A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department K-9 deputy appeared on the latest “Santa Clarita Sheriff Talk” on KHTS AM-1220 with her detection dog, “Sstack,” at her side.

Deputy Amy Raniag, a Santa Clarita resident, fulfilled her dream of becoming a deputy for a K-9 unit when she joined the department’s Transit Policing Division after serving as a field training officer in Compton for four years.

“Working with the K-9s is, I would have to say, probably the best job on the department,” Raniag said. “I saw the K-9 when I was an Explorer, and I just knew that I wanted to work with the K-9.”

Before she was assigned Sstack, an energetic black labrador retriever, Raniag was sent to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas — which she called the “main hub” for military working dogs — for 10 weeks of K-9 training.

Related: SCV Sheriff’s Station Encouraging Community To Join ‘Nextdoor’ Network

“Basically you’re learning how to be a dog handler,” she said. “They pair you up with a dog and they teach you from the basics.”

Detection dogs are trained to use their noses to pick up on the scent of a specific item, which can range from narcotics to explosives to cell phones to alcohol.

“The best analogy I could give you is if you have a cup of black coffee and we all smell it, we can tell it’s just a cup of black coffee,” Raniag explained, noting that a dog’s nose is completely different than a human’s.

“If you add, say, maybe a tablespoon or two of sugar into it, we could probably tell or smell that it’s been sweetened with something,” she continued. “If you take those same two tablespoons of sugar and drop them into, say, two Olympic-sized swimming pools, that canine will be able to tell the difference.”

To start the training process, deputies use the dog’s favorite toy in a game of “hide and seek,” and once the dog is able to successfully sniff out their toy, they introduce the item the dog is training to identify and repeat the “game,” this time using the toy as a reward for finding the item.  

“They’re smelling the stimuli, and they know that, ‘Hey, I get my toy when I smell that stimuli, so I’m going to give a response so I get my toy,” Raniag said.

Sstack recently assisted Raniag during an incident at the Pomona Metrolink Station after a suspicious package was reported.

As the area was shut down and the bomb squad worked to render the package safe, Sstack and Raniag joined other K-9 teams in searching the station for additional possible explosives.

“We work with the Threat Interdiction Unit — TIU — which is a specialized team that also has a lot of the training that we have, and then we also work with our bomb squad,” Raniag said. “Because we constantly train and we do a lot of joint training, we actually are pretty good at getting it handled pretty quickly to get those rail stations opened.”

While Sstack technically belongs to the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, he is officially assigned to Raniag, and lives with her at her home in Santa Clarita so they can build their bond with one another.

“I have to trust him, he has to trust me,” she said. “It takes awhile, it’s just a lot of rapport, walks, brushing him, grooming him, just spending a lot of time with him, letting him be a dog. A lot of that stuff, you start to build that trust, and then it continues on into training.”

“With Us You Are Never Alone”

All American Bail Bonds

23360 W. Valencia Blvd. #E

Santa Clarita, CA 91355

661-255-2245

Call Toll Free: 888-755-2245

24 hours a day — 7 days a week

If your loved one is in custody and they wish to talk to an All American Bail Bonds representative, call:

818-990-0003 or 661-267-6777

[email protected]