Koda and Smith are currently undergoing an intense 12-week training course in Kettering, and Koda will officially be a licensed Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy, or OPOTA, K-9 in July.
After that, he will be making the rounds in the community to get to know everyone, the city said.
“He’s very friendly; he’s very sociable,” Smith said of his new partner. “Everything’s new, his nose is to the ground, he wants to sniff everything.”
Koda is a “green dog,” which means he has not had any prior training, Smith said. Dogs that are shipped from overseas to be K-9 officers have very little human interaction before they’re paired with a handler.
“The idea behind that is to allow that very special bond between the handler and the dog. And so that’s very new to him as well, the human affection and just interaction in general,” Smith said.
During his academy training, Koda will learn basic obedience, bite work, narcotics detection and how to track. German Shepherds are known to be intelligent dogs and typically easy to train, and Koda is catching on quick.
“That’s one of the things we noticed,” said Officer Smith, “He keys in on the handler, has attention to detail and stays on task.”
Koda and Smith will get to work in earnest in August, the city said, focused on drug activity in the city.
“We have struggled over the last few years with drugs in our community,” Smith said. “The jurisdictions around us that have dogs, the criminals know that, and it’s a pretty big deterrent to run from the police and to do business in our community.”
“It gives us a tool to take some of that off the streets, and make our community a safer place to live,” he added.
Xenia was a grant recipient from AKC Reunite, a non-profit organization that supports working K-9s, gives about 200 grants across the U.S. each year.
The city thanked Carol Frank-Poore with the local chapter of AKC Reunite for helping the police department obtain Koda, as well as Rural King the Xenia Walmart, and the Fairborn Police Dept. for their donations.
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