Williamson County among winners at Fort Hood first annual Central Texas Working Dog Competition

FORT HOOD, Texas (KWTX) - Texas law enforcement agencies and their K-9 partners gathered at Fort Hood this week for the first annual Central Texas Working Dog Competition.

A total of nine agencies and 18 canine teams took part, with the competition made up of 11 narcotics teams and seven explosive teams.

It was a chance for the K-9′s to get training in an unfamiliar area as well as for handlers to compare training techniques across agencies.

“It’s always interesting seeing how they work their dogs. I know they teach them in German so I think that’s super cool because all of our dogs understand English,” said Spc. Tiffany Paris.

Spc. Paris traveled more than eight hours from Fort Bliss to compete, citing the competition was great training but the terrain wasn’t something her or her K-9 Bryan was familiar with.

That being because of changes in biome as Fort Bliss experiences mostly dry weather.

“They just have different terrain so there’s certain things we can’t do. We don’t really have bodies of water just laying around like this, so we can’t really do aggression like this,” said Spc. Paris.

Water wasn’t the only thing these K-9′s got experience with, having to perform building hoists, lifting your K-9 from top to bottom.

I’m told the training was tough but visiting agencies would happily return.

“Any training, joint training. They always send the invitation down so in the future we do plan to do some joint training with fort hood,” said Capt. Billy Montgomery.

The competition ended with an award ceremony and three top prizes being handed out.

First, Officer Andrews Converse and K-9 Kova with the University of Texas Austin PD won the award for Hardest Hitting dog.

Deputy mark bell and K-9 Ekter with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Department won the Top Dog award for narcotics.

Spc. Jarima Rivera and military working dog Naruto with the 226th Military Police Detachment won the Top Dog award for explosives.

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