Tank, Lakeville's Newest K-9 Has Graduated From Training School

This past year we celebrated the 25 year anniversary of our K-9 unit here at the Lakeville Police Department. Over the years, we have been fortunate to have six outstanding teams of great dogs with very dedicated and professional police K-9 handlers to serve our community. To date, every one of our police K-9s over the past 25 years have been specially bred German Shepherd dogs. The German Shepherds have always been selected because of their inherent qualities that make them very well rounded police general duty dogs. 

That tradition of using German Shepherd breed dogs exclusively for our police K-9 dogs is about to change this month with the deployment of our first police K-9 dog that is a Belgian Malinois breed. 

This past week, Tank, our newest police K-9 dog, graduated from basic police K-9 training with his handler, Officer Chad Loeffler. Tank and Officer Loeffler also trained with the Winnipeg Police Service K9 Unit this fall, focusing primarily on tracking. The training this past week in Brooklyn Park focused on a number of important police K-9 skills including tracking, obedience, agility, apprehension, and building searches. 

Tank is replacing Shadow, who retired from active service last month after six years of outstanding service to our community. Tank is a Belgian Malinois and Officer Loeffler, as an experienced police K-9 handler, has reported that he has been very pleased with Tank’s performance and progress in training so far. 

The Belgian Malinois breed was selected because they make very good police working dogs due to their natural high energy drive, tracking abilities, and strength and agility. Look for Officer Loeffler and Tank to be out and about, as they will begin their patrol duties now that they have completed the basic police K-9 training. 

WEEKLY LPD SNAPSHOT

Sampling of LPD activity for the week of Oct. 2 to Oct. 9, 2012 

Traffic crashes: 9 Alarms: 24 Animal Calls: 27 Medical Emergency Calls: 26 Thefts: 25 Traffic Stops: 148