Henry County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Blake G. Hankins and K9 Edo earned their national certification through the North American Police Work Dog Association (NAPWDA) last month.
Henry County Sheriff Wayne Davis said NAPWDA is the premier certifying organization for law enforcement canines across the country.
“All dogs that we currently utilize are certified by NAPWDA. We currently have four” police dogs, he said.
Edo, a five-year-old Belgian Malinois and German Shepherd mix, had already received his certification. However, as his previous handler was promoted, Hankins became his new handler.
“So it required both the dog and the handler to get retrained and recertified,” he said.
Edo has served with the Sheriff’s Office for three years.
Davis said Edo will serve in the patrol division where his primary responsibility will be the protection of the community through searching for criminals who have fled the scenes of crimes, apprehending those individuals, and the detection of narcotics.
Edo is Hankins’ first K9 dog.
When getting certified, Hankins said he believes the biggest obstacle the pair had to overcome was establishing a level of trust between them.
“After that he’s already trained, so the training took off and there’s really no stop after that. We’re pretty good. Every handler handles a dog differently, so he had to learn what I was asking and what I expected from him but at the same time I had to learn how he’s been trained and what he understands and go from there,” he said.
In the approximate four weeks they’ve been partnered together, Hankins said Edo’s kept him on his toes.
“He’s eager. He loves to work, he has a very high drive, he really enjoys his job, so it’s fun. It’s a good time,” he said.
Hankins believes Edo’s favorite part of the job is the patrol work, the apprehension of criminals, and finding narcotics.
“ He’s a narcotics dog, so” he really knows “how to find narcotics. I can’t speak for the previous owner, but he’s very successful when it comes to locating narcotics. We’ve only been out of training for, I’d say about three weeks, so we haven’t gotten any real work experience yet with narcotics. During training and everything he was very successful, he had no issues at all,” he said.
Within the first three weeks of being certified, Hankins said he’s utilized Edo about a dozen times, primarily in searching for narcotics around vehicles.
“I use him any chance I get. I mean, that’s why he’s here. He’s a good asset to the community. Probably his favorite thing to do is come to work and get to work. Every time we get him out he’s excited, he gets straight to work, – he’s a good dog,” he said.
Knowing there’s a lot of substance abuse in Henry County, Hankins believes Edo serves the community well in working to get narcotics and dealers off the street.
Outside of work, Edo lives with Hankins.
“He stays with me 24/7. He has a kennel he stays in,” he said.
