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A police dog, also known as K-9 or K9 (a homophone of canine), is a dog specifically trained to assist members of law enforcement. Dogs have been used in law enforcement since the Middle Ages.

Police K9s are specially bred service dogs who undergo extensive training, enabling them to assist their human partners with a variety of important tasks. Common K9 duties include suspect tracking and apprehension, narcotic and explosive detection, and search and rescue.

K9 is short for the word "canine," which is an English and French translation of the word "dog." K9s are dogs that receive specialized training to aid the police. Police dog breeds can vary, but all the breeds have special skills that assist them do their job. K9 units comprise a handler and a specially trained dog.

Dogs entering the K-9 corps are matched with a handler and go through an intensive 10-week training program, where they learn to identify over 9,000 different explosive scents. K-9 corps dogs are continuously trained and tested to ensure they stay at the top of their game.

Regarded as the most effective and most utilized police dog training methods, the reward training method is a training program where a dog owner rewards a dog whenever it is able to obey or follow a command.

With having such a powerful sense of smell, police dogs are often the most vital part of the operation when it comes to tracking. Some of the smells that police dogs are known to track include: People and suspect odors: Police dogs can track the scent of a suspect and help to lead police to their location.

To train a narcotics detection canine, an association must be developed between the canine's training toy and the odor of controlled substances, usually cocaine, heroin, , and marijuana. When the dog smells the odor of the designated narcotics, it believes it has found its toy.

The term 'K9' or 'K-9' is derived from the English and French word 'CANINE' (which simply means 'DOG'). 'CA'='K' and 'NINE'='9' (same as 'YOU TOO'='U2'). The first use of 'K-9' goes probably back to 1942. In that year the first military K-9 Corps were created by US Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson.

Police dogs are trained to bite dangerous suspects and hold them hostage. In many situations, they are the first ones to put their lives on the line and go in against an armed suspect to protect their human partners.