K9 Officer

[Midwest Rotormedic]

Hello, I am trying to find out if anyone has transported a K9 officer and his partner by air before. If so I have a ton of questions to ask.

The reason this is coming about is I was approached by a local K9 unit about transporting the K9 if it were injured and due to distances to an Emergent Vet, this might be an option.

Thanks for any help.

[takefootoff]

There was an article recently that said people got in trouble for doing the same thing you mentioned.

[Flying Pig]

My unit trains for it pretty regular. Done it in an MD500, B206 and UH1H and even in a Cessna. Just did a large training day with 20 handlers and dogs 2 days ago. Ive been called a couple times for injured dogs, but they always opted for ground trans for some reason. This is as an LE pilot, not EMS. One location was far beyond the range of the helicopter. They wanted to go about 300 miles away. So the mission ended up being done in an airplane with the dog in a cage. The other was a rattle snake bite. Again, they opted for ground transport. For an injured K9... it would have to be pretty serious. Muzzled, etc. As we all know... having an injured dog with the abilities of a police k9 in the back of your flying machine could go real bad real fast.

 

As a pilot, the risk v reward aspect is pretty far leaning to the risk side. Can the handler go also? Does the handler even know the first thing about being in a helicopter or is the handler as much of a risk as the dog? When you deal with handlers, their drive to protect their dog is on par with how people treat their children. So thats a consideration thats very real. Imagine transporting a small injured child AND having mom in the back with your medics. It can be done, but Id have reservations about doing it without the dog in a crate depending on how your helicopter is set up and the willingness of your medical crew to be exposed to a injured pissed off land shark.

 

If you want to PM me it would probably be easier to talk vs type.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Flying Pig

[Spike]

By policy, the allied agency K9 unit must have received training from us in order to fly with us. We have even gone as far as to supply the unit a “certificate of attendance” upon completion of the training. The dog must be muzzled and secured by the handler by having the leash pass through a floor hard-point carabineer regardless of dog specialty; ala bite, sniff, search…... However, we do not specify the condition of the dog. That is, our policy does not specify transportation of an “injured” dog. Therefore, because they’ve left that door open for interpretation by management, I’d probably say negative to the request….. And, even though we train with local and fedreal K9 units and CARDA teams several times a year, in the last 15 years, we've never had to transport any dog operationally.....

[Bonzo828]

Not much I can add other than to say, yes, this is done all the time. As long as the policy / SOP and training are in place.

[OH58A]

Like the Flying Pig, we train to transport K-9s all the time. We have a policy in place.