How is it a dog who was afraid of his own water bowl made inmates run in fear? A dog who was so gentle with children be so fierce when he descended into the drug-infested bowels of prisons? A dog who came to be nicknamed Knucklehead because he uprooted garbage cans could sniff out 75 pounds of deadly narcotics then die by inhaling what is believed to be synthetic marijuana?

A crowd gathered under the shade of a sprawling oak tree at Staton Prison shed tears and listened to “Taps” because the answers to those perplexing questions had come at a tremendous cost — the death of K9 Jake, a five-year-old Belgian Malinois who was considered perhaps the best drug-detecting dog in the state.