Two K-9 handlers from the Marquette City Police Department recently received certifications after attending the annual National K-9 Training Seminar in Alpena.

Handler Todd Collins, along with K-9 Scud, and handler John Waldo, along with K-9 Nitro, were among the 330 teams from the U.S. and Canada that attended the September seminar through the National Association of Professional Canine Handlers.

Collins and Waldo are the only two K-9 handlers in the MPD.

The certification was a first for Waldo, who partnered with Nitro in April so the two could become acquainted before training.

“It takes almost a year to concrete that bond between the dog and the handler,” Waldo said. “He is my dog, there is no question who his owner is, but it takes almost a year to get that trust.”

Nitro is a single-purpose detection dog and the only full-time K-9 in the Upper Peninsula trained to find explosives. Among explosives, the black lab is also trained to find firearms, ammunition and the like.

Waldo said different scenarios were set up for the different types of detection dogs during the training.

“With him being an explosive detection dog, they utilized some buildings and facilities at the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center,” he said. “It’s an international guard base, so we use their buildings and they hide explosives, dynamite, C-4s, all kinds of explosives. They hid them and I had to take Nitro through the building and locate all the explosives.”

Waldo said there’s a lot of pressure placed on dogs that are trained to find explosives.

“If he misses a bomb, there’s the possibility of life-threatening injuries and danger to the public,” Waldo said. “Obviously we want to find what we’re looking for, even in the narcotics area, but with a bomb dog, he can’t be wrong. He’s got to be right, so it requires a tremendous amount of ongoing training which we do weekly. Sometimes every other day I’m training with him.”

We would like to congratulate Collins and Waldo, as well as their four-legged co-workers, Scud and Nitro, for receiving this certification.