PASCO COUNTY, Fla. — A Pasco County Eagle Scout’s project is expected to help the sheriff’s office better train its K-9s for search and rescue missions.
Ishaanth Ravichandran, a junior at J.W. Mitchell High School and member of Boy Scout Troop 77, spent more than a year building wooden training boxes to replace the aging plastic ones used by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.
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“It’s really great. It was a long process. Actually, over a year of work put into it,” Ravichandran said.
The new boxes are designed to help K-9s track live human scent during search and rescue operations or when pursuing suspects.
“Live human odor is what they are looking for with these boxes. It allows us to conceal the subject, and they have to use their nose versus their eyes to locate who they are looking for,” said Deana Hudgins, K-9 training manager with the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.
Ravichandran and fellow scouts began building the boxes more than a year ago. The previous boxes had deteriorated after years of use in the Florida weather.
“The boxes they had before were really expensive, and they didn’t really solve the problem and they had a bunch of issues and he found a solution for them that worked for them and got it approved,” said Ish’s Scout Master, Michael Ferraz.
Ravichandran said the most difficult part of the project wasn’t the construction itself, but the administrative side.
“The paperwork, getting things approved, getting things approved. The red tape,” he said.
Now that the boxes are complete, they will be used to support the training of the more than 55 dogs currently in the Pasco Sheriff’s Office K-9 unit.
“We’ve got a lot of support for our community and this is a great example of that. We are very thankful that he decided to take this project on as part of his Eagle Scout work to be able to provide this for our dogs,” Hudgins said.
The sheriff’s K-9 unit has received broad community support in recent years. Donations helped fund the construction of a state-of-the-art K-9 training facility in Land O’ Lakes. The facility allows deputies and their K-9 partners to train in controlled, realistic environments and has become a key part of the agency’s search, rescue and apprehension capabilities.
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