FORT BENNING, Ga., (Aug.26, 2015) --Sgt. Daniel Jackson and his military working dog, Staff Sgt. Bbailey, spent five days, July 27-31, competing in the 2015 Hawaiian Island Working Dog Skills Challenge, where they won first place in tactical detection and won overall "Top Dog" in the competition.

"It felt good to represent Fort Benning, the 904th (Military Working Dog Detachment) section and the 209th (Military Police Detachment) section, and show what we can do, especially being from a small kennel," Jackson said.

Jackson and Bbailey competed against 31 teams from the Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy and Hawaii police department SWAT teams.

Jackson said he attributes much of the team's success to Bbailey.

"She's such a good dog. She's really good at what she does and I've been able to capitalize on that and been able to make it work for us to make us as good of a dog team as we are," he said.

Bbailey, a 6-year-old Belgian Malinois, has been Jackson's K9 for three years.

"It's a pretty close relationship," Jackson said.

Jackson said initially the two had a lot of playtime.

"Just throwing the ball around, having a good time, giving baths, taking walks. All of that stuff was to build rapport and show the dog 'Hey, I'm dad now,'" Jackson said. "It progressed from there with daily training and rapport building."

Bbailey, whose name has two b's to identify her as a puppy from the Department of Defense Military Working Dog Breeding Program, has a mind of her own, Jackson said.

"She's very hyper. She's definitely toy driven and always wants to play. She's very independent," Jackson said. "I like that about her sometimes, but sometimes I want her to do something and she does her own thing."

Jackson said their yearlong deployment to Kandahar, Afghanistan, made them a strong team and set them apart from the other teams in Hawaii.

"We did a lot of predeployment stuff here that trained us for a tactical environment," he said. "And we still work on it. We have scenarios we do where we get very limited information. That tests not only our ability and handler knowledge, but it also tests to see how you actually work on a problem with a dog. We do a lot of that stuff on a daily basis just to prepare for everything possible."

The competition included stress shoots, tactical and nontactical detection, a written skills test, an obedience course, handler protection and a hardest hitting dog event, in which working dogs were scored on the strength of their bite.

"(Part of the competition) was to test the handler's and the dog's ability in both narcotic and explosive detection," Jackson said. "We actually searched a big cargo ship, and that was really cool."

Jackson, who had never been to Hawaii before, said the trip was a nice vacation and he was able to see some sights while there, but for him, the competition was the best part.

"It was definitely a really good experience to be able to do something like that," he said. "The whole point of it was to build esprit de corps, to help integrate and learn from each other, and see how other people train that may be different from what we do."

Jackson said he feels like he has the best job in the Army.

"Who doesn't want to work with dogs everyday?" he said.