be training with the dog wherever they are, whether in Ohio, or Louisiana, or whatever canine program we’ve selected to get the dog from. Like I said, I think we initially invest about two years into a dog before he becomes effective.”
Unfortunately, the years spent preparing a canine for service leave a relatively short working career.
“That’s really a short window because the sad part is they’re working dogs, and it’s pretty intense, the work that they do, so you usually start wearing a dog out, so to speak. They usually age out at about eight or nine years of age, so you only get about six or seven working years out of them. We’ve had a lot of transitions over the past six years where we’ve had dogs that aged out.”
The Point at the End of this Trail
“Each training location has its own unique set of techniques for choosing what to train a particular dog for,” explained Sheriff Hawthorne. “They take the dogs as puppies and try to identify what their skill seems to be, whether the dog always uses its nose and follows a trail, or whether he’s a dog that’s sitting there and smells something and immediately goes to it, that would be a drug trafficking dog. The one who puts his nose to the ground and follows a scent would be a tracking dog. They literally start that as puppies and there’s different techniques they use to see whether the dog has those types of skills.”
Not every dog completes its original training program, but Hawthorne has found that some of those dogs can still be valuable to law enforcement.
“Some of the dogs we’ve had over the years are what you would call ‘washed out’ dogs; they’ve washed out of a program. What I mean about washed-out is there’s something about the dog that was a flaw. A couple of the dogs we’ve gotten were from Lackland Air Force Base. They came out of the military world, and they were either bomb dogs, or search dogs, or what have you.”
Hawthorne recalled one particular dog that became a favorite despite having a trait that disqualified him from the military program.
“One of the dogs we had was one of my favorites. He washed out of their program because he was a breed that had a tendency to want to point, like a hunting dog, a pointer. Bomb or drug detection dogs, when they find what they’re looking for, just sit down and stare at it. This dog had a wonderful nose and ninety percent of the time, he’d find what he was looking for, but then he’d point instead of sit.”
That difference in how the dog alerted his handler was not a concern for Hawthorne.
“They told me his flaw and asked if that was going to be a problem. I told them, as long as he gives us what we’re looking for, I don’t care if he points or sits. We got him and he ended up being one of our most successful dogs. He ultimately ended up with a disease and is no longer with us, but he was a terrific dog. So, even a washed-up dog can be a fantastic asset and tool for the sheriff’s office,” Hawthorne noted with a smile.
Victim or Perpetrator: They Will Find You
“I’d have to say, my most memorable cases with the canines are the human searches,” the sheriff confessed. “Because of our proximity to the interstate, we have a lot of traveling criminals. We have a lot of human trafficking; we have a lot of drug trafficking.”
One situation in which the dogs have proven particularly useful is when suspects abandon their vehicles and flee on foot.
“We’ve had a lot of what we call car bailouts where the deputy or the state trooper attempts to stop a car, probably in an interdiction scenario, where the car comes to a quick stop, and everyone bails out and flees. Those are extensive manhunts that take a lot of manpower and a lot of time. We’ve been able to end some of those manhunts in very fast form and fashion by using canines that have been able to get on the track of the people who fled out of the car and apprehend them pretty quickly.”
“The dogs that we have at the sheriff’s office are dual purpose dogs. They do drugs and tracking. We also call them bite dogs. We do our best to let the criminal know we’re turning the dog loose, because when the dog finds them and knows that’s the criminal he’s looking for, he will bite him.”
Hawthorne explained that the dogs are trained to identify and follow a suspect’s scent.
“He knows if it’s the criminal he’s looking for because we’ve given him his scent, often by putting him in the car where the fella was driving and he catches his scent. Sometimes they’re not smart enough to give up before we turn the dog loose, and the dog is just doing what he’s been trained to do, and that’s apprehending the criminal. Some of those apprehensions are very meaningful.”
In addition to tracking suspects, the dogs have proven valuable in locating illegal drugs and large amounts of cash.
“Other things, from a sheriff’s perspective, I’ve been really pleased with is the canine’s ability to sniff out drugs and money. Criminals oftentimes will hide the money and the drugs in the same place. Also, money has a very specific smell to it. When you have money that’s been handled from drug operations and drug deals, that drug scent also ends up on the money.”
As a result, a search that begins with the expectation of finding drugs sometimes leads to something else.
“So, often the dogs will sniff out what they believe is drugs and the search reveals it’s actually money, that’s pretty common. Some of those searches have revealed very large amounts of cash. There are various processes in the criminal justice system by which the person who’s carrying all this money has the ability to justify to the courts and justify to the IRS why they have all this money. Under normal circumstances, we have found they cannot justify to us or the IRS why they are carrying this large amount of cash and usually it ends up being drug asset forfeiture money.”
For Hawthorne, however, the greatest satisfaction comes from seeing the program work as intended.
“For me, from a sheriff’s perspective, the most rewarding aspect of the canine program has been the overall management of the program. There is not a better feeling for a sheriff than when he hears a deputy ask if there is a canine available and dispatch comes back and tells him there is a canine available, and he is enroute.”
He said those requests often lead to successful outcomes in a relatively short time.
“Then, thirty or forty minutes later you hear the success of whatever it was, whether it was trying to search a building, or apprehending a burglar, or trying to find someone who has fled from a traffic stop, or that they found narcotics in the car. It’s very fulfilling to me that the money, and time, and effort we’ve put into this program over the last say twenty years, has paid off.”
Ultimately, he sees the program’s success as a responsibility to the taxpayers who help support it.
“It is a financial asset that in some form or fashion, the taxpayers pay for. If you’re sheriff, and you want to run a very proficient and professional operation, you want to make sure the money and time and effort you put forward that the taxpayers support you doing, actually pays off and it works. That’s probably the most important thing to me.”
“On the flip side of that, I will also tell you there is nothing better to make a kid light up at the school when a canine handler brings a dog for a demonstration. That’s a very nice thing to see.”
Hawthorne said the dogs also play an important role in introducing young people to law enforcement, particularly at a time when recruiting new officers has become more difficult.
“People don’t get into law enforcement like they used to. Ever since some social events that have taken place, law enforcement has really struggled in their recruiting. Probably one of the best recruiting tools we have is our four-legged officers. The kids and the young people of all ages, from kindergarten to high school, love the canines, so we routinely use them for our recruiting program.”
A Badge, Leash and Dog
Carlton Carrington joined the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office, Oct. 2, 1998, and became a canine handler around 2010. He is still basically under the umbrella of the sheriff’s office, but since 2020 he has worked for the county court at law He is still licensed through the sheriff’s office, he just doesn’t work under the direction of the sheriff any longer.
For Carrington, who served as Chambers County’s first canine handler, working with the dogs became a memorable part of his law enforcement career.
“Honestly, I don’t know what attracted me to being a canine handler. I was friends with a guy named Kevin Dunlap; he works for the Baytown Police Department now, but he worked at the sheriff’s office. He was assigned to the narcotics task force that Chambers and Liberty County had; they had a combined task force that ended in 2008.
“He and I were good friends, and I would help him with his dog. We went to the Baytown Police Department canine training unit pretty regularly; it was a weekly maintenance training. His dog, Arco, was a single purpose, narcotics only dog. He would find a person for you if you asked him to, but all he wanted to do was lick them and love on them. He was one of the most loving dogs ever.”
When Dunlap left the sheriff’s office, Carrington became Arco’s handler.
“Kevin ended up going to work for Baytown Police Department, and I was given Arco to be his handler. I handled Arco for two or three years until his health started failing. I spoke with Sheriff Hawthorne, and we decided to retire him.”
Carrington’s next canine partner, Yeorie, was originally intended for another handler.
“They had a dog picked out for me and Yeorie was going to go to a different guy, but the other guy was kind of new. Yeorie was such a strong dog they decided he needed a handler with a little experience, so they ended up giving me Yeorie and I instantly fell in love with him.
“He was such a beautiful dog with a pretty copper coat and a dark muzzle, just a really good-looking dog. He was very athletic and muscular, and very serious. He was trained as a dual-purpose dog; he was trained to find narcotics, which would be cocaine, crack, methamphetamine, ecstasy, heroine, and marijuana. He was also certified in criminal apprehension and tracking.”
Their training together got off to an interesting start when Yeorie decided he wasn’t going to give up a glove he had found.
“From day one of getting him we started training. On the track where we were doing some training, he picked up a glove, which is what he was supposed to do on the track, but it’s in his mouth and he won’t let it go. I try to get it from him, and he just clamps down on my hand. I thought, oh, no, this is really going to be bad. He was trained in Dutch, and I told him no in Dutch and he let go. I told him, sorry dude, and we kept going about our business.”
The next glove presented an even bigger problem.
“We get to the second glove, and he does the exact same thing except he swallows the entire glove. He’s like, you’re not getting it back at all, so I’m freaking out. I told Mr. Jack what happened and he said, ‘You’ve got an expensive problem.’ Long story short, we monitor him, and it takes him about a day, but he gets rid of the glove for us.”
Another memorable experience came during their certification testing at Canine Concepts.
“At the end of our training at Canine Concepts, Mr. Jack had an independent third-party evaluator come in to give us a secondary certification. They had a room set up with a narcotics find in it. We don’t know where it’s at, only the certifier knows where it’s at. We go in to look for the narcotics and Yeorie alerts and I tell him, ‘Good boy.’ We go out and the guy comes back and says, ‘You failed.’ I said there’s no way, he had a nose that you would not believe.”
As it turned out, Yeorie had detected something the evaluator hadn’t anticipated.
“The certifying official came back about thirty-five minutes later and said, ‘Hey man, just to be a 100% transparent with you, I saw everything you did, I saw your dog go into odor final response, that’s not where the narcotics were hidden. I saw such a strong response from your dog that I went and looked. There was a sealed jar of narcotics that had been sitting there about fifteen years. The rubber gasket on the jar had been sitting there so long it had deteriorated, and the odor was starting to emit.’ So, they set up a whole new problem for me and Yeorie, he alerted and we were certified.”
The two developed a close bond during their years together.
“Yeorie and I became super good friends, best dog, extremely loyal. I can’t tell you how much narcotics and money we found. We didn’t have any apprehensions about him biting the bad guy, well actually we did have one, but we had numerous instances where he found the bad guy but the bad guy surrendered rather than be bit by a dog.
“During training there were several guys that would put on the suit and get bit by him and they all said he was absolutely the hardest biting dog they ever got bit by. He was such a lover, he wanted to love on you, he was so happy, but all it took was one command and he would make business happen.”
Carrington recalled one occasion when Yeorie’s training proved especially valuable.
“I remember one night, Gordon Andrews and I were fighting a guy and we were spent. So, I told Yeorie to do his thing and he did. It hadn’t been for Yeorie, Gordon and I would not have gotten that guy under arrest, fighting him in a dark house. It was pretty intense, but Yeorie saved the day for us.”
Eventually, a change in Carrington’s duties meant he could no longer work with Yeorie.
“Due to a position change, I ended up changing roles at the sheriff’s office, and I had to give him up to another handler. I tried to find a way to make him work in my new role, but I was working in a plain clothes capacity doing a lot of investigative work and there was no way to utilize him. Before my law enforcement career is over, I hope to have another dog,” said Carlton wistfully.
A Bond Beyond the Badge
Deputy Sheriff John Lunsford Jr. joined the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office in October 2022. In May 2023, he became a canine handler; he and Sigma have been a team since then.
“I hadn’t put much thought into being a canine handler, but I’m a proactive officer, I like being out there, making stops and finding drugs. One of my good friends now, Robert Betar, was in the canine program for a while. I started hanging out around him and I just fell in love with how smart and unique dogs are.”
Working alongside Sigma has given Lunsford a greater appreciation for the partnership between a handler and his dog.
“The first time Sig and I found a big load of narcotics and the first time we were able to locate a burglary suspect together just drove home the point of how much of a partnership and bond me and Sigma have together. There’s just a whole bunch of different events that kind of showcased that for me.”
Although Sigma is no longer a puppy, Lunsford said he hasn’t lost any of his youthful energy.
“Sigma is five years old, but he still acts like he’s two years old. He’s always wound up and ready to go. We certify as a team to work the streets once a year, but once a month we have to have a total of sixteen hours of training. Every Wednesday, me and the other two canine handlers train for four hours.”
Two Uniforms, One Calling
With Interstate 10 running through Chambers County, Lunsford believes proactive law enforcement plays an important role in keeping the community safe.
“Interstate 10 is a major drug corridor; I think one of the main reasons our county is so safe is that we have a lot of proactive officers. Criminals don’t want to come over this way because they know we like to do our job and work hard over here.”
Off duty, Sigma enjoys a quieter life at home, although Lunsford remains mindful of his training and responsibilities as a working dog.
“Sigma is a dual-purpose dog; I think he would be okay around children, but I keep a close eye on him because ultimately, at the end of the day, he’s still a dog. We have two other dogs at home, and he gets along with them really well. He just lays around and relaxes, he’s pretty social.”
Deputy Sheriff Travis Counts joined the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office in February 2023 and became a canine handler in June 2023.
“During my time in the military I was a canine handler with the Air Force beginning about June of 2015,” said Deputy Counts. “I was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. My canine was a certified bomb dog and he and I deployed to Kuwait in 2016 and 2017. The majority of our mission while we were over there was at the entry control points to the base.”
His duties overseas involved searching vehicles before they were allowed onto the military base.
“Essentially, before vehicles would be allowed to come onto base, they would go through what we called a search pit. Me and my canine would search the vehicles, whether they be buses or tanks, or any large vehicle. My canine and I would search to make sure there weren’t any bombs that had been planted on the vehicles, or if anyone was trying to bring anything they weren’t supposed to, like explosives.”
Fortunately, Counts and his fellow service members returned home safely.
“As far as being any hairy moments or squirrely moments, luckily no, we came home unharmed and brought everyone we were over there with home safely.”
After joining the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office canine program, Counts was paired with Blitz, a partnership he clearly enjoys.
“When I became a canine handler, Blitz and I became a team. I make the biggest joke that out of all the jobs out there my job as a canine handler trumps them all. What other job is there where you get to go to work and play with a dog all day, so that’s kind of been my running joke,” laughed Deputy Counts.
Beyond the enjoyment of working with Blitz, Counts appreciates the practical advantages of having a canine partner.
“One of the things I’m most thankful for with Blitz is that canines are a force multiplier. Me being a single deputy, I’m only able to do a single task at a time but with Blitz it’s like having a whole other deputy there riding with me and working with me.”
That additional help can make a significant difference in situations where deputies must search for suspects or evidence.
“Whether it’s searching vehicles or searching houses for bad guys or if someone takes off running, we’re able to utilize Blitz to get out there and do the search. I tell you, his nose is a lot better than mine is and he’s able to find stuff a lot easier and a lot faster than me. What’s important to me is just being able to use him as a force multiplier and being able to do a variation of different tasks that keeps us safer and makes our jobs easier.”
“Blitz and I have had a fair amount of interesting successes. One of my favorite stories to tell people about is the night we got a call that two guys were breaking into a house in Baytown. When I get there, it’s only me and Blitz and I’m still waiting on my other two units to show up.
“I give my canine announcement to come out and surrender or Blitz is going to come find you, you’re under arrest. As soon as Blitz and I enter the property, I hear one of the other officers on the radio telling me to come towards the road.”
When Counts returned to the road, he found the suspects preparing to flee from the other deputies.
“I go back to the road and see these two guys there that are about to take off running from my backup deputies. I let them know they better stop running, or Blitz is going to get out there and bite them. I promise you, they both stopped dead in their tracks, looked at each other, looked at Blitz, then put their hands in the air and laid right down on the ground. They didn’t want any part of Blitz going after them.”
The story didn’t end with the arrests. Counts later learned that one of the suspects had talked about the encounter during a phone call from jail.
“We arrested them for breaking and entering and later got notified that they used the jail phone and called one of their buddies that kind of colluded with them on breaking into the house. You hear them talking on the jail phone, ‘Yeah, man, I was just about to take off running from the deputies, I could have outrun every single one of them, but then they said that they had that canine and I knew I couldn’t outrun him, so I just gave up right there.'”
For Counts, the incident was another example of the advantage of having a canine on the scene.
“This goes back to what I was saying about the force multiplier, there’s plenty of two-legged officers there but when there’s a four-legged one, everybody starts acting a little better than they would have. There’s a T-shirt I like to wear, it says, ‘Go ahead and run, my canine likes fast food,'” laughed Deputy Counts.
“K-9 Harvey was a Chambers County Interdiction K-9,” said Deputy Counts, “meaning he was responsible for patrolling the high drug trafficking corridor known as I-10. K-9 Harvey is responsible for seizing over a million dollars worth of currency along with thousands of pounds of various illicit narcotics throughout his K-9 career.”
“K-9 Harvey now spends his days living the retirement life on our couch teaching his brother, Blitz the ins and outs of being a K-9 Deputy,” said Deputy Counts.
Pure Muscle
Deputy Sheriff Jerry Bingman Jr., currently the acting sergeant for the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office, joined the force in October 2023. Before moving to Texas, he was a deputy in Alabama, where he also served as a canine handler. He got Bama from Ohio in May 2025 and named him for his home state of Alabama.
“We received our certification in Ohio after a four-week class. We, as handlers, continue to train with our dogs weekly to keep them in shape and maintain the working mindset they need to do their jobs. That continued training keeps them focused on their purpose and prevents them from becoming simply a big pet. We also have our yearly certification with the NNDDA, National Narcotic Detector Dog Association.”
Bingman described Bama as a powerful, energetic dog trained for more than one law enforcement function.
“Bama is a three-year-old Dutch Shepherd weighing in at about eighty-five pounds of pure muscle. He’s a wild one,” he added with a laugh. “He’s is a dual purpose dog, trained in narcotics detection and apprehension and tracking.”
“I helped one of our units on a traffic stop where they had reasonable suspicion to run Bama. Bama alerted the car and we got a small amount of narcotics out of it along with just shy of $80,000. It was pretty awesome to be able to seize that,” declared Sgt. Bingman.
Beyond the successful searches and seizures, Bingman values the companionship that comes with having a canine partner.
“I love the fact that with Bama, I always have a partner there with me.”