Lisa Briggs, director of Western Carolina University’s Human Remains Detection K-9 training program and Emergency Disaster Management program, and Edwin Grant, HRD K-9 program instructor and long-time law enforcement officer, have been deployed with their HRD K-9s since the start of the recovery process for missing persons in Western North Carolina following the devastation left by Hurricane Helene.  

Learn what to do when your dog gets hurt on the trail with a workshop offered 10-11:30 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 3, in Clyde. 

After conducting a limited review into the death of a Bryson City K9, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations issued a decision that it’s unlikely a criminal offense occurred. 

It’s been several months since a young police K9, Kanon, died while in the possession of a Bryson City Police Department employee, but the local community and the nonprofit organization that donated the Dutch shepherd are still seeking answers to what really happened. 

The town of Sylva is in hot pursuit of what Police Chief Davis Woodard called a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to add a canine component to the ranks of municipal law enforcement.

By Paul Clark  • Contributor •

Norris Bunch called his dog Maxo to attention. Maxo, alert and ready, waited for his release.

Barbara Holt, a judge for the U.S. Police Canine Association, gave the go-ahead, and Bunch, a K9 handler at the nuclear Savannah River Site, shouted for Maxo to move.

Laser-quick, Maxo charged toward the “decoy” – a fellow K9 officer acting as a criminal suspect. The decoy had a 25-yard head start on the football field at Waynesville Middle School. And, he certainly had the sympathy of the civilians spending a sunny June morning watching the police dog trials from the stands.