Yuliana Quiroz 
UTRGV – From across the seas…
“Odin came from Europe, we bought his through a vendor over there and then he got shipped to the United States,”
Nine-year-old Officer Odin was born to work for UTRGV.
And his handler Sgt. Molly Ralph has always been by his side.
“It’s been challenging and fun, it’s a lot like working with like a three year old that never grows up. So, constantly taking care of the dog, maintaining the dog, making sure that he’s healthy and clean, maintaining his training, which is about 16 hours a month that he need to do basically practicing finding drugs,” said Ralph.
Sgt. Molly Ralph says that UTRGV is the only university in the UT System to have narcotics dogs on campus.
This Belgian Malinois has dedicated eight years of his life detecting marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroine.
But Odin isn’t the only one in UTRGV PD’s K-9 unit with a heck of a sniffer. Sgt. Ralph says there are now three K-9 officers. The newest addition being K-9 Ika.
“I’m a first time K-9 handler, I’ve never been a K-9 handler before, so this is new to me as well as K-9 Ika, so we are both trying to learn together that way we become a good team,” said Officer Isaac de la Garza, Ika’s handler.
The German shepherd is in the middle of training to be an explosives K-9 Officer. After eight weeks, Ika will be able to detect 26 types of explosive substances just like K-9 Officer Suzy who joined the unit in 2018.
The K-9 Unit has existed since 2011 under UTPA and there’s only been one other officer aside from the three who is now retired.
Ralph would like to emphasize even though these doggos seem tempting to pet, we should think twice before doing so.
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