WELD — David Rackliffe rolled a small flashlight between his hands before he tossed it into the field Tuesday at his Von Woden Kennels.

The Franklin County Sheriff”s Department deputy of 10 years let his police dog, Justice, out of the kennel.

Justice sniffed around and laid down minutes later.

“Show me,” Rackliffe said.

Justice nodded his head down toward the found item.

It’s called evidence recovery, Rackliffe said.

Justice and Rackliffe wrapped up eight weeks of drug school training in October. The dog was trained to recognize and alert to odors of five basic drugs, and some odors not to alert to.

“The more I work with dogs the more they amaze me,” Rackliffe said. “They are so capable of smelling things that we could not imagine.”

One-eighth of a dog’s brain is committed to the sense of smell. A human’s primary sense is their sight, he said.

The average German Shepherd has 220 million olfactory cells, which give the sense of smell, in their nose, he said. That is 44 times more than the average human being’s five million, he said.

“The more I learn about dogs, the more I understand them,” Rackliffe said.

He had Justice along with his sister, Jetta, imported from Belgium in 2010 as young puppies.

Rackliffe opened his kennel four years ago and has been working to produce and train a strong breed of German Shepherd police dogs. He has sold several to other police departments. Rackliffe, an assistant trainer for the Maine Criminal Justice Academy in Vassalboro, specializes in helping to train troubled dogs outside of law enforcement.

The county bought Justice from Rackliffe in 2011 at a cost of $3,000, about half the price of a similar dog, Sheriff Dennis Pike said at the time.

Rackliffe donated another of his police dogs, Abbie, to the county in 2011. She was from the first of four litters he had.

Justice and Abbie, whose handler is Deputy Christopher Chase, graduated from patrol school in June. Abbie is scheduled to be trained in narcotics detection next fall.

Each of the dogs replaced aging police dogs, Odin and Jack, respectively. Cpl. Nate Bean also is a dog handler. His partner, Diesel, is also trained in patrol and drug detection.

The county has an account for its dogs that helps pay for veterinary care and medical expenses. It was started through unsolicited donations and has about $730 in it, county Treasurer Mary Frank said Wednesday.

The Sheriff’s Department also includes funds in its operating budget for food for its dogs and other expenses.

In every litter, you get dogs with a mix of capabilities, he said. The hope is to at least get one or two pups from each litter that are of police quality.

While many canine handlers use commands spoken in German to train their dogs, Rackliffe doesn’t.

“I train my dog in English because that is the language I will resort to when I’m under pressure,” he said.

Dogs train in searches in a variety of ways, including on vehicles and schools. They are also trained to track children and older people, the most likely to wander away from home and get lost.

They are also taught to locate or recover lost evidence with a human odor on it in the way Justice demonstrated Tuesday morning.

Though the dogs are trained for officer protection, they are for the most part still socially friendly and people can pat them, Rackliffe said.

But when the handler gives the command, the dog is ready to go.

dperry@sunjournal.com