So long, Dash. Job well done!

The Cookeville Police Department recently lost a valuable member of the force to lymphoma who worked up to the day before he passed away. “Dash,” a 3-year-old Belgian Malinois, was a narcotics dog who had been working with his partner, Officer Tony Branch, for about a year.

“He had a little knot come up on the backside. We went to the vet and they cut it off and diagnosed him then,” said Branch.

“The vet said, with these kind of cases, you’ll notice a little difference in them but they won’t be suffering. Then overnight it will just happen. And that’s pretty much what happened. I found him one day passed out in the yard in a thunderstorm. He couldn’t even get in his doghouse. I had to carry him to the truck.”

Dash had to be put down that same day.

In the short year that Branch worked with him, Dash helped find numerous traces of drugs and even helped in several significant drug busts in the community.

“In the year I had him, I can think of at least two search warrants I was able to write off of him and they resulted in a pretty good drug seizure. One was a meth lab, one was cocaine,” said Branch.

Dash was Branch’s third dog since he joined the police force in 2001. The first was a bloodhound who passed away. The second was a German Shepherd who was already advanced in age when Branch took him. The German Shepherd was retired after his hip went out.

Dash came from Thunderhawk Canine, a Cookeville business which trains dogs for the police force, in addition to the number of other canine services they provide. According to Christie Meyer, clinical behavior consultant and certified police K9 trainer for Thunderhawk Canine, though lymphoma is not extremely unusual for Dash’s breed, such a young dog developing cancer is uncommon.

According to Meyer, Thunderhawk Canine guarantees the health of dogs that are purchased at their facility for up to a year.

“Dash was maybe two or three months passed his warrantee, but we went ahead and replaced him,” she said.

“(Thunderhawk) has been really good to us,” Branch added.

Stepping up to try to follow in Dash’s pawprints is 18-month-old Titan who was born and raised at Thunderhawk.

Though Branch wasn’t sure he wanted a new dog so soon after Dash’s passing, he is quickly warming to his new partner-in-training.

“I haven’t really used him at work per-se yet,” said Branch. “We’re both still just getting to know each other.”

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