The roots of the ANVIS K-9 program trace back to Director Cartner's grandfather, Bob Cartner, who was the Tulsa Police Department's first K-9 officer.  Director Cartner grew up around the peculiar animals, and realized the important role that these animals serve to law enforcement officers. Very few resources, such as the police K-9, provide the police officer with the ability to enhance virtually every skill an officer needs to survive, and properly investigate.

 

These "resources" have a sense of hearing four times greater than humans, and can pinpoint the origin of sounds from a much greater distance than their police partner. Aside from being able to pinpoint those sounds, they are able to distinguish if the sound is threatening, or not.

 

Aside from their extraordinary hearing, these animals have  twenty-five times more olfactory (smell) receptors than humans do. In recent decades, law enforcement has identified this, and utilized the animals in drug detection and drug investigations.

 

While growing up, Director Cartner was around these K-9s, and as a Vice Detective, a drug K-9 was assigned to his unit. However, most local law enforcement K-9s are not "cross-trained." This means that these animals are trained solely in one aspect of police work, such as drug detection.

 

In the environment that Director Cartner grew up in, he realized from an early age the valuable asset a properly trained police K-9 provides to officers, and the community. As a Deputy, he was often out-spoken with his controversial views stating that "dogs that only smell drugs are like cops who only write tickets. That's the most mindless function of law enforcement, and these dogs are capable of searching buildings that are too dangerous for an officer to search alone, or tracking suspects who have fled from police or tracking lost children or lost elderly people. Besides that, alot of people will fight a cop, but few will fight a cop with a dog trained to protect him."

 

When ANVIS implemented the K-9 Corps, they researched police dog training regiments, and enrolled in a training program, which produces the world's best police dogs! A Master Trainer with the North American Police Work Dog Association designed the program and he actively trains police dogs for over two hundred and fifty police agencies across the country. This program produces the most talented police dogs, which are cross-trained in bomb detection, drug detection, tracking, and personal protection.