My department is in the process of looking for an additional canine. I will be handling it. We are going to be needing a dual purpose narcotics/patrol, finished dog. I am trying to get quotes together to bring before my Chief next week. It seems the going rate is around $10,000, does that sound about right to you guys? I have been talking a lot to a company called K9 Working Dogs International, they are going to be sending me a list of references so I can make some calls, but have any of you heard of them? The thing that stands out about them is their 5 year health and workability guarantee. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Been working on this for four years, so I want to make sure If we are going to spend 10 G's that we get what we pay for. Thanks.

Regardless of who you might purchase a dog from, caveat emptor - buyer beware. I would suggest you do a few things.

1. Treat all vendors like used car salesmen. Sure there are some very good ones out there. There are also some very good ones that will sell you a piece of caa caa.

2. Test the dog you are going to purchase. Do the test on neutral ground. Not somewhere the dog has recently or for that matter, ever trained. Use your decoy. Keep the test fair and reasonable. Have a list of what you expect that dog to do, and measure if it does it. For example, use a modified version of what USPCA or NAPWDA or one of the other certification agenences would use. Does the dog measure up to those standards.

3. When testing for drugs, use your drugs. Again, in an area the dog has not previously trained.The handler should not know where the drugs are located. I would even conduct a negative test (using a blank area) without the handler knowing it. Doesn't have to be long.

4. Spend an extra 200 bucks and have your own physical, including xrays, conducted on the dog before purchase. I've never met a vendor yet that would object to that. If a vendor did object, I would purchase that dog.

Regardless of the vendor, taking a few, relatively easy, precaustion can help ensure you get what you want.

DFrost

Thanks for the advice David. Things kind of wound up falling into place...just took a little patience. We are going to be going with Little Rock K9.