Montgomery County canine unit gets certified, brings home awards

Two Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office canines brought home trophies after their annual certification this month. 

Deputies Nate Elwood and Rick Mitchell participated in the certification process in Des Moines earlier this month. Elwood’s three-year-old German Shepherd, Rex, brought home a trophy for first place in the tough dog competition and an award for patrol case of the year. 

Mitchell’s dog is a 14-month-old Belgian Malinoise, German Shepherd mix named Rush that became a new member of the force a little more than a month ago. 

The certification is done through the Heart of America Police Dogs Association, which covers Iowa, Kansas and some of Missouri. 

The dogs are certified yearly to make sure they are up to par for in-the-field operations. 

“More or less, what the certification does is make sure that the dogs are up to par on what they should be able to do on the street,” Mitchell said. “It’s required by us to make sure our dogs are certified. “

Following the certification, the organization hosts a competition for members in the categories of tough dog, detector dog and patrol dog. 

“After everybody’s certified, they go into a competition,” Mitchell said. “They have tough dog, detector dog and patrol dog. Everybody competes on that throughout the organization. Of course, this year, Nate won first place in tough dog competition.”

Along with the annual certification, handlers are required to keep up to federal standards and keep logs of their dogs’ work. 

“There’s a federal standard of 16 hours of continuing education with the dog every month. So, we usually train two times a month. It’s usually [all surrounding counties],” Elwood said. “We all get together because we can be decoys for each others’ dogs and everything. Somebody else can hide narcotics and we can go search with our dog for them. We don’t know where they are either so we’re not queuing the dog or anything. Then we have training records that we have to upkeep. So, if they were ever looked at by the courts or anything, then we can show, ‘yes, we kept our training in tact.’ Every time we deploy our dog, there’s a document for that as well.”

Both dogs are from I80 K9 Services in Atlantic, where the owner, Kyle Quist, imported the dogs from Slovakia. Quist requires purchasers to go through a five-week handler’s course to bond and train with the dogs.

Earlier this year, funds were raised to pay for Mitchell’s new dog. The dogs cost around $12,000 each. 

“One hundred percent of those funds we raised through donations and we did a big golf tournament, we did some raffles,” Elwood said. “We actually raised 100 percent of funds to purchase [Rush].”

The sheriff’s office plans to continue raising funds for future K9 unit needs by hosting an annual golf tournament. 

The deputies said along with receiving discounted food through Orscheln Farm and Home, the dogs receive donated vaccines, medications and care from Dr. Merlyn Knudson at Ingmand Animal Hospital in Red Oak. 

When it comes to caring for the dogs, the deputies said they are constantly together and the animals become a part of the family. 

“It’s just like another child. It really is,” Mitchell said. “They’re with us all the time and it’s no different than if they were children.”