On Sept. 11 Gr. 1 students received a visit by a few officers from the San Jose Police Department’s K-9 unit. The officers explained how the dogs are trained for their role in law enforcement and explained how they can pick up a person’s scent and alert officers to their presence. For example, if the dogs discover someone in a tree, they will circle the trunk and bark to let police officers know the location of their target.

The kids also got to pet the well-behaved, friendly German shepherds, which are trained in Germany for 18 months and then shipped to the U.S. Because of this, the dogs receive their instructions in German and Czech, rather than English.

2009_09 LS K-9 Visit SLIDESHOW – Images by The Harker School