Page 7 - Highland Heights Annual Report 2018

K9 TIBA

K9 Tiba was utilized over 80 times in 2018. Her main
search area is vehicles, but she also searched schools,
lockers, houses, rooms, parking lots, the open spaces on
the sides of the highway, fitness areas, and tractor trailers.
Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines were
all found throughout the year, as well as the paraphernalia
used with these drugs. In addition, even though K9 Tiba
is not taught to indicate on prescription medication, many
pills being used illegally were located in conjunction with
the other illegal narcotics.

K9 Tiba trains several hours weekly. Her training
focused mainly on distractions and how to ignore them
and focus on searching for narcotics. Most places Tiba
searches have food, animal odors, or other interesting
odors that dogs want to stop and smell. Purposeful
training where the handler knows where food or odors
are placed helps to stop the K9 from paying attention to
these distractions and focus on finding the narcotic odor.
In addition, it helps handlers know how their K9 reacts to
an interesting smell or food as opposed to their reaction
to a narcotic odor. Body posturing is completely
different between the two reactions. Training also
consisted of adding in some of the more interesting forms
of marijuana that we have seen in the last year, such as
liquid, edibles, and wax.

K9 Tiba turned 7 in November of 2018 and has a clean
bill of health. She visited many groups this year,
including veterans, several rounds of school kids, Boy
Scouts, Girl Scouts, career days for kids and adults,
Touch-A-Truck events, City Fest, Heroes Day, and a 5k
benefitting K9s. She has a great personality and is always
good with people petting her. Having a friendly K9 that
is approachable is a great way to open up the lines of
communication with the public.

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