Hank was already set in his ways when he came to the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office.
The bloodhound was about 3 years old when cops taught him to track.
It took Hank a year to get the hang of it, but there was no stopping him once he did.
“This dog, hands-down, was the hardest pulling dog on the track,” said his trainer Deputy Milton Maldonado, age 34.
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Hank died during the first few hours of Wednesday morning. His stomach got twisted up like a wrapped piece of candy, something that happens with bloodhounds.
Maldanado and Hank’s handler, Deputy Scott Berger, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday they have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from the community and on social media.
Hank was a tracking dog and wouldn’t know what to do if an officer yelled at him to attack someone. He barely interacted with suspects.
Credit: Cobb County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Cobb County Sheriff's Office
He sniffed out children and elderly folks who wandered off and the occassional missing hiker.
“Everybody loved Hank,” said Berger, 39.
The department got Hank because his owner in Florida no longer wanted him.
A Cobb resident who was involved in search and rescue while here had moved to Florida and heard about Hank. She thought Hank might be a good fit for CCSO even though most working dogs are trained from the time they’re born.
“It was a rough start with him,” Maldanado said.
But they began simple: One person would hold Hank while another would play “real hot and heavy” with the dog and then run off. The person holding on would let go so Hank could chase the runner down and they would play more once Hank caught up.
They added more turns, next an article of clothing with a scent, and finally, they’d hide.
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“When he quickly realized that we were there simply to play with him and play games, he came around,” said Maldanado.
Hank began his public safety service in 2014 and worked an unknown number of cases — from finding a ski mask used to identify a Powder Springs robbery suspect to searching for the hiker who recently went missing on Kennesaw Mountain.
But the department also used him in schools and Touch-A-Truck events to connect with the community.
“He took to children unbelievably well,” Maldanado said. “He would turn himself inside out on his back and get rubbed on.”
He was part of not only the Cobb community but Berger’s family. Hank started coming home with the deputy in January.
It’s a special bond between dog and handler. They become like a child at home and a trusted partner at work.
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Berger said Hank had been having medical problems the last couple of weeks.
Bloodhounds, and other dogs, are barrel-chested and susceptible to stomach torsion.
“When that stomach twists, it ends up looking like a Tootsie Roll,” Berger said.
With the stomach twisted off, dogs can’t burp, bark or expel anything. Their guts start to fill with gas and their stomachs can start to fail.
Berger said they took extreme caution with Hank, making him wait an hour in a kennel after playing to cool down before feeding him and making him wait another hour after.
But Berger noticed something was wrong late Tuesday and rushed Hank to a veterinary office at 3 a.m. X-rays of his stomach showed it was expanding.
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Surgery would have been a 50-50 chance, Berger said, but other health problems brought Hank’s chance of surviving the procedure to 25 percent.
“The possibility that he’d come out of it really messed up made up our minds,” Berger said. So they put him down.
By 6 a.m., the deputy said his phone was blowing up with people offering condolences .
Hank came with his name. And Berger said that over the past couple days many who knew him agreed that “Hank” was apt for the affable, hard-working animal.
“He fit the name.”
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