Story By John Mann

As the summer reading program winds down for the Albertville Library they held one of their last events at the former National Guard Armory on East McKinney Avenue, welcoming both an Albertville K-9 unit and Albertville Animal Control.

Officer Tyler Angel was joined by his K-9 partner Titus to speak about some of the work they do in the city such as tracking, narcotics detection and apprehension. Titus is a four year old Dutch Shephard who has worked in the police department for the last three years, living with Angel since he was just thirteen months old.

“He’s a great dog and he has a very high drive to work,” Angel said. “He’s always excited to come in and I get to be with him twelve hours a day. Titus is a dual-purpose dog; he can do criminal apprehension as well as narcotics detection and he can track people who get lost. Say that a child or an elderly person wanders off, we can come in to their last known location and I’ll give the order to track and that’s when he knows to sniff the ground, find a scent and see where they went.”

At home Titus undergoes daily training with Angel while also getting to spend time relaxing and running around. Angel handles all of Titus’ needs like his food and shelter and is a full time police officer for Albertville. 

Titus is one of five active duty service dogs with the Albertville police department, which includes three other dual-purpose dogs and a firearm/bomb detection dog. One of his fellow police dogs, Loki, even works within Albertville City Schools.

“I just can’t overstate how important it is to provide our police and public safety teams the things they need to protect our community,” Albertville City Councilwoman Jill Oakley said. “These dogs can do so much more than just a person on their own and being able to depend on them for protection and safety is so vitally important to us.”

Alongside Officer Angel and Titus was Albertville Animal Control Officer Cooper Hughes, who sat down with the kids to read a story and talk about the importance of taking care of dogs and cats.

Though the city currently has no dedicated place for stray cats all dogs whose owners cannot be found that are picked up by Animal Control are housed at the Second Chance Shelter in Boaz, a partnership that has been going since last December. That means that there are no dogs put down in the city of Albertville except for in certain circumstances. 

“I worked with Second Chance before I came to Animal Control and once I started that partnership really blossomed,” Hughes said. “It’s very important that people visit the shelter and adopt because it’s literally life changing for these dogs. The more people that can come to the shelter the better and it’s important that we speak to the younger generations about it because the more they hear it growing up the more they will remember it when they are older.”

The library will close out their reading program this Thursday with a Summer Wrap Up party at Sand Mountain Park and Amphitheater starting at 10 am. More information about the Albertville Library can be found on their Facebook page under “Albertville Public Library – Alabama” while Second Chance can be found under “2nd Chance Shelter.”