Schools

School Safety Dog Teams

Our full-time Safety Dog Teams play a crucial role in making K-12 schools safer for students, teachers, and parents. With their specialized training in firearm, explosives, narcotics, or vape detection, these highly skilled canines are a powerful deterrent against potential threats. By conducting consistent proactive searches throughout the day, our Safety Dog Teams help keep the school premises secure and free from dangerous substances or objects.

These Safety Dog Teams have a very specific mission: to keep your students, faculty, and administration safe.

Safety Dog Team Benefits:

  • Mobility: They can search backpacks, lockers, restrooms, bleachers, the perimeter of the school, the gym, and stadiums

  • A visual and word-of-mouth deterrent

  • Providing social and emotional support when not actively searching

  • Providing peace-of-mind to the entire school community

  • Providing safety and support for sporting and social events

  • Working closely with school resource officers, on-campus security, and local law enforcement

  • In many instances, state governments provide grant funding to underwrite the cost of Safety Dog Teams

Our Safety Dog Teams are certified to the standards set forth by the National Association of Professional Canine Handlers.

Firearms and Explosives Detection

Our full-time Firearms and Explosives Detection Safety Dog teams are responsible for keeping students, faculty, and administration safe and focused on what is most important - providing a quality education. Our teams do this by:

  • Monitoring entrances and exits

  • Monitoring hallways between class periods

  • Sniffing backpacks and lockers for firearms, ammunition, explosives, and fireworks

Our firearms and explosives detection canines are certified to detect the following: ammonium nitrate, RDX, potassium chlorate, water gels, TNT, dynamite, black/smokeless powder, TATP, PETN, HMTD, firearms, spent casings, and gun cleaning solvents.

Zebra K9 holds a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and is able to train exclusively with “live” training aids. This allows us to develop canines with unique detection skills that are focused on identifying threats specific to this type of environment.

Vape Detection

Zebra K9 provides schools with a proactive, mobile, visual, and word-of-mouth deterrent to identify and reduce the presence of vaping devices on school premises, providing a safer and healthier environment. Our specialized vape-detection K9 teams are capable of detecting liquid nicotine and liquid THC - the primary components in vape products.

The prevalence of vaping in schools has become a significant concern for educators and parents. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey, e-cigarettes were the most commonly used tobacco product among middle and high school students in the U.S. In 2023, 2.1 million students currently used e-cigarettes, including 1.56 million high school students and 550,000 middle school students.

Our highly trained vape-detection K9 teams are a crucial step toward creating a healthier, vape-free environment for students and teachers.

Lakeview Public Schools in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, has seen a reduction in THC vapes and nicotine vapes on school premises since implementing a full-time onsite Zebra K9 drug-detection team at its middle school and high school.

Drug Detection

The latest statistics show that nearly 20% of high school students in America have been offered, sold, or given drugs on school property.

Zebra K9 drug detection dog services are available during school hours and after school social events. Using this proactive approach, schools can prevent drug possession and distribution. Our nationally certified teams can detect the following:

  • Marijuana

  • Fentanyl

  • Heroin

  • Cocaine

  • MDMA (ecstasy)

  • Methamphetamines

Benefits Beyond Security

Beyond their security duties, our Safety Dog teams provide a unique form of emotional support for students. Our canines are carefully selected for their gentle and friendly nature, making them approachable and comforting for students. The presence of a Safety Dog team in the school environment helps reduce anxiety and stress, fostering a sense of safety and well-being, creating a positive learning environment.

Creating Stakeholder Confidence

The presence of our Safety Dog teams also reassures the school board, administration, parents and teachers, instilling confidence in the safety measures implemented by the school. Knowing that these highly trained canines are on-site provides a sense of security and peace of mind for all stakeholders.

Testimonials

  • “The Avondale School District is excited about our partnership with Zebra K9, a community partnership that affords a trained K9 team to assimilate within our school culture, adding to not only our school security measures, but also adding a level of socio-emotional benefit for our students. K9 teams are a very non-invasive way to search. Many times, when there are students who are upset or grieving or going through some emotional situation, Lucy [the safety dog] has a calming effect and is used for that purpose.”

    Dr. James Schwarz, Superintendent of Avondale School District

  • “I love the positive presence of this dog team in the school. My child has experienced positive outcomes from interacting with the team and I like knowing that we have preventative measures in place. As a parent, I value it is another layer to safely protecting our kids and a deterrent potentially for any student that might think about making a bad choice.”

    Parent, Williamston Community Schools

  • "Fortunately, with the Zebra K9 teams onsite, we have not had any instances of weapons or explosives found at our school. The teams have been instrumental in helping to regularly check backpacks and lockers, be a visual deterrent to some negative behaviors, and even deescalate situations to bring a calming effect. The emotional support function of the K9 teams is huge. They attend special education classes, provide a calming presence, and add a layer of support for football games, parent-teacher conferences, and other school activities."

    Piper L. Bognar, Superintendent of Van Dyke Public Schools

  • “We’re giving [the students] a negative incentive not to do bad things. Your higher confidence level of getting caught should help you make a better choice, that’s the hope. Lakeview has seen the safety dog teams having a positive impact. Students are thinking twice before bringing anything illegal to school."

    Karl D. Paulson, Superintendent of Lakeview Public Schools

  • “Our Zebra K9 team made an immediate positive impact in our schools. The team has effectively added an additional layer of security to our buildings while establishing meaningful relationships with our community. The safety and social-emotional benefits of the team were validated through community survey data collected at the end of the last school year. Students, staff, and parents noted how important the team was while our district navigated through several serious school safety situations that occurred in neighboring communities.”

    Dr. Adam Spina, Superintendent of Williamston Community Schools

  • “I have witnessed on a number of occasions the social emotional support that Gemini [the safety dog] can provide to our students that are in need. Her keen sense and awareness of what the student needs is amazing. I have also witnessed Gemini detect the firearm of our SRO upon coming into the office. Her detection abilities are a wonderful comfort to the students and staff at WCS.”

    Teacher, Williamston Community Schools

  • "Having a trained munitions dog and handler at our high school helps bring another layer of peace of mind in sending my child to school. It really provides a non-intrusive way to provide for security and the students love the dog as if it is just part of the staff.”

    Parent, Avondale School District