I presume many of the people who frequent this board have some relationship to LE and military K-9. I have a question. What happens to the dogs that can no longer serve? Be it health issues or age (also healthe issues, I guess). What's the norm, most common faith? Are they put down, adopted out, adopted by their handlers, what? Did it change significantly over the years?
In our police department the last handler has the option of keeping the dog in his retirement years. The dog is actually sold to the handler for $1.00. I believe that this is typically the norm.
Unfortunately in the military the fate of the dog can be quite different. I remember a few years ago an exceptional K-9 team from the Marine base in Cherry Point NC. The hander was getting out of the service. The dog was to be put to down. An awful waste. I don't know if this is the general rule for all military working dogs. It is a very archaic way of viewing K-9 teams.
A few years back the law was changed to make the Armed Services offer retired dogs for adoption. It's restricted to "law enforcement agencies, former handlers of these dogs, and other persons capable of caring for these dogs."
A few months ago, one of the cable channels had a nice documentary on the training program at Lackland. They briefly touched on the adoption of retired dogs and the evaluation of the dogs for adoptability. Somehow, I don't think many of the patrol or sentry dogs pass that test. According to the DOD Adoption page (update 12/2002) only 5 dogs were available.
I suspect most still meet the same fate as the dogs used in Vietnam.
According to the law, the military is supposed to report to Congress the number of dogs adopted, the number killed and the reasons why the killed dogs were not adopted. There should be some way to get a copy of that report, possibly through your local congress-critter.
Here is the link to the page for retired military K9's
our department allows the handler to adopt the K9 whenever the handler or K9 is no longer either fit for service or retires. We have 2 handlers who were given their K9 when the first handler became temp. disabled and the second received a promotion that would not allow him to feasably remain a handler. The handler takes full responsibility of the K9 from that point on.
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