supporters of the Audrain County K9 Program over the years. Jax is Sgt. Chism’s second K9. Like Sheriff Oller, his former partner, Chal, was retired after the passage of Amendment 3. Dwain Shelton at Shelton Seed and the crew at Graf and Sons will also donate food for Jax. Sgt. Alan LeBel with the Callaway County Sheriff’s Office and his new K9 Tajfun were also part of the Boone County graduation class. Tajfun is a 17-month-old Belgian Malinois born in Poland. He, too, was purchased from Shallow Creek Kennels. This is Sgt. LeBel’s second K9. “I have always wanted to be a K9 handler ever since I got into law enforcement. I have always owned dogs, and I enjoy working with them. In my opinion, there is no better job in law enforcement than being a K9 handler,” Sgt. LeBel said, adding that the sheriff’s office had no additional cost because he is using the same equipment he used for K9 Iro. Diamond Dog Food is donating Tajfun’s food. Deputy Caleb Cromer with the Boone County Sheriff’s Office is a first-time canine handler. He said he got interested in working with K9s early in his career. “I found it fascinating to watch the dogs being utilized for roadside investigations during traffic stops. I enjoy proactive policing, as well as assisting other law enforcement personnel on investigations, so being a K9 handler will allow me more opportunity to participate in that kind of work,” he said. His new partner is a 17-month-old Belgian Malinois named Odin, who was born in Poland. He did not pick his own K9. Instead, his dog was selected by Director Smith, who accompanied the rest of the group to Pennsylvania to help them choose their K9s. Bourn Feed and Supply have provided the Boone County Sheriff’s Office K9 Teams with donated dog food for many years and promised to continue that practice into the future. Linn County Sheriff Jeff Henke said when he ran for sheriff in 2019, he was the K9 handler and sergeant at the Brookfield Police Department. “When I won the election, the City of Brookfield allowed me to take K9 Nitro with me to the sheriff’s office, so I ran K9 Nitro until January of 2023 when Amendment 3 took effect,” he said. Sheriff Henke was on vacation when the others from the class were in Pennsylvania choosing their dogs, so his dog, Zloty, was selected for him. Zloty is an 18-month-old German Shephard from Hungary. Because Sheriff Henke uses the same equipment used with K9 Nitro, very little money was needed to equip his new K9 partner. Ag-Land of Brookfield provides Zloty’s food, and the vet services are being provided at no cost to the county from Montgomery Vet Clinic. “K9 Zloty will go to work with me every day. Being the sheriff, I have a lot of administrative duties, but I still remain active in patrol as well, so Zloty will be used frequently.” Deputy Travis Weaver with the Howell County Sheriff’s Office said since starting in law enforcement, working narcotics had always been his passion. “I felt that having a valuable locater tool like a detection K9 would open so many doors and would be a major asset to the community. Having a K9 Partner also sounded like a lot of fun. I have a soft spot for animals, and working alongside ‘man’s best friend’ was really a dream come true,” he said. While selecting his new partner, Ares, an 18-month-old German Shepard
from the Czech Republic, 16 dogs were demoed. But Ares was the only dog that approached him. “I felt an immediate connection to him. Although I still struggled with the choice of choosing between 16 dogs, I felt that K9 had somewhat chosen me.” Although most equipment had already been obtained, he hopes to get funds to build a fence to improve both K9s’ quality of life. Hirsch Feed and Farm Supply in West Plains supplies food for Ares and other Howell County K9 Units.
Reprinted with permission from The Missouri Sheriff magazine.
K9s Bring Loyalty and a Super Power to the Job
The phrase “a dog is a man’s best friend” is believed to have been coined in 1789 by King Frederick of Prussia. Legend has it that the king said, “The only, absolute and best friend that a man has, in this selfish world, the only one that will not betray or deny him, is his Dog.” Nowhere is that loyalty and love more apparent than between a law enforcement officer and his or her K9 partner. The time and effort devoted to training together creates a bond like no other. Officers rely heavily on their K9 partners to be there when they’re needed. Also invaluable is the trained K9’s ability to sniff out drugs, bombs, weapons, evidence, and people. A dog’s sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times more acute than a human’s. Googling “dog’s sense of smell” produced more than 14 million results from experts — veterinarians, the American Kennel Club, the National Institutes of Health, Purina, NOVA, animal research organizations, universities, and more — explaining that dogs possess up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses. In contrast, human noses have five to six million. That’s not their only smelling advantage. The part of a dog’s brain devoted to analyzing smells is about 40 times greater than a human’s. A dog’s snout is even structured in such a way that, while sniffing for odors, the spent air exits through the slits in the sides of their noses so that even the faintest of scents is not disturbed. All those factors combined mean a dog’s sense of smell is powerful enough to detect substances at concentrations of one part per trillion, comparable to a single drop of food coloring in 18 million gallons of water.
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