The VT Police Canine Association began in 2000 as a non-profit association to support VT’s Police K9 Teams with additional training, equipment and other needs. Although our non-profit Association is relatively new, VT’s Police Canine Program began over 30 years ago, and has been credited with hundreds of arrests, hundreds of lives saved, tons of drugs seized, and millions of dollars in seized assets.
Many of our working dogs have been donated, some departments are able to purchase a dog from a credible breeder, and some handlers have even purchased the dog individually. Many of these dogs come with their fair share of issues: unknown fears (to include gunfire, large animals, and shiny floors), lack of socialization, and aggression concerns to name a few.
In 2008 one of our senior handlers, Cpl. Ed Hunter (and K-9 Xerxes) of the VT State Police began our Police Puppy Program. In this program, the VPCA acquires (donated or purchased) puppies and places them with foster families. The families are given a small stipend, but their job lasts for months.
As a foster family, they are responsible for the day to day care of the puppy, basic obedience training, exposing the dog to new environments, socializing the puppy with other animals (dogs, cats, and whatever else they can find), exposing the puppy to children, and placing the puppy in every environment that the puppy, as a future working dog, may experience.
Each family has an assigned handler to work with should problems arise, and to guarantee the puppy’s success.
We purposely keep this program small to avoid an excess of dogs and to be able to maintain the level of quality in our program. Although we occasionally have a need for foster families, we are not currently seeking any new families to participate.
We have successfully placed several puppies, as grown adults, with new handlers to attend basic training. To date, all of our puppies have made it through our basic training program to become certified VT Police K-9’s.