DOTHAN, Ala. – K-9 police teams from across the country are here in Dothan this week sharpening their skills.
The k-9 seminar is meant to expand the dog’s abilities, with 6 venues throughout Dothan the dogs can run-through their specialties.
Lt. William Wozniak, Dothan Police K-9 Trainer said, “So we have detection venues for narcotics and explosives and then we have man searching they’re searching for a man, building searching area searching set up.”
The scenarios are meant to provide an experience that is as close to real world scenarios as possible.
Wozniak said, “Expose dogs to things they’ll see on the street that they normally won’t do in training.”
The dogs are trained to go from room to room scanning the entire area until they find what they’ve been set out to find in many cases it could be a pipe bomb like this or narcotics. As for the handlers, the networking done with teams from across the country helps them stay better equipped.
“Everybody sees different things when they deploy in the real world so this gives these guys an on the street we can relay that stuff to ensure other dog teams prepare for those same situations,” Wozniak said.
As the teams run through the courses, handlers learn to better trust in their dogs ability and the dogs learn to successfully reach the route of the source.
Houston K-9 Academy President, Jaz Stanze said, “What we do is we try to build up the teams, especially with the times that we’ve been going through the lack of support on the law enforcement we want this to not only be a morale booster but also to remind the guys to have fun with what they’re doing, have fun with the dogs and create an effective and efficient team.”
The seminar itself has grown tremendously since it started in the 90′s. For Lt. Wozniak who’s been there from the start it boils down to, “Changing lives one handler at a time… you know so,” Wozniak said.
The k-9 police world is small, but mighty. Dothan’s 2 newest police k-9s Tirion and Hank participated in the seminar for the first time
