Southern Minnesota State Patrol K-9 Hangs Up Her Collar

On Friday, Minnesota's Department of Public Safety Tweeted out some retirement news of a 9 year veteran from Southern Minnesota. Layka, a K-9 officer, called it a career after 9 years of service with the Minnesota State Patrol.

The Tweet stated that after 9 years Layka was hanging up her collar after a career that took hundreds of pounds of narcotics off the streets and years of patrol along I-35 in Southern Minnesota.

Layka according to a

Facebook post by the Minnesota State Patrol is "a 10-year-old Belgian Malinois, and was imported from the Netherlands in 2010 and trained in narcotics detection. She worked the Marshall district, Virginia district and west metro district before being assigned to Trooper Jarid Nacey in 2015 to patrol the I-35 corridor in southern Minnesota."

She was deployed over 450 times in her career and also performed well at the annual police K-9 certifications; she and her handler Trooper Nacey were the first-place agency team in 2016 at the United States Police Canine Association National Competition.

According to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety's website, the K-9 unit is staffed with 13 K-9 teams trained to detect the odor of narcotics, and one team trained to detect explosives.

Unlike other K-9 officers, the dogs that the State Patrol uses are not trained in other typical police functions such as apprehension or tracking.