I had drawn my baton on my own partner. I had been prepared to stop Titan if protecting the child required it. Everyone in that park had made judgments with incomplete information.
The difference was that Titan had better information than any of us.
Paramedics examined the girl. No bite marks. No broken bones. A bruised shoulder and scraped elbow from the tackle. Frightened, but safe.
Her name was Lily.
When the medic asked if she knew what had happened, Lily pointed at Titan.
“He squished me.”
Her mother laughed and cried at the same time.
“He saved you.”
Lily looked at Titan carefully.
“Can I pet him?”
My throat closed.
“Not yet. Let him calm down first.”
Titan sat beside me, still watching the sealed transport tub.
For the rest of the afternoon, the story spread through the park in broken pieces. People who had shouted for a gun now recorded video of animal control carrying the snake away. A teenager who had filmed Titan’s sprint showed me the clip. From his angle, I could see something I had missed entirely.
Half a second before Titan launched, the leaves near Lily’s frisbee moved.
He had seen it from nearly forty yards away.
Maybe seen it.
Maybe smelled it.
Maybe heard the rattle before the rest of us could.
Whatever the answer, he had acted.
The department did not simply congratulate him.
There had to be a review.
A police K9 had broken obedience, escaped his leash, knocked down a child, and pinned her. The fact that he appeared to have saved her did not erase the need to understand what happened.
I welcomed that.
If Titan had made a dangerous decision, I needed to know. If I had missed something in his training, I needed to know that too.
For forty-eight hours, he was taken off operational deployment while supervisors reviewed body-camera footage, witness video, medical findings, and the animal control report.
Those forty-eight hours were harder than I expected.
Titan came home with me, but he knew our routine had changed. The next morning he waited by the garage door at 5:40, ready for work.
I sat on the floor beside him.
“Not today.”
