Deputy Matt Kirby with K9 Renko and Deputy Aaron Chadwick

Bay Elementary held its 5th grade DARE graduation at the end of the school year, complete with guest speaker, Deputy Matt Kirby and his K9 partner, Renko. There were awards presented, and a bike was the grand prize.

Deputy Matt Kirby and K9 Renko were on hand to demonstrate how a K9 handler and the dog interact. Deputy Kirby explained to the kids and the crowd of parents that showed up to support their children, that a dog has about 200 MILLION scent receptors, the cells that allow the nose to detect the odor. To put that into perspective, that's about 40 times more than what the human nose has, at just 5 million scent receptors. Renko is trained to track, detect drugs, and is also a "bite" dog. After opening the floor to Q & A, Deputy Kirby and Deputy Chadwick demonstrated how they train with the commands. Chadwick put on the bite sleeve, which is comprised of padding and jute, and Kirby gave the command. Renko took off and went straight for that arm, and took it right off. It's always amazing to watch.

After the demonstration, awards were presented for the best essay for each class, the best essay overall (prize is an iPod shuffle), the student that most represents what DARE means, and a random name is drawn to win the bike. Kids were given extra opportunities to win if they scored  100 or above on the final test.

Essay winner Ms. Johnson's- Katie Padgett

 

Essay winner Mr. Justin's- Ashlyn Higgins

 

Essay winners- Ashlyn Higgins and Katie Padgett

 

Overall winner- Ashlyn Higgins

 

Daren winner- Faith Muntz