Kate Ryan, wtop.com

ROCKVILLE, Md. – Do you know anyone who jumps for joy when they hear the phrase “Time to go to work!”

Lila, a former shelter dog, is one of two new firearms-sniffing dogs trained by Montgomery County’s police department. Officer Mary Davis, the lead trainer for the K-9 corps, says the dogs will take on a vital role.

“We have a lot of guns out there, and we need to try to pull as many as we can off the street,” says Davis.

Lila and Cali have been trained to sniff out firearms — whether it’s a handgun tossed by a fleeing suspect, or a shotgun stashed in a home or car.

Both dogs have a tremendous drive.

When brought out for a demonstration at the Public Safety Training facility in Rockville, Lila was beside herself with excitement, leaping in the air even before given her assignment: find the gun in a car.

Within seconds she was leaping on top of the hood, then diving beneath the front of the car, all the while sniffing furiously. She quickly picked up the scent of the recently-fired weapon.

The trick with these dogs, says Davis, is keeping that drive high, but training the dogs to resist the urge to do what comes naturally: grab the object they are looking for. How do you do that?

Davis explains the gun is not the object the dogs really want.

“We never made it the object to play with. We made it the signal that they were going to get an object they want to play with.”

The ultimate goal? Getting to play with a tennis ball.

As soon as Lila’s nose came in contact with the weapon, her handler, Officer Dominic Raysick offered her praise, and playtime with a tennis ball on the end of a tether. Lila was so overjoyed and pleased with her own performance, she quickly tore the ball from its tether and sat contentedly mouthing the prize.

Cali, Lila’s colleague, is a $6,000 German Shepherd purchased from a breeder in Connecticut.

But Lila is a truly lucky dog. She’s a shelter mutt; a Shepherd-Malinois cross.

Davis says a friend of hers told her about the dog, and sent her a video. Davis says Lila’s obvious drive won her a spot on the force, where she’s raring to go. Montgomery County police have bomb-sniffing and drug-sniffing dogs as well as patrol dogs. Lila and Cali round out the K-9 corps, and Davis says, depending on the need, they could soon be training more.

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