By Kelly Holleran
Daily Mail staff
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Kanawha County Sheriff’s Lt. Ron Mathis wanted to find a friendly, non-intimidating dog to work full-time in schools, one that wasn’t afraid to mill around hallways with hundreds of students and one that could smell drugs on a person.
So, he made a trip to the Kanawha-Charleston Animal Shelter, the first place that popped into his mind.
And there he found Jo Jo, a 7-month-old small, tan shar-pei/ miniature pinscher mix that he thought would be perfect for the job.
“We’re tickled to death that she’s worked out so well,” said Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford. “The animal shelter is a great place to find animals. It goes to show there are very useful animals there.
After school starts Tuesday, Jo Jo and her handler, Kanawha County Sheriff’s Cpl. P.J. Lively, will be patrolling the halls at Andrew Jackson and Sissonville middle schools and Sissonville High School.
Jo Jo will be called in any time a drug search is needed. Eventually, she will be able to run up and down the halls, searching lockers for drugs, like her fellow drug-sniffing dogs.
But unlike them, she will also be able to search individual students, the first dog in the county to be able to do so.
That is because Jo Jo will be trained to be passive. Instead of barking and scratching when she detects the scent of drugs, Jo Jo will sit.
She and Lively will be able to perform drug searches at other schools in the county when they are needed.
The sheriff’s department found Jo Jo around the beginning of July and participated in a foster program with the shelter. Deputies were allowed to take her out to different places – their houses, for example – before adopting her.
And Mathis’s suspicions were right – her friendly personality and high play drive made her perfect for the job.
“She had everything we were looking for,” Mathis said.
She was officially adopted July 30.
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