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‘Top Dog’

Algona Police officer, K9 to be on A&E show

-Photo by David Black/A&E 2021
Algona Police Officer Benn Gatton and his K9 partner Puma will be featured on an upcoming episode of A&E Network's "America's Top Dog." The episode will air Tuesday at 7 p.m.

ALGONA — Nearly a year ago Algona Police Officer Ben Gatton and his K-9 partner, Puma, flew to California to take part in a competition that tested their speed, agility, teamwork and trust. For months, only Gatton, Puma and a few network producers have known how it all played out, but soon, the rest of the country will, too.

Gatton and Puma will be featured in an episode of the A&E canine competition series “America’s Top Dog” that will air at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. The series brings together working dogs, K-9s, and “underdogs” from across the country to compete for the title of “Top Dog” alongside their handlers on a massive canine obstacle course over two rounds of competition.

In the first round, teams go head-to-head against another competitor in their class for an epic battle to prove who is best. The winners of each of the three classes face-off head-to-head to determine who is that week’s Top Dog. Each week, the winning team will receive a $10,000 cash prize as well as an additional $5,000 to donate to the animal charity of their choice.

Gatton has been an officer with the Algona Police Department for 15 years, and has been a K9 handler for 14 years. Puma and Gatton have been partners since 2014, he said.

Puma is an 8-year-old Dutch shepherd and Belgian Malinois mix.

“I get the brain of the Dutch shepherd with the workability of the Malinois,” Gatton says in a promo for Tuesday’s show.

Gatton and Puma are about as close as partners can get — they spend all day at work together, and then they go home together. At home, when Puma isn’t playing with the kids, she’s relaxing in her kennel, Gatton said.

“For her, she can’t ‘turn off,'” he said. “If she’s out of the kennel, she’s a working dog.”

Gatton and Puma train nearly every day. As a narcotics detection and patrol dog, Puma has to constantly hone her skills to stay at the top of her game. They also focus on fostering trust between the two.

“Every day we train while we’re at work,” Gatton said. “Over time, that trust just develops.”

While they don’t see the kind of big drug busts a big city might see, Gatton and Puma have caught their fair share of bad guys. Her reward for doing a good job is a bit of play time with a special toy, Gatton said.

“Her ball is her favorite thing in the world,” he said.

She’s also very food-driven, he added.

Gatton first got involved with “America’s Top Dog” in February 2020, when he received an email about casting for season two of the show. He’d had some friends from the Florida area compete on the show during season one, so he was interested. After filling out an application and going through several rounds of interviews with producers, he and Puma left for California in September.

“It was really interesting when I got offered to be on the show, they sent me a list of obstacles that there may be, so I had to teach my dog how to dock dive,” Gatton said. “My dog hadn’t even swam until last fall, I never even had her in the water until then.”

He also had to teach Puma how to push buttons and pull levers. The agility aspect of the competition came naturally to her, though, he said.

“She had a blast,” Gatton said.

Being on “America’s Top Dog” is an experience Gatton and Puma won’t soon forget.

“Doing the show was really cool,” he said. “I got to meet a lot of people from all over the country.”

As a K9 officer, Gatton often travels around the country and has met many other K9 officers, but at this competition, he was able to meet people who weren’t officers, but had sporting dogs.

“Just an opportunity to run a course like that, I’ll probably never get to do that again in my life,” he added. “That was one of the coolest things. It didn’t matter how well we did, it was just so much fun to go train and run a course that is so unique.”

Gatton and Puma might not be able to watch their debut on the small screen on Tuesday night — they’re both on duty. But Gatton said he and his family plan on watching the episode together next weekend.

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