Grade 9 student Tristan Potuer received an early Christmas present that he won’t soon forget, when he had a surprise visit from his teacher’s brother and his police dog on Friday morning, travelling here from Calgary to spend the day with him at St. Michael School.
Tristan is a special needs student who loves dogs, and when he learned about the special role played by “Hawk”, a police trauma dog handled by Sgt. Brent Hutt, brother of his teacher Natalie Regier, he wanted to do a special report on Hawk, including a power-point presentation.
Unbeknownst to Tristan, Regier arranged for her brother to travel here from Calgary, and to surprise him in class with a personal appearance.
Hawk is a four-year-old Black Labrador, and he uses his unusually strong empathetic skills to comfort people who are victims of horrific crimes or bad traffic accidents.
His handler, Sgt. Hutt, was born and raised in Weyburn, the son of Jim and Elaine Hutt, and has been a member of the Calgary Police Service since 2000, currently serving with the Victim Services Unit.
As Tristan said later, after sharing a pizza lunch with Sgt. Hutt and Hawk, he was greatly surprised and happy to have the visit.
After presenting to his Grade 9 class, Tristan was able to introduce Hawk and his handler to each class as they came in to hear about this special police dog throughout the day on Friday, and the work he has been able to do, including being the first dog in Canadian history to be allowed in a court room to comfort a little girl who had to testify in a sex abuse trial.
Asked later what the best part of his day had been, Tristan had a wide grin as he replied, “Meeting Hawk!”
He said he might go on to be a veterinary technician for a career.
“I love all animals, except for hairless cats and hairless dogs. One time I fostered a dog, a Chihuahua; a friend of my mom knew I loved dogs,” said Tristan.
His own dog is a retriever-spaniel named “Snoopy”.
After the initial introduction of Hawk and Sgt. Hutt to Tristan, including a happy licking of the face by Hawk, Tristan’s education assistant, Eric Sim, explained how he went about helping Tristan with the presentation, where Tristan sent questions in an e-mail.
Sim typed in the questions, pretty much word-for-word of what Tristan wanted to ask, and noted Tristan actually had triple the number of questions that he sent, because there was a lot he wanted to know about what Hawk does.
Tristan shared his power-point with the class, and as soon as he was Sgt. Hutt entered with Hawk, and Tristan broke out into a wide grin as he met the very dog he was talking about.
As a trauma dog, Hawk is the opposite to other police dogs, said Sgt. Hutt; in his role of comforting those in a traumatic situation, he is very low energy and will sit patiently with a person for hours. Afterwards, when he goes home with Sgt. Hutt, he’s then full of energy and has to burn off all the tension.
Sgt. Hutt said he was quite impressed with the thoroughness of the questions Tristan sent, and told the student he thought he was a better reporter than many of the ones he’s talked to in Calgary.
Noting the presence of a Review reporter, Tristan grinned as he pointed that Sgt. Hutt thought he was an excellent reporter.
Explaining how he became partnered up with Hawk, Sgt. Hutt noted once he travelled out to Burnaby, B.C., to train with Hawk, he was told “the dog gets to pick their job. This dog loves people and will sit there for hours when people are screaming and sirens are going off. He just lays there.”
Calling Hawk virtually “bomb-proof”, whenever Sgt. Hutt attends a scene with Hawk, the Lab looks to him “to see if I’m bothered; as long as I’m not scared, then he’s not scared.”
Sgt. Hutt noted that the Weyburn Police Service is looking into the possibility of such a dog, and in his own unit in Calgary, Hawk has been so busy and successful, they are looking at getting a second dog to fill the role.
Hawk lives with Hutt 24-7, who is married with children, and they have a second dog at home, a shih-tzu breed, much smaller than Hawk.
