The Limestone County Sheriff’s Office hasn’t had their own K9 since 2013 when they gave Kilo to the Alabama Department of Corrections.

Now, 10 years later, Kilo’s former handler and now sheriff, Josh McLaughlin, plans on adding four-legged officers back into their team.

“I’m actively pursuing bringing K9s back to Limestone County,” Sheriff McLaughlin said.

Though Kilo has recently died, her relationship with the sheriff remained until her retirement as ADOC worked with the LCSO, since they no longer had a dog of their own.

Of course he said that relationship has been helpful for the department, but there’s nothing like having one of your own.

“The quicker we can get there in those situations and have a dog available the better the outcome will be most of the time,” he said.

With the growth of Limestone County, one of the benefits to having a K9 program is to be able to go into schools with the dog. He said Kilo was “a good asset” to keeping the schools safe.

“There’s a lot more kids in the schools. This day and age, there’s a lot more stuff out there. I go to the schools regularly to talk to the children about narcotics,” he said. “You don’t want those influences at school, if possible, and [a K9 program] is one more thing to help do that.”

He said some of Kilo’s training was actually in an old school building, so that translated really well for some of her work here.

McLaughlin knows well about how expensive and time consuming it can be to bring a K9 into the office. He did the research and training to bring Kilo in 2010. He found a place in Kansas, Canine Working Dog International, where where he and Kilo trained for several weeks.

“K9s are expensive. The programs aren’t cheap. But she more than contributed to this department and what we paid for was nothing to what she brought back to our community, just pulling narcotics off the street,” McLaughlin said. “There are a lot of cases we never would’ve made without the benefit of a K9 or of Kilo.”

The plan is for these dogs to be single-purpose, like she was, meaning they will be scent-dogs to assist with narcotics searches and tracking items, the sheriff said.

“Hopefully by the end of the year I’ll have at least two in place,” he said.

He wants to have one at the department by September, and he would like to ultimately have four total.

“I’d like to have one for every shift that we have, so that you always have that benefit out there to assist the officers,” McLaughlin said.

Right now, he said they’re in the process of acquiring equipment and talking to trainers. Next month, the North Alabama Canine Expo is going to be at the Limestone County Sheriff’s Arena from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on April 22. The sheriff said the group putting on the event expects over 40 vendors already. On the event’s Facebook page, five demonstrations are also planned.

“They’re going to make a contribution out of whatever they get from the Canine Expo toward helping the K9 program here at the sheriff’s office. So, we’re very thankful for that,” McLaughlin said.