K-9 police team wins at national competition

Officer and dog bring home 4 of 5 awards

Sergeant Jason Guidry with the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office never dreamed that he and his narcotics dog, Berry, would be national champions.

Now that is exactly what the team is: national champions in four categories.

Guidry and Berry, a 3-year-old Belgian Malinois, competed in the National Narcotic Detector Dog Association’s annual competition in Shreveport in April.

Over 120 teams from all of the country competed, but the team took home four out of five first-place titles – all except the two-team competition because Guidry and Berry were the only team to compete for St. Charles Parish.

“I don’t know if my feet have hit the ground yet – it’s really a major accomplishment,” Guidry said. “I knew I had a good dog, a very good dog, but I just didn’t realize that we could win this whole thing.”

Lt. Ricky Oubre supervises the K-9 patrol unit and Guidry said that without his help in training Berry, these wins would not have been possible.

The competition entailed sniffing out narcotics during a three-minute timed trial in a large area filled with appliances, vehicles, and other large objects. Each man-and-dog team had to search a particular area and hit on as many targets as possible without hitting the same target twice.
“While at the starting line for the competition, Berry was straining the leash,” Guidry said. “He had apparently winded at least one of the hidden targets.

“At the end of the competition, K-9 Berry had located eight of the 10 targets and lost no points for hitting on the same target more than once.”

Other trials during the week-long competition included vehicle searches, dark room searches, rooms that had masking odors in them and even a room full of nothing but luggage.
Sheriff Greg Champagne attributed their success to their close relationship.

“Our K-9 officers spend a tremendous amount of time training their dogs, in fact, they work together daily,” Champagne said. “The K-9 Division is called upon frequently and has been very successful in locating narcotics, fugitives and evidence.”

Not only does Guidry work with Berry every day, Berry lives at Guidry’s house along with a bomb dog.

Guidry says living with the dogs creates a stronger bond between officer and K-9.

Berry is a dual-purpose dog for narcotics and patrol. Guidry first started working with Berry about three years ago.