BEND, OR -- Police dogs from all over the Pacific Northwest wrapped up a three-day training in Central Oregon, on Tuesday. Deschutes County Sheriff’s Deputy Kyle Joye is a master trainer who worked with the 140 teams from Oregon, Washington and Idaho as part of the Oregon Police K-9 Association event. "We go through both classroom and field work to get in front of people outside of our own departments and to get with state-recognized trainers," Joye told KBND News. "It's basically to better our teams to perform better on the streets. Plus, we learn from each other."
K-9s and their human partners participated in various field exercises in Bend and Redmond as part of their annual certification. "We’re broken in two groups: Patrol division works on tracking, as far as wanted people and they have updates on use of force. Then detection comes out and we are searching everything from cars to rooms and we have a refrigerated semi truck. So they get to work in a variety of settings." said Deputy Joye.
The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office currently has three patrol dogs for tracking wanted subjects, and one drug dog trained in finding controlled substances. Deputy Joye said those dogs are invaluable in the local law enforcement effort. "It’s immeasurable as far as savings of man hours. For example, we have a semi out here - it would take two deputies up to an hour or hour and a half to search that entire truck. You can imagine taking a little piece of drug and hiding it somewhere on a semi trailer, how long it would take to find it. We are clearing this entire trailer within a 5 to 10 minute timeframe."
Training events are held across the Northwest twice a year, coming to Bend every two or three years.
