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Saturday, 26 January 2008 |
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 Officer Brian Bigelow of the Benton Police Department welcomes his new partner, Lucky, who will serve on the K-9 unit. Lucky is an 18-month-old Belgian Malinois and has extensive training from the Little Rock K-9 Academy. (Courier photo by Matt Burks) By Matt Burks Benton Police Department has welcomed an 18-month-old Belgian Malinois onto the force.
Lucky will serve as the newest member of the K-9 unit.
“Lucky is our newest officer,” Sgt. Kevin Russell said. “He is the second K-9 unit that we have along with Rudy. We are looking forward to having another K-9 unit on the street to help eradicate the drug use in Benton.”
Officer Brian Bigelow, who owns Lucky, said he has been training with him for the past couple of months at the Little Rock K-9 Academy. Lucky has been trained in narcotic detection, tracking, area and building searches and criminal apprehension.
“He has been trained to locate marijuana, meth, cocaine and heroin,” Bigelow said. “He knows how to track people. That tracking can be for missing people or, of course, tracking down a criminal. He also is trained in handler protection, which basically gives him the right to attack someone if they attack me. That is the one time when he is allowed to disobey my order.”
The training for both Bigelow and Lucky was financed with drug seizure money, Russell said.
“We’ve put in quite a few hours together,” Bigelow said. “It cost around $8,000 for the training for both of us, but we paid for training for the life of the dog. Anytime I want to get him trained in something, I can just go up to the academy and start the training.”
Bigelow said he first noticed Lucky sometime in the fall.
Since that time, they have bonded and Lucky always looks forward to going to work, he said. Wednesday was his first day on the force.
“Out of the four dogs at the training academy at that time, Lucky was the best tracking dog,” Bigelow said. “I thought he was the best out of all of them, so I was really happy to get him. He has a great temperament and he loves to be loved on. When I get up and get ready for work, he starts pacing the fence back and forth. He is always ready to go to work.”
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