Calvert
Advanced Life Support is excited to announce a partnership between CALS and the
Calvert County Sheriff’s Office and its K9 officers. In 2015 Calvert County Sheriff Mike Evans
had the vision to add several narcotic K9’s to the Sheriff’s Office. These k9’s have been utilized as an excellent
crime fighting tool, helping deputies detect illegal narcotics. By 2016 CCSO had grown its K9 ranks to 14
working dogs. With the increase in our county’s
K9 force CALS did an assessment and found that we had no providers trained to
provide immediate care to K9’s who had been critically injured on scene. Handlers are forced to place the dogs in
their cruisers and race them to Huntingtown for emergency veterinarian
care.
The goal
was to get a paramedic trained in basic emergency K9 care to be able to start
care on the scene of an incident.
Survivability once in the care of a definitive veterinarian increases
significantly if immediate care is started on the scene. CALS quickly began training toward this
endeavor with the Veterinarian Tactical Group located in Virginia Beach. From that point forward CALS made the
commitment to send as many paramedics as possible to this course with the end
goal of being able to guarantee that 24/7 365 there would be a K9 medic on duty
in Calvert County. In 2017 CALS paid for two Deputy Sheriff’s to attend the
training. Additionally, the training is
now offered to current k9 handlers.
CALS
and the CCSO are pleased to announce that on April 17 – 18, 2018 the
Veterinarian Tactical Group will be conducting the training at the CCSO
training facility on Broomes Island Road.
Currently the course will be attended by 9 paramedics from CALS and
other EMS agencies in the region, 8 CCSO K9 handlers, and 2 k9 handlers from
other regional agencies. CALS currently
has 14 paramedics trained in K9 life support.
