New county sheriff pup detects narcotics and fights crime throughout Southeast Ohio.
Wearing the shiny badge of his fallen predecessor, Ijo works on all fours to sniff out crime in Athens County. When he’s not working, he likes to play with his green squeaky toy.
In just two months on the job, the newest K9 Unit of the Athens County Sheriff’s Office has assisted with about four arrests, helped find a man threatening to take his life in the woods, worked with the Athens Police Department to find a robber and made multiple narcotic detections.
After Ryder, a 4-year-old Belgian Malinois, died in a house fire in early April, the office started its search for a K9 to take his place.
“Ijo has definitely picked up the torch where Ryder left off,” Deputy John Kulchar said, who handled Ryder while he worked for the sheriff’s office.
The 2-year-old Dutch Shepherd hails from France like Ryder and responds to commands in French.
He said Ijo went through the same six-week training Ryder did, which trains police dogs in work including detecting narcotics, tracking, searching for articles and building searches.
“His mentality to train and learn is almost better than Ryder’s because he’s still young,” Kulchar said.
According to a news release from the sheriff’s office, during a traffic stop Aug. 13, Kulchar indicated a strong odor of narcotics coming from the vehicle while speaking to the driver. Ijo was deployed for a free air sniff on the vehicle, which led to a search that revealed multiple forms of narcotics and drug paraphernalia.
Not only does Ijo spend time assisting Athens law enforcement, but he also works with officers in other counties. Kulchar said Ijo cost about $11,500 — the same as Ryder.
Sgt. Kevin Lemon, from the Glouster Police Department, said he’s glad Kulchar was able to get another dog to help the surrounding community.
“It’s nice to have a dog in the Glouster area with our limited funds and our war on drugs,” Lemon said.
Lemon has worked with Ijo a few times for routine traffic stops, when they’ve been able to detect and confiscate narcotics.
Kulchar said Ryder and Ijo have completely different personalities, but their work ethics are similar.
“The only thing I wouldn’t take away from either dog is that they do share their dedication to work and to train and to push the limit and be better,” Kulchar said.
Kulchar said during Ijo’s training he tackled tactics and techniques that took three or four months with Ryder. Due to Ijo’s younger age, Kulchar said he had the techniques down by the end of training school.
“When you hear the term police working dog, that’s what Ijo is — he’s all about work,” Kulchar said.
Ijo has done work in Athens, as well as state patrols, Glouster and Albany, and is available to the Ohio University Police Department and APD.
“He’s doing a lot better than we expected,” Athens County Sheriff Rodney Smith said. “We’re very happy with his progress so far.”
Smith said the office didn’t realize how muchthey missed having a K9 around the office after they lost Ryder.
“(Ijo) is a very hard worker,” Smith said.
@Fair3Julia
