See Kar Run--After Heroin--and Other Smart Police Dog Tricks on Display Saturday and Sunday

Kar is a friendly, happy 3-year-old German Shepherd who sees going after a stash of methamphetamine or heroin, or a guy who has just beat up and robbed someone, as a fun, dog game. 

But Kar, one of two of Walnut Creek's police K-9s, has also proved his worth as a crime fighter. With his keen sense of smell, he has helped out in some recent major drug busts--zeroing in, for example, on a nearly a pound of methamphetamine stashed in a safe at the Concord home of a suspected distributor of the drug.

Kar, born in the from the Czech Republic, is also trained to help his human handler, Walnut Creek Police Officer Joe Donleavy, track down suspects in all sorts of crimes. (Because of Kar's national origins, he is bilingual, responding to commands in both Czech and English.) 

Kar and Donleavy met with customers at Pet Food Express in downtown Walnut Creek Saturday, as part of a campaign to raise money.

Pet Food Express, which has 34 stores in the Bay Area, is teaming up with the nonprofit Cover Your K9 Fund to help police departments that have been hard hit by budget cuts. Last year, Pet Food Express raised $70,000 to help buy bullet-proof vests for Bay Area police dogs. 

Kar joined the Walnut Creek Police Department about a year and a half ago, after undergoing training with Donleavy on how to sniff out narcotics and bad guys. Kar is the second K-9 to join the Walnut Creek police department. Orfas and Officer Pat Duggan paved the way a couple years earlier, and the two will be at the South California Boulevard store Sunday afternoon from 3 to 5. 

In a demonstration at Pet Food Express Saturday, Kar easily sniffed out a stash of heroin, planted in a metal can. For this German Shepherd, mostly covered in shiny, silky black fur, finding the drug was a big game. His reward: getting his mouth around a chew toy that Donleavy handed off to him. 

Donleavy explained that, contrary to popular perception, police K-9s are not mean vicious dogs. The dogs, while on the job doing a search, are simply reverting to puppyhood in their desire to hunt out and locate some thing--a drug, a weapon used in a crime, or a criminal suspect.

Once these dogs find what they have been told to look for, they bark, wag their tails proudly, and may take the thing or object between their teeth. In doing so, they don't intend to cause damage or inflict injury.  That's just how they pick up what their handlers ask them to look for.

Kar, by the way, is a member of Donleavy's family. Although owned by the city, Kar lives with Donleavy and his family of four kids and four other dogs. He's a family pet, who gets to go to work with "dad" four days a week. 

This year, Pet Food Express and Cover Your K9 would like to buy more vests for the dogs, as well as medical kits and heat censors for police cars. The fundraiser will also donate money to help pay for medical care for retired police dogs. 

Continuing on Sunday, customers can come into any of the 34 Pet Food Express stores and make direct donations or they can purchase tokens for self-service dog washes.

Pet Food Express will donate 100 percent of what it earns from these purchases to the Cover Your K9 fund. Customers can buy as many dog wash tokens as they like, and the tokens have no expiration date on them.