JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-RANDOLPH, Texas –
The 902nd Security Forces Squadron here welcomed the Comal
County Sheriff’s Department K-9 unit for a military working dog training exercise
Monday outside the JBSA-Randolph MWD kennel.
The exercise marked the first time in three years since the
902nd SFS has partnered with a local police department for training with MWDs,
said Tech. Sgt. Matthew Phillips, 902nd SFS kennel master.
Phillips said the new training areas, the exposure to
different scents of narcotics and explosives and allowing both departments to
become familiar with each other’s operating procedures were equally beneficial
factors for both organizations in forming a partnership.
“When we do joint training it is not just for the dogs, but
for the handlers too,” said Phillips. “Everyone coming together to share their
experiences and training techniques makes for an excellent training environment.”
The training exercise was designed to provide practice for dog
handlers and their dogs in finding explosives in a recreational vehicle lot, as
well as narcotics in an open field.
Currently the CCSD K-9 unit is training its dogs to work in
county courthouses and in schools to detect various explosives, said Deputy
Duane Buethe, CCSD K-9 unit corporal in charge.
“Some of the explosives that I need to make sure the dog will
find, only the military has,” said Buethe. “The military brings a lot of
information back from foreign conflicts that we’re not going to have experience
with. When they come back they share those things with us, and it helps us
understand, ‘Well that could be done here,’ and so we use those things to help
our program.”
For the next partnered training exercise, Phillips said the
902nd SFS will go out to work at the CCSD’s training area.
“They’ve got different experiences in law enforcement… and
with them, they get narcotics all the time,” said Phillips. “If they find narcotics,
they can then use it for training, so we can expose our dogs to a lot more on
the narcotics side and to new training areas off base.”
The 902nd SFS is home to six MWDs, with explosives and
narcotics training as part of their weekly duties. Phillips said each dog has a
training schedule and is “hitting odor” twice a week, as well as performing
force protection and working on obedience with their respective handler.
The dogs are also dual certified to perform bite work with
handlers and part of their training schedule can also include practice in finding
people.