He's best known for bringing bad guys to justice - but Duane 'Dog' Chapman has found himself on the wrong side of the law many times throughout his wild life
HE'S got flowing blonde hair, eye-popping muscles and is TV's best known bounty hunter - and this week, he was back in the news for rescuing Tiger Woods’ ex Jamie Jungers from a Las Vegas drug den where she was trading sex for heroin.
But behind his hero persona, we can reveal Dog has a shocking past, with a racism scandal, four failed marriages and even a first-degree murder conviction behind him.
It's clear that the gruff bondsman - who has caught 6,000 criminals who've broken their bail terms - is more German Shepherd than Chihuahua.
Indeed Dog, 65, is so dangerous, British fans may not realise that he is forbidden from entering the UK - and from ever owning a firearm, which is why he uses a taser when his colleagues brandish guns.
On TV, we're used to cheering on as Dog hounds unrepentant criminals, but in 1976 it was Dog who found himself face down on the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back.
The young biker was sat waiting in a car when his friend accidentally shot and killed 69-year-old Jerry Oliver, an alleged pimp and drug dealer, while they were fighting over a cannabis deal.
Although Dog played no direct role in the murder, he was tried for the crime under Texas rules that anyone involved indirectly in a killing can be held responsible.
He was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to five years behind bars in Texas State Penitentiary - a conviction which understandably turned his entire life upside down.
At the time, Dog was with his first wife, LaFonda, but she divorced him while he was in prison and married his best friend instead.
And today, Dog is still dogged by the other impacts of that drug deal which went terribly and fatally wrong.
His conviction resulted in him being barred from entering the UK back in 2012, when he was due to appear as a housemate on Celebrity Big Brother.
His wife Beth said at the time: "It's just incredible that something that he did 33 years ago is just haunting him.
It prevents him making a living."
But it hasn't stopped Dog stashing away a cool £4.75m in the bank.
While he was serving time, he prevented a prison break-out, tackling an inmate to the ground, saving the prisoner from being shot by guards.
He was released after serving just a year and a half of his sentence and chose a career on the other side of the law.
"I have been misjudged, misinterpreted, and misunderstood for most of my life," Dog writes in his book, You Can Run but You Can't Hide. "I have spent the last twenty-seven years trying to be one of the good guys.
"In spite of those efforts to be seen as a moral man of virtue, I am still viewed as an ex-con, a criminal, a killer. I am many things, including those just mentioned. Put it all together and you will see: I am Dog."
Dog endured a strained relationship with many of his children, but this reached a nasty low point in 2007 when a phone conversation between him and his son Tucker was leaked to the media.
In a recording of the call, Dog can be heard using several slurs including the N-word to describe Tucker's girlfriend, who is black.
After the story broke, Dog issued an apology, saying in a statement: “I know that all of my fans are deeply disappointed in me, as I have tried to be a model for doing the right thing.
"I did not do the right thing this time, and hope you will forgive me. We learn from our mistakes, as my story of overcoming a life of crime has proven, and I will learn from this one for the rest of my life.”
A&E, the company which produces Dog The Bounty Hunter, initially pulled the show off air and suspended production while they conducted an investigation into Dog's conduct.
Eventually, the show returned, but only aired for two more seasons before it was cancelled for good.
Dog has been married five times, and has fathered 12 children: including one from a teenage relationship and two from his first marriage to LaFonda Honeycutt.
These kids were initially forbidden from seeing Dog, but as they started getting into trouble as teenagers he was able to reach out to them and eventually obtain custody of them.
Dog's second marriage, to Anne Tegnell, resulted in three children - one of whom died shortly after birth and the other two were raised by their mother.
Throughout his third marriage, to Lyssa Brittain, Dog had three more children - Barbara, Tucker and Lyssa - who he retained custody of.
But on the night before his wedding to fifth wife Beth, Dog received the horrific news that Barbara, 23, had been killed in a car accident.
He went ahead with the wedding as planned, but was forced to break the awful news to his friends and family at the reception.
Soon after, Tucker ended up at the heart of the racism scandal, while his daughter Lyssa wrote an explosive book where she said she had a "horrible life" owing to the "fighting and drugs" in Dog's household.
The fraught relationships Dog has with his kids are a sad reflection of his own upbringing.
Dog was raised in Denver, Colorado, alongside three siblings. His mum was a church minister and his dad was a welder for the US Army and a keen boxer.
In his book, Dog reveals that his dad used to beat him relentlessly with a wooden paddle and batter him in boxing matches at home whenever he did something wrong.
He claims his dad told him the beatings were to toughen him up.
"Because of my religious upbringing, I thought my dad was punishing me for being a terrible sinner," Dog writes.
"Until very recently, I never understood that none of his abuse was my fault.
"To this day, if I get a sunburn anywhere on my body, it reminds me of my childhood beatings. Just thinking of the abuse I endured can make me cry."
Against this backdrop of violence and aggression, Dog struggled in school and dropped out at he age of 13.
Instead of taking lessons in the classroom, he turned to a motorbike gang to educate him about life on America's roads, where he was reportedly arrested multiple times for offences including armed robbery.
As the bounty hunter admits in his book: "I spent the first twenty-three years of my life on the wrong side of the law. The only thing I knew about the law was a thousand ways to break it."
Today, with all that tragedy in the past and a desire to do the right thing, Dog is happily married to Beth - his on-off girlfriend ever since he was a teenager.
Fans of his show will know that she shares his passion for catching bad guys: she stars alongside him and also works as a bounty hunter.
You'd think the pair would be looking forward to a quiet retirement but, with no sign of the pair stopping any time soon, you'd probably be barking up the wrong tree.
