Every dog has its day.
Monday was that day for Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office K-9 unit veterans Boss, Igor and Diablo. The three dogs have now retired, trading in their official duties for tennis balls.
Diablo’s handler, Sgt. Thomas Honnell, said it is tough seeing his partner retire, after his many years of service and having each others’ backs.
“It’s been one of those where when I’ve needed him, he’s been there,” Honnell said. “And he was the first (K-9) that I ever got so it’s kind of a special relationship between me and him.”
Thankfully, Diablo will be able to stay with Honnell after retirement, though he will now be doing it much more like a typical dog. Honnell said Diablo will get to enjoy “living his best life in the backyard with a good fence.”
Boss and Igor will be enjoying similar lives with their owner and handler, Sgt. Jeff Edmondson.
“They’re already used to coming home and chilling after the shift is over with,” Edmondson said. “Now they just get to chill all the time.”
Sheriff Eddie Hawkins said each of the dogs had served for about a decade on average before being retired. Diablo, 11, and Igor, 12, are trained in narcotics detection and apprehension, he said, while Boss, 11, is trained in bomb detection.
“You don’t want to train a dog on two different types of odors,” he said. “If you’re training him on explosives or guns or something that can be used as an IED, you want that separate from narcotics.”
Hawkins said that, like humans, dogs get older. Canines in a physical profession like police work can suffer from issues like hip problems, he said, so eventually it comes time to retire them.
“Once they get to where they start showing times of physical incapabilities, that’s when we look at phasing them out of the program,” Hawkins said.
The K-9 unit is not going away. Walking in their paw prints, four new recruits will succeed the veteran trio.
Rip, Scorpion, Rocky – all nearly 2 years old – and 5-year-old Gero are all trained in narcotics detection and apprehension. Hawkins said the office will look to add a new bomb detection dog in the future.
Gero was donated from the Webster County Sheriff’s Office after his handler left the program. Gero has been paired with Deputy Hunter McBride.
“So far, it’s very enjoyable,” McBride said, who has worked with Gero for about three weeks. “When I first got him, we were kind of feeling each other out. Since then, it’s been spot on. He’s learned a lot about me and I’ve learned a lot about him.”
Edmondson said dogs are trained from the age of six weeks to 17 months, but once they are paired with their handlers, the training never ends.
His new partner, Rocky, is “rambunctious everywhere he goes,” but will calm down with time.
“Igor was the same way, but the older he got, the more he knew that when he saw me put my uniform on, it was all business,” Edmondson said.
“It was time to go to work. But when I got home and took his collar off and everything, he was like a pet. He’d run around and play with the kids and you can pet and love on him and do everything you wanted to do. But as soon as I put my uniform on and put his collar on, don’t mess with him.”
Kevin Edwards is news editor and reports on Starkville and Oktibbeha County government.
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