428 J Janssen communication canine charm offensives are put into use Demonstrations to show the skilfulness and competence of the animals thoroughly impress a lot of members of the public both young and old According to the dog handlers, however, the possibilities of using the dogs as public relations tools are limited That argument can also be found in literature about police dogs: Some police departments can be faulted for seeing the public relations plusses that flow from canine use not just as an advantage, but as the primary purpose for the cop’s existence! This is wrong The police dog is not meant to be a public relations tool with which to awe small children and to be prepared through an endless stream of girl and boy scout and service club meetings and used every now and then for a touch of law enforcement work Just the opposite A department’s canine unit must be an integral part of a well thought out, carefully conceived law enforcement program (Chapman 2009) One dog handler told me once about a discussion he had with some colleagues of his and superior officers about the suggestion to give members of the public in a shopping area the opportunity to ‘pet’ some of the surveillance dogs but then when required to deploy those same dogs as a means of force ‘First to have it caressed and then to instruct it to attack is difficult for a dog to understand It confuses the animal and it makes it feel insecure The dog in question is very likely to hide behind its master.’ From the public relations perspective it seemed a nice idea but according to the dog handlers the initiators failed to take a dog’s psyche into consideration My interviewee felt that in situations like this, his knowledge of dogs can be of fundamental importance when it comes to policy decisions on the use of police dogs And so this street-level bureaucrat has become a policy maker himself Hierarchy Up to now, I have linked my impressions of the constant paradox to the hierarchical gap between the handlers on the shop floor and their superiors partly inspired by the work of Reus-Ianni (1983) However, I am increasingly doubtful about the accuracy of the connection In the summer of 2011 rumors that particularly dog handlers were put under a lot of pressure to switch to the just introduced animal police caused considerable consideration The creation of that organisation was in process at that