Teen helps bulletproof K9 unit

TAYLORSVILLE — Kaiser has a nose for trouble: The German shepherd regularly sniffs out illegal drugs and often takes the lead in pursuits of armed suspects.

Thanks to the fund-raising efforts of 16-year-old Kristen Barneck, Kaiser soon will be better suited to handle trouble when he finds it.

Barneck recently completed a yearlong project to raise money to purchase a bulletproof vest for the Taylorsville Police Department's K9 unit.

"I'm an animal-lover," Barneck said, "and I don't like hearing about animals getting hurt. These dogs get shot at."

Kaiser is one of three dogs serving the public with their officer handlers on Taylorsville's police force. All three have been cross-trained for patrol-apprehension work and to locate narcotics, said officer Jason Huggard.

"The dogs really are put in harm's way," Huggard said. "Many times the dogs are asked to go in and clear areas when we're searching for armed suspects."

Taylorsville's police force is only 2 years old, and funding for protective gear for police dogs has been unavailable, Huggard said.

"The vests are quite expensive," he said. "Being a new department, it just hasn't been a resource we've been able to get."

Like Taylorsville, several law enforcement agencies nationwide have lacked funding to purchase bulletproof vests for police dogs, a fact that led a Southern California girl to form the Vest-A-Dog Inc. Foundation.

In 1999, then-11-year-old Stephanie Taylor read a story in the newspaper about a New Jersey police dog named Solo who was killed in the line of duty. Officials there speculated that the dog may have survived had he been wearing a protective vest.

That inspired Taylor to begin a fund-raising project to purchase bulletproof vests for law-enforcement dogs across the nation.

Barneck said she read Taylor's story in "Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul" and wanted to make sure Taylorsville's police dogs were as safe as they could be.

"I thought I could try to do that for our police department," she said, "because they are new. I thought they might need the help."

Barneck pitched the idea to Assistant Chief Wayne Dial, who offered to help by drafting an official letter of support for the project to give credibility to the fund-raising efforts.