BELLEVUE (NBC 26) — On Tuesday, there's new commentary on the future of a Sheriff's canine, which was recently separated from its handler.
The deputy handler, Beau Berger, is on leave, and a non-profit offered to buy the dog to keep him with the deputy, but the Brown County Sheriff's Office took the dog and will transition it to a new handler.
We spoke with a neutral party on the subject, an expert, about how much longer we might expect the dog — a 6-year-old Belgian Malinois named Dorian — to work for the County.
Watch Bellevue neighborhood reporter Karl Winter's full story here:
"As long as the dog is physically healthy — at least another three to four years I would expect," Ken Pavlick said.
Pavlick, the head trainer at Pacific Coast K9 in Washington state, has worked with police dogs for 50 years.
He says occasionally agencies will sell dogs to other agencies — but that it's much more common for dogs to train with a new handler.
"The people that say, 'Well, once the bond is there, it can't ever be broken' — if that was the case, then humans, when they divorce, shouldn't remarry and re-bond with another person," Pavlick said. "But it happens all the time in the human world, and it happens all the time with dogs and handlers."
We also spoke with Kevin Sheldahl, the owner and operator of K-9 Services in New Mexico. He said he trained Dorian and Deputy Berger.
Sheldahl expects Dorian to continue working for several years, and says: "The Sheriff is absolutely right. His press release gave you everything you need to know."
That press release from Sheriff Todd Delain Monday says Brown County K-9s are not for sale, and that Dorian is in the prime of his working career.
"It is important to know that Brown County has very successfully transitioned K-9s from one handler to another numerous times in the past," Delain wrote.
Tim Newtols, a retired Brown County Sheriff's Office K-9 handler, refuted that claim at Monday's County Public Safety Committee meeting.
"I don't remember how many that is, Todd, because I only remember two, and they were both single-purpose dogs," Newtols said.
Dorian is a dual-purpose dog, doing both detection and patrol.
If Dorian were to be reassigned to an experienced handler, Pavlick said the training process for the pair would take 6-8 weeks.
"The three largest agencies utilizing dogs for police work — the U.S. military, United States Border Patrol and the United States Customs and Border Protection, they all routinely reassign dogs to new handlers," Pavlick said. "The military, in fact, the dog stays at the base his entire life, and his handlers come and go, they just retrain with new handlers."
Critics of the decision to take Dorian from Deputy Berger have claimed the dog is dealing with pain and other medical issues and should be retired. The Sheriff says those claims are "misinformation."
More than 2,500 people have signed an online petition to keep Dorian with Deputy Berger.
The critics, including Wisconsin Vest-a-Dog non-profit founder Donna Morgan, who is offering to pay Brown County $20,000 to get a new K-9, say the dog should be able to retire and stay with Deputy Berger's family.
In the Sheriff's press release, he declined the offer, and said he also declined an offer from another agency to buy Dorian.
If Dorian is fully healthy, Pavlick says the dog could be expected to work for several more years.
"He probably started his working dog career with the agency somewhere between 15 months and two years, and barring any injuries or systemic disease that's going to medically disqualify him, he's more than capable of going to 8, 9, 10 years of age, easily," he said.
