LOS ANGELES — A mutt from a Massachusetts animal shelter who got a new life as a K-9 drug-detection dog stars in an upcoming episode of a new PBS series called “Shelter Me: Partners for Life.”
The Worcester County sheriff’s department in central Massachusetts turned to the shelter when there wasn’t enough money in the budget to replace its retiring tracking dogs. The department covers 60 towns, a prison and a million people. With drug overdose deaths in Massachusetts rising, the department needed a good drug detection dog.
Sheriff Lewis G. Evangelidis sent Lt. Tom Chabot to find a shelter dog that was young, friendly, enthusiastic, smart and free.
Chabot came back with Nikita. Their story is showcased in an episode of “Shelter Me: Partners for Life” airing on PBS beginning Oct. 1 (local listings at ShelterMe.TV). A second profile on the show will look at singer Emmylou Harris and her animal rescue, Bonaparte’s Retreat.
Nikita was picked up as a stray in San Juan, Puerto Rico, when he was 3 months old and 25 pounds, and brought to the Sterling Animal Shelter in Sterling, Mass., Chabot said.
“He was reaching out to me … screaming for us to take him,” Chabot recalled.
In no time, Nikita was a local rock star with a following that counted students, inmates and residents. Drug seizures at the prison even dropped.
Last year, another Sterling dog named Jaxx, joined Nik on the Worcester squad. The department saved tens of thousands of dollars by picking dogs from shelters, training them for eight weeks through the nearby Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department.
Chabot doesn’t have to buy anything but food for Nik, said filmmaker Steven Latham, who created the series. A veterinarian donates the dog’s medical care. A group of residents got him a bulletproof vest and an alarm that notifies Chabot and opens patrol car doors if it gets too hot.
This is Latham’s fifth episode of “Shelter Me,” which he created to eliminate negative perceptions about public animal shelters and to show people that shelter pets make the best pets.
“I love the direction this sheriff’s department and other law enforcement agencies are going,” Latham said.
Another member of the K-9 squad, a bloodhound, does missing children hunts and other friendly finds.
The best aspect of the shelter dogs’ work is that they’ve become community icebreakers, Chabot said.
Chabot said he sees the difference the dogs make when he takes questions during classroom visits. With Nik and Jaxx, the students will ask if they can touch them or pet them or where they came from.
“I had a German shepherd before and the kids wanted to know … how many people he had bitten and how many bad guys we had caught,” he said.
