Week 6 of the West Fargo Citizen’s Police Academy was originally booked for K-9 and DUI, but the vast wealth of information discussed on K-9 pushed DUIs to another date.

The West Fargo PD does not maintain its own K-9 units, but does utilize both Cass County Sheriff and Fargo PD K-9 units as needed.  All three officers of the Fargo K-9 presented at our class session, held at the West Fargo police station.

Officers on the K-9 unit apply and volunteer to be K-9 handlers, and undergo between 8 and 13 weeks of training with the dog that will become their partner.  All dogs of the Fargo K-9 unit are males by policy (females distract the males during qualification) and all go home with their handling officer after their shift is complete.

Two german shephards and one, um … other dog (dang, forgot its breed) make up the Fargo K-9 unit with the two german shephards as track and apprehend dogs (the other dog is a track only, used for the elderly, missing children and other non-violent situations).  All dogs are required to recertify each year, the german shephards twice yearly (for tracking and for apprehending).

The officers tag-teamed the presentation, throwing in personal anecdotes as appropriate and personal histories as needed.  Some great stories were told, and again you’ll have to take the class yourself to get them (c’mon, it’s free).

We were taken as a class to the garage where a small amount of marijuana was hidden.  The mystery dog (forgot its breed) came in first and immediately knew something was in the room.  He began searching in a cone pattern until he zeroed in on a garden hose reel.  This K-9 is trained in a passive search, meaning he sits when he has found his target — which he did and got his toy.

The second dog, a german shephard, also immediately knew something was in the room and also searched in a cone pattern.  This K-9, when he found his target, began scratching and biting to attempt to retrieve the baggie … this response is known as the active search.

We were then given a demonstration (using one of the K-9 Unit officers) of the apprehend portion of the german shephard’s training, using a bite sleeve.

As I said earlier, the K-9 information ran long and we were unable to get into DUIs, but they will be covered later.