JONESBOROUGH, TN – The Washington County Sheriff’s Office has a new working dog with a new handler, and the pair is pretty special.
K9 Sgt. Balu is a two-and-a-half-year-old German Shorthaired Pointer and the first Kinetic Explosive Detection Dog (KEDD) in Tennessee. His handler is Deputy Katy Pellien, who is WCSO’s first female K9 handler. She is also a School Resource Officer, currently assigned to Gray School.
“When we began the search to add a new dog to our program, we knew we needed an explosives detection dog,” Sheriff Keith Sexton said. “We worked with Global K9 Protection Group in Alabama, and they suggested we have a handler that hadn’t worked with narcotics dogs before because kinetic detection dogs work differently.”
Balu is part of Global K9’s Paws on Patrol School Safety Program. It is the first in the nation to focus on using dogs trained for explosives and firearms in a school setting. The dogs are trained to be deployed in a dynamic campus environment, using a layered security approach that brings law enforcement, school officials and K9 officers together.
Continue reading at www.johnsoncitypress.com