David Wiley put the dog food in a bowl and set it on the floor for his dog, Ranger.
Ranger, a black Labrador retriever, was confused. It was the first time he hadn’t eaten from Wiley’s hand.
“He just looked at me,” Wiley said. “I had to teach him how to eat from a bowl.”
Ranger just retired from being an ATF explosives detection canine.
Ranger’s job was to find explosives, guns and ammunition. He is also an ATF search enhanced evidence K-9, able to work off leash up to 150 yards away from his handler and detect more than 19,000 distinct odors.
Now he had to learn how to be a pet.
“Ranger’s watch is done,” Wiley said. “He’s loving retirement. From April 3, 2016, to March 30, 2024, there were six nights I was away from Ranger. That was it. He went everywhere with me.”
Wiley worked with Ranger more than eight years.
“He’s not a typical dog,” he said. “The vet called Ranger a professional athlete. Ranger is in phenomenal shape. As long as they can work, they will keep working. They typically retire them at nine. He was on a one-year extension. And they’ll give them one extension as long as they’re able to certify.”
Ranger will turn 10 in January. Wiley started working with him when he was 15 months old on April 3, 2016.
“He was the first canine to get Canine of the Quarter, first quarter out of training. He had found shell casings, bullets, which had been missing for 16 months. It was almost an impossible case. They never thought we would do it, and we went out and did it,” Wiley said.
That was just one of several cases the canine would close in his career.
“The longest search we ever have done with him finding something was three miles,” Wiley said. “He found a shell casing that was used to kill somebody in the Smokey Mountains. It was two months old. Ranger found the firearm that killed someone in St. Clair County, Alabama. A shell casing that was a month old that killed a boy standing on a streetcorner on a drive-by shooting. That was in January. He found the 25 casings in an hour at that same intersection.”
During that search authorities were looking for a particular caliber to be able to close the investigation. Ranger found it.
Another notable crime they worked on as a team, was when a bomber detonated a recreational vehicle in downtown Nashville, killing himself and injuring eight people. Ranger found a lot of post-blast debris including parts of the camper, and parts of the device as well.
Wiley and Ranger were also called when a Marine Corps KC-130T plane experienced a catastrophic mechanical failure at cruise altitude and crashed in Leflore County, Mississippi, killing 15 Marines and one Navy corpsman. They found some of the explosives that were on the plane that needed to be recovered for security reasons.
Ranger and Wiley also served on multiple deployments to support notable security details.
“We worked the inauguration in 2017,” Wiley said, “We’ve been to three Super Bowls, several Kentucky Derbies, Country Music Awards, even Talladega.”
At those events Wiley and Ranger would search the facility for explosives and bombs before the event and during the event. They would be called on to check unattended packages, too.
Working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives demands a lot from both the handler and the dog as well as their families because it involves so much travel.
“One day we were sitting at the supper table, and we had several call outs and my youngest says to me, out in the blue, ‘Daddy, you love Ranger more than you do us! He gets to ride in the truck, he goes to work with you, he sleeps with you, he comes home with you … you spend more time with him than you do us!’” Wiley said. “My response was, ‘Son, that’s my bread and butter. He enables us to have the things we have. That’s my job. I love my job.’”
But now, Ranger is retired and enjoying his family life, Wiley said.
“Ranger loves the family life,” he said. “On his down time, he loves to play ball, loves to catch Frisbee. He likes to go hiking. He loves to swim. If he sees a body of water, you might as well forget it. You just let him get in it and get it out of his system. We’ve got a pool at the house, and we’ll toss ball back and forth all day and he’ll dive off the diving board.”