Bond wins at K-9 contest
Olney K-9 Officer Bond and his partner, Officer Miranda Wright, came home winners from a grueling weeklong competition in Graham against elite police K-9 teams from across North Texas.
Bond, a 3-year-old Belgian Malinois, captured the second prize for his Evidence Detection skills at the Region 25 U.S. Police Canine Association competition, which began March 15. It was Bond’s first competition since taking up his duties in Olney last September.
He and Wright competed against four other teams for Patrol honors. Patrol is made up of agility, obedience, suspect search and apprehension and evidence detection, Region 25 President Kirk Horton said.
The first-day contests included obedience, in which a judge calls out commands to the handler and dog; agility, in which the dog completes an obstacle course; and suspect detection, in which the dog finds a person hidden in one of a series of large boxes.
On the second and third days, the teams competed in narcotics, firearm and explosives detection and recovery, and suspect apprehension, in which the dogs bite and subdue a person wearing a protective sleeve. The fourth day was taken up with tracking a scent trail that was at least 3o minutes old.
Wright and Bond received their prize at a banquet on the final night of the contest.
“It was a pleasant surprise, considering that we were competing against much larger and more experienced departments,” Wright said. “He had a blast - he got to find the drugs and the bad guys.”
Twenty dogs competed in one or more of these contests – including Graham Police Department Officer Hailey Calcote and her partner, Wolf, who won third prize in evidence detection.
The Patrol competition included Bond and Wright, Barco and Officer Tim Cox and Tipp and Officer Cory Davis from the Abilene Police Department, Jax and Officer Quentin Hall from the Vernon Police Department, and Khaleesi and Constable Kirk Horton from the Clay County Sheriff ’s Department. All dogs but Khaleesi, a giant schnauzer, were Belgian Malinois.
The award for Top Dog went to Jax and Hall, who also placed first in the Patrol contest. Tipp and Davis placed second and Khaleesi and Horton placed third in Patrol. Officer Trey Baxter and Edor of Montgomery County Fire Marshal’s Office won Rookie Dog. Officer Alfred Dixon and Karma of the Abilene Police Department bested Wright and Bond for the top Evidence Detection Award.
Bond also emerged from the contest with a USPCA certification in patrol and narcotics and National Police Canine Association certification in narcotics, which are important credentials to have when taking K-9 evidence to the court, Horton said.
“If one of these cases goes to court and the defendant wants to challenge the level of training, the USPCA will send a subject matter expert to testify on behalf of (police) for free,” Horton said.
Bond also did some real-world detecting at the Olney High School and Olney Junior High School campuses, where he swept student lockers and classrooms for evidence of narcotics. The search yielded no drugs – just contraband like cell phones, vape pens and tobacco products, Chief Dan Birbeck said.
“The best thing is, we didn’t find any narcotics. We are proud of the students that we didn’t find any illicit narcotics on campus. The only thing that was located was minor contraband,” Birbeck said.
Olney Independent School Administrator Greg Roach said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We are in the kid business, not the gotcha business. Drug testing and the use of the drug dog are targeted to be preventative in nature and give students a good reason to say no.”