GOOD BOYS GET TO RETIRE
Staties seek loving homes for couple of K-9s
When two state police K-9 officers made the difficult decision to put their retiring partners up for adoption, the agency posted a plea on Facebook for “safe, loving, forever homes” for the dogs.
What Lt. Patrick Silva, commanding officer of the State Police K-9 Unit, underestimated was the power of social media.
Within 24 hours, he received more than 1,000 emails from prospective new owners, and by last night, the emails were still coming, at a rate of three to four per minute.
Many were from dog lovers simply looking for a new pet, and then there were those from people with special needs, from veterans seeking therapy dogs to help cope with PTSD, to parents hoping for a dog that could anticipate seizures in their epileptic child.
“It’s going to be a very difficult decision,” said Silva, a handler himself. “A lot of these emails are heartwrenching.”
The dogs in question are Klauss, a 5 1⁄2-year-old Malinois-mix trained in both patrol and human-remains detection, and Alex, an 8-year-old German Shepherd trained in patrol and narcotics detection — two of the department’s 59 dogs.
Over the past year, eight state police dogs have retired, Silva said, and all of them have remained in the care of their handlers.
Klauss’s handler was promoted and had to leave the K-9 Unit, however, and because he already has a retired state police dog at home, he doesn’t have space for a second. And Alex has reached retirement age, and his handler has a new department dog and another police dog at home.
“Both of these men have wrestled with this decision for several months,” Silva said. “As a handler, you spend more time with your dog than with your family. The dog is like another child. They’re trying to put the dog’s best interests ahead of what they want.”
In the coming weeks, the department will narrow down the list of prospective owners and conduct interviews with and run background checks on those who seem most promising.
The ideal home for each of the dogs would be a place such as another police department or a civilian search-and-rescue team, where they could continue to work, he said. The second choice would be a home with someone who has trained or is at least familiar with police, military or sporting dogs.
“I wouldn’t give them to a home that’s just looking for a new pet,” Silva said. “These are the Ferraris of dogs. You need to know how to drive them.”