Gage Vota PARTNERS — Harrison County Sheriff Mark Touville puts his office's new K-9 Sadie her badge as K-9 handler Devon Dowdle handles the K-9.

CADIZ — The Harrison County Sheriff’s Office has revived its K-9 program after nearly a decade without one.

Sadie is the newest addition to the office, and her handler, Devin Dowdle, said he believes the K-9 will help keep drugs out of the community.

“This is a huge asset for the county and surrounding counties, being that down the road, canine Sadie could be part of the joint task force that would allow us to help other communities keep their streets clean along with ours,” Dowdle said. “Our residents within the county can be assured that during our time on the road that there will be a lot more narcotics seized off the street.”

He added that the pair also will conduct school sweeps, checking lockers to ensure no drugs are present.

“That way, the residents of the county will know that there won’t be any narcotics on the school premises or on the roadways coming through the county,” Dowdle said.

He said the pair completed a four-week training session to ensure Sadie can detect narcotics and track fugitives.

“We did a four week training session. I had her for about a week or so before we initiated training to do a bond time. So she got used to me and after that, we graduated on April 3 and she’s been with me since,” he said.

The new program was made possible through a $15,000 donation to the office from Ascent Resources.

External Affairs Coordinator Brent Riggle said he was contacted by the Harrison County Community Improvement Corporation, which informed him the county had not had a K-9 in several years.

“Most of our folks live and work in this area. So we’re happy to give back when we can,” Riggle said.

Sheriff Mark Touville said he could not be happier that his office is able to have a K-9 program again.

“I’m just happy to be able to have this program and be able to have the collaboration with people of the county such as Ascent, the relationship with the prosecutor’s office, the county CIC and the county commissioners,” Touville said. “It’s a group effort to do things like this and I’m appreciative of everything that we can provide to make our community safer.”

The K-9 was purchased through local company 4NK9 Inc., a veteran-owned business that provides K-9 detection and security services.

4NK9 President Shain Nickerson said that before the K-9 was given to Dowdle for the four-week training classes, it went through an eight-week training program to learn narcotics detection.

Nickerson said the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office is the first local entity he has had the opportunity to work with, and he hopes it opens doors to more opportunities.

“The goal is to be the leader of what’s putting the dogs in the hands of these amazing officers that are out here every day. We’d like to be at the forefront of that. This is our first dog team here in the valley,” Nickerson said. “I’m not being arrogant by any means, but our background is very well known, there’s just a lot of competition here within 100 miles. We really hope this gets out and people see like, ‘Hey, you got guys in your backyard that are doing the same stuff, just as good, if not better.'”