K-9 Officer Recon has been part of the Uhrichsville Police force since February of 2015. (Submitted photo)

Uhrichsville, Ohio - The Uhrichsville community continues to rally behind the city’s canine crimefighter.

Last weekend, the Police Department held a reverse raffle to support its K-9 program. Sgt. Mike Hickman says the fundraiser was the most successful to date and raised a record amount of funds for the program.

“After everything was paid out, we ended up with a little over $7,000, which is huge,” he says.

Hickman says the money is a huge boost for the program, which operates entirely off of donations. 

“The city doesn’t budget me any money for the K9 unit. The K9 unit relies on donations from the public,” he says. 

Hickman says he plans to use the money to fence in a lot on North Main Street that was donated to the program several years ago by the city.

“Several years ago the city gave me that lot for canine training, and there’s a couple of houses down there that have animals, have dogs, and I just didn’t want to chance one of the dogs going over and messing with the K9s, or the police dogs going over and messing with their dogs, and that’s why we haven’t done much there with the lot. The street department still maintains it and mows it, but we just haven’t used it for canine purposes,” he says.

Hickman says he would like to put up 8-foot fencing around the perimeter of the property, build an agility course, and bring in a trailer for storage. He says the area would also be made available to neighboring departments to use for their own K9 training. 

STACEY CARMANY, TUSCO TV