People lined up to get inside City Opera House in Traverse City for a memorial service for Piper. Hundreds of people have turned out to salute a speedy border collie that became an internet sensation for keeping a northern Michigan airport free of wildlife. 'So that's something I really try to focus on in my law enforcement efforts, which really goes hand-in-hand with Kilo being a narcotics K-9.Watch Video: This airport K-9 is as tough as TSA 'We're trying to make Traverse City a safe place for not only the citizens, but our visitors that we have a bountiful amount of - especially this time of year,' he said. Given Kilo's specialization as a narcotics dog, Snyder said, most of their time patrolling the community is spent looking for illegal substances. 'Developing as a police officer, I kind of got to realize that being a K-9 handler was a career goal of mine.'

'I've always been a dog person,' he said. Snyder said he first joined the department in May 2018 as an officer, but he always had a specific ambition. Kilo replaces the former TCPD K-9 Drago as the department's narcotics dog, joining fellow TCPD K-9 Eno, who specializes in explosives detection.

'We're not going to have trainers there next to us when we're on the streets, so we were taught different ways to incorporate the training that we learned with our dogs and utilize that in our careers.' 'Eventually, as we progressed, we got taught different ways to be essentially dog trainers ourselves,' Snyder said. Each day, their schedule consisted of three to four hours working on tracking techniques, followed by handler protection work before ending the day focusing on narcotics detection. Police dog - or K-9 - training included tracking, handler protection and narcotics, he said.

Traverse city airport dog