Canine Unit
The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department Canine Unit is one more way the department protects life and property. The Canine Unit promotes an atmosphere of service and safety in the community by using canines in general and specialized patrol to enhance crime prevention, drug interdiction, criminal investigation, and Police Officer/Citizen protection. The Canine Unit also participates to keep our county schools drug free because of the unique search capability and in the Department’s community outreach and drug awareness programs.

The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department began the Canine Unit in 1990 when Sergeant Thompson teamed up with Lucky. The program was so successful that it expanded to its current size of two teams when Lobo came on board a few years ago. Lobo is now retired and very busy taking care of a two-year-old child and a household. The Canine Unit lost Rudy, a German Shepherd, who was killed in the line of duty a little over a year ago. Rudy is honored as a Fallen Officer.

Today, Deputy Ayon and his partner, Hatto, a German Shepherd are one of the two Canine Teams that patrol Santa Cruz County. Iwon, a Malinois—pronounced MAL-in-naw, is waiting for reassignment to a new partner.

Because of the nature of their professional relationship, both Deputies selected their dogs from a California kennel that specializes in placing highly trained dogs with their human handler. Each canine had some basic training before joining the Department. Iwon, for example, came from the Netherlands and received his basic training from KNPV, which stands for Koninklijke Nederlandse Politiehond Vereniging, or, in English, Royal Dutch Police Dog Association. Iwon is a certified Politiehond I & II (Police Dog I & II).

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Department canines units are trained to handle two types of roles:
1. Narcotics
2. Patrol

For Narcotic detection the dogs are trained to locate marijuana, powdered cocaine, crack cocaine, methamphetamines, and heroin. The patrol role uses the dogs to track, search buildings and open areas, search for articles, and apprehend criminals by biting when the situation is serious enough and no other means of apprehending the suspect are available.