FORT SMITH — Mars Petcare donates food for the dogs in the Fort Smith Police Department’s K-9 unit and now has provided the means for them to work off those calories.
Mars employees joined Fort Smith Mayor Sandy Sanders and police officialsThursday morning in a short ceremony to open a K-9 training obstacle course for the department on the grounds of its Chaffee Crossing plant. The course is inside the company’s fence for security and to allow the dogs to run freely, Mars Petcare Site Manager Chris Haas said.
About half of the plant’s 125 employees volunteeredmore than 240 hours of their time and labor this week to build and lay out the course obstacles to replace a small facility the department had been using on land near downtown owned by one of the officer’s relatives.
Haas praised the employees’ effort in the company’s annual volunteer program that provides one paid daya year for employees to do volunteer work in the community.
“I’ve been in four other departments and this is the first time we’ve had this level of support for a K-9 unit,” Police Chief Kevin Lindsey said.
During the ribbon cutting ceremony, Sanders thanked the Mars employees for theirwork to help the department provide a better service for the community.
The course has a series of obstacles for the dogs to climb over, jump through or crawl under and mirrors the course needed for U.S. Police Canine Association certification, department K-9 unit leader Sgt. Brian Rice said.
He said the new course will benefit the four dogs in the unit by giving them new obstacles to learn. It also will help the four handlers as they watch the dogs react to the new obstacles.
Haas said the facility will be available to the department at any time.
Rice said the department will take Haas at his word. He said the handlers are required to give their dogs four hours of training each week. That’s on top of the other work they are called on toperform, which is growing all the time.
Each dog and handler works 12-hour shifts three days a week and are always on call, Rice said. While doing their regular patrol work, they are called on nearly every day to work with narcotics, detective or traffic division officers.
“They do their own thing but most of their time is spent helping other divisions,” he said.
And Patrol Division Major Chris Boyd said the handlers have to work with the dogs constantly to ensure they are sharp when called on and will work at peak efficiency.
And recently, the unit has begun working with the Fort Smith School District to conduct random searches of school lockers and cars in the school parking lots about every three weeks, Rice said. The added duties have stretched the unit thin, he said.
Because of the added duties, Lindsey said the department may consider adding a fifth dog to the unit next year. He said it wouldn’t cost the city additional funds because an officer would be transferred from within the department to the K-9 unit.
And the dog would cost the department nothing, Boyd said. He said the department uses drug forfeiture money to come up with the $14,000 a new K-9 unit dog costs.
The department also receives donated veterinary services for the dogs and a local business, Pet Wash, allows the department to use its facilities to wash and groom the dogs, Rice said.
Haas said Mars has been donating the unit’s food for about a year. The food comes from the Joplin, Mo., plant, which manufactures dry food. The plant at Chaffee Crossing makes wet food, he said.
Boyd said the food and other donated services save the department thousands of dollars a year.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 11/02/2012