Drug sniffing dog, deputy earn national honor
Published: July 11, 2006
With doubts hanging all around them because of their inexperience in the drug sniffing business, a Garvin County deputy and his K-9 dog beat the odds and have received an unexpected national honor.
Passing the test and receiving national certification was the relatively new K-9 team of Sgt. Chad Hillis and a white 19-month-old Labrador known as Calvin.
Hillis and his new four-legged partner have only been working together since early February training to master the difficult task of finding illegal drugs.
After getting state certified in May, the two then traveled to Mississippi in late June to take part in a national certification school — a school designed to both train and test Calvin and his handler in the law enforcement routine of finding narcotics hidden away from the world.
When the week was over they erased the doubts of some, namely instructors, and earned one of the many high level certifications out there.
“There’s people out there who have been K-9 handlers for a long period of time that have never even attempted to get a national certification,” Hillis said.
“For me and Calvin to go in six months time and receive this certification is pretty astonishing I guess because we’re so young to the K-9 business,” he said.
“The certification was more than what I expected. The first couple of days I wasn’t really sure. But it proves to me that no matter what distractions we have we can do it — him and I together.”
Calvin came to the Garvin County Sheriff’s Department with only some obedience training when he was given at no cost by the Lindsay Police Department.
Since that time both Calvin and Hillis have been learning together what it will take to be an effective K-9 team trying to find such drugs as methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin.
The two took that training to a whole new level at the national certification school.
“The state’s test is not an easy test, but the national test is that much tougher,” Undersheriff Steve Brooks said.
“The national test just takes it up a notch.”
The testing, which includes time limits and stricter rules and regulations, focuses on two main areas — searches of a typical residential house and vehicles.
The house run includes two drug “finds” somewhere in a three-room area, while the remaining test includes a couple of narcotic concealments in two of four vehicles.
However, the school didn’t start out so well for the Garvin County team as both Calvin and Hillis were struggling with their nerves and a testing procedure in the unfamiliar surroundings of Mississippi.
“The second day we didn’t do so good. When we went into the house I was nervous, he was nervous. I couldn’t get him real fired up,” Hillis said.
“Calvin is a young dog and me being an inexperienced handler, I really didn’t know what to think. The only thing I knew was to work him and go from there.”
Adding to the problems was neither one had been exposed to training for searches inside a house.
It was at that point the training instructors told Hillis they didn’t believe Calvin had the necessary drive for this level of certification.
It was also then Hillis realized that whether or not they passed the testing he was going to use the experience to learn more and progress as a K-9 team.
“We had nothing to lose. We were going to come out on top somehow, someway. I knew that if we could learn one thing from the school it would be beneficial to us,” he said.
“As time went on Calvin kind of loosened up, I loosened up and he did good. When we did our certification runs he did what he was supposed to do.”
For a testing run inside the house, the clock was set at 10 minutes for the team to conduct their search patterns and find the two locations of hidden narcotics.
It was in the second room where Calvin first showed an odor response to the drugs, which were hidden in a wooden box placed on top of a refrigerator.
That was followed by an alert in the third room on a filing cabinet with a microwave on top.
The next part of the certification process was for the team to find two hidden drug spots somewhere in four vehicles.
Calvin found the drugs in the allotted time concealed in a bumper and a gearshift compartment.
Credited with three out of the four “finds,” the team passed the testing and got the higher level certification.
“What this does is it builds his credentials up and mine also as far as his training and knowledge and being able to detect narcotics,” Hillis said.
“That’s what Calvin is, a drug detection dog.”
And for the record, two of the 10 teams present at this particular school didn’t pass the certification testing, Hillis added.
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