Cherub Child Care: Martinez's Finest...Officer Dark

One of our visitors this morning was from the Czech Republic, is bilingual in German and English and had sleek black hair. He has worked for the Martinez Police Department for two years and is one of the most popular officers on the force. Children love him, but criminals fear him....his name is Dark and he is a 3 year old black German Shepard, Officer Muncher's right hand man!

Dark was born and trained to be a police dog in the Czech Republic. He was hand picked by the Martinez Police Department to be Officer Muncher's partner. He has been trained to search and rescue, apprehend people not following the rules and sniff out substances that are not legal.

Office Muncher told the children that Dark lives with him and is just a regular dog at home with his other dogs. But when he gets in the police car and wears his collar with his police badge, he knows he is working. Office Muncher speaks commands to him in German, so that criminals do not know what he is asking Dark to do and cannot confuse him. He demonstrated several commands and Dark responded the first time, right away when Officer Muncher asked him to do something. (Hmmmmm....how can we get our children to do the same thing?)

We got to see the inside of the police car, turn on the siren, lights, look at the computer and let children take turns "driving" the car as well as sitting in the back seat.

Although this was a little out of order for Transportation week, it was worth it...Next week is Community Helpers, but Officer Muncher and Dark were not available.

Additionally, at our big book pick up on Monday, we gathered all sorts of books. One that is a favorite already is a book called "Art Dog". It's about a dog named Arthur who is a guard at the museum and how he turns into "Art Dog" in his off time. It's a great story how he solves an art heist, beautiful painter and a great community member. The interesting thing about the book is that it shows all sorts of famous paintings in the background, the "Mutta Lisa", "Blue Dog", paintings by Pablo Poodle and Leonardo Dog Vinci. The children started asking about the paintings and what the really looked like as well as who painted them. What a great learning experience....I printed out all of the paintings from the web, discussed the artist and the painting and how they painted it. They were thrilled and asked all kinds of questions about artwork. Ask your children about Vincent Van Gogh or The Starry Night or Sunday Afternoon in the Park by Seurat or The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Vermeer.....we've got some patrons of the arts in our midst.