For Release: September 24, 1997

Contact: Steven Hall 277-3070

Stephanie Powell 277-2771 ext. 4418

PROVIDENCE - When the K-9 world games championship competition gets underway in Germany October 3, RI Department of Environmental Management Conservation Officer Donald Andrews and his K-9 partner Lux will be one of five teams representing the United States.

Chosen from over 10,000 teams in the United States, Andrews and Lux were picked because of the past performance of Andrews and his first canine partner, Perry. Last year Perry won the United States Police Tracking Dogs tracking title in Pennsylvania, and he and Andrews have had several on-the-job tracking successes, including finding a group of people lost overnight in the State's Arcadia Management Area in April of 1996, finding a suicidal man, and finding a man with a shotgun who subsequently was sent to prison.

With Perry now retired because of illness, Andrews last October purchased Lux, a German Shepherd from the Czech Republic, who will be five in December. He knows no English, so Andrews talks to him in German, washing him, brushing him, playing ball and spending long periods of time bonding with him. Lux lives with Andrews and with the retired Perry, and is taken by Andrews three or four times a week for K-9 schooling at the sheriff's department in Plymouth, MA, a 16-week course that is still underway.

Although Lux is still in school, the team of Andrews and Lux already has been out on several missions - "routine patrols, a couple of tracks, all uneventful" according to Andrews - and "he's a nice partner."

Andrews, who has been with DEM for ten years, is taking Lux to the three-day International German Championships for Service Dog Handlers at his own expense. According to Sgt. Wendell Nope, coach of the United States five-man team, the K-9 world games "is a huge event. It's the Wimbledon of police dog competitions. It's not uncommon to get 25,000 to 30,000 people attending this event. Police dog events in Germany are like the premier horse competitions in this country."

The United States team will be competing with teams from 13 other countries, including Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Japan, and the Czech Republic.