Public Safety K9s
Working dogs have never been more important than they are now. As an international tactical training center, F1RST has created the Tactical Canine Academy, which strives to innovate the way first responders across America and the rest of the world respond to and resolve modern-day conflict and disasters with the help of K9s. Through partnerships in research, the F1RST Tactical Canine Academy will challenge traditional K9 tactics and revolutionize public safety training. It contains both indoor and outdoor training facilities that allow for real-world scenario-based training so tacticians can train exactly how they will be expected to respond. The F1RST Tactical Canine Academy is one of only three training facilities in Florida to have a Level-1 rubble pile to help facilitate search and rescue, canine live find, and human remains detection trainings. Our academy will also have K9 training facilities complete with research and veterinary space to allow studies in veterinary medicine, fitness, and nutrition of working dogs.
By partnering researchers and practitioners under one roof, the F1RST Tactical Canine Academy creates the environment to study the use of working dogs in public safety. This creates great opportunities to study both the physiological and psychological impacts of various assignments on working dogs and allows researchers to gain a shared understanding of how the dogs are actually deployed in the field. It paves the way to create innovative methods and tactics to improve the overall use of working dogs.
K9 Research and education programs at F1RST include:
- Patrol K9
- Narcotics K9
- EOD K9
- Swat K9 Integration (on and off-lead & tactical operations)
- Forensics Human Remains Detection
- Live-find SAR K9
- Bloodhound Tracking K9
- K9 Tactical Combat Casualty Care
- K9 Fitness and Nutrition
