LAS VEGAS NV April 24 2019  It’s a ‘ruff’ job, but thanks to a generous $100,000 gift from the Consumer Technology Association, the two bomb-sniffing yellow labs that help with security at the Las Vegas Convention Center, now have two black lab partners.

The LVCVA said the gift from CTA, which owns and produces the Consumer Electronics Show, was actually made in 2018 to buy and train the two new dogs, which are now on duty full time.

The original yellow labs, named Pierce and Cooper, have a more conventional training.

“They’re what I’ll call traditional ‘sniff and sit’ dogs,” said Ray Suppe, the LVCVA’s VP of Customer Safety. “They’d approach an object and sniff the object for an explosive, and alert the handler if they find something in there that may be an explosive.”

The additional dogs, Bo and Wells, have an extra counter-terrorism superpower called “vapor wake,” allowing them to target a suicide bomber, or someone attempting to plant a bomb in a crowd.

“The vapor wake dog is very different,” said Suppe. “They actually follow the wake of a person as they walk through a facility or crowds of people walking through their scents. They will pick up on an explosive scent, and go right up to the person.”

With four dogs now on the LVCVA’s K-9 team, they’re able to keep the extra layer of security on the schedule seven days a week.

When they’re not patrolling the Convention Center during an event, they train.

“Any downtime, maybe if it’s just an hour, two hours, we’ll set something up,” said Woody Chan, the LVCVA K-9 Supervisor. “We’ll run our dogs, maintenance training, just to keep our dogs sharp and our handlers sharp too.”

The CES gift is being used beyond the walls of the Convention Center.

Bo, Wells, Pierce and Cooper are used for outside duty, including major events.

“The most recent one was New Year’s Eve,” said Suppe. “It was a four-day period leading up to New Year’s Eve and the day after, where the four dogs and the handlers were assigned to Metro units. Two of them worked the downtown area. Two worked on the Strip.”

The K-9 team’s primary mission is to help protect the 1.3 million people who visited the Las Vegas Convention Center last year, as well as the 9,000 jobs it provides to locals, along with $2.1-billion worth of economic impact from attendees last year.

KSNV

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