Meet “Yak”
After 8 ½ years on the job, Barek has retired. Barek was a certified, dual purpose, police Service Dog and the decision was made to start training a new dog while he was still able to work, thus providing certified K9 service without interruption. Barek will live out his retirement years with his handler, Patrolman Tsoukalas and his family. Barek’s replacement is Yak.
Yak is an 18 month old German Shepherd that was donated by the owners of Lou’s Custom Exhaust and Billerica resident John Barbarossa.
After 11 weeks of narcotic detection training and 14 weeks of patrol training, Yak is a fully certified, dual purpose, police service dog.
In addition to narcotic detection, Yak is able to track wanted suspects and missing people, conduct building searches for suspects in hiding, evidence recovery, off lead open area searches and provide handler protection.
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