Earlier this month, Military Working Dog (MWD) teams from multiple law enforcement agencies across the state swept across Mississippi State University’s Davis Wade Stadium, and K-9 units with their noses in the air attempted to detect chemicals commonly found in improvised explosives on Feb. 16. 
 The reason this occurred without the accompaniment of a Maroon Alert and the evacuation of campus, was the F.B.I. had placed the materials themselves, and the agencies  gathered for the opportunity to train their K-9 units to respond to these rare and dangerous components, an opportunity that is not readily available due to the chemicals being highly hazardous and too risky for most police departments to keep on hand for training purposes. 
   MSU Police Department Chief Vance Rice said the training session, which included officers and dogs from MSU, Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department, MS Highway Patrol, Mississippi Fire Marshall and Southaven Police Department, was very valuable. 
   “There are some specific explosive materials that terrorists use that are extremely dangerous to handle,” Rice said. “So police units just don’t have them. Everything went great, we felt like it was a successful day of training.”
   Special Agent Brandon Grant, a bomb technician for the F.B.I., said in a MSU press release the training was to improve the dog’s detection of chemical and improvised explosives. 
   “This is the second time we have done this (joint training), and by far the largest turnout we have had,” Grant said. “This is very important training primarily because the dogs can sweep a large venue, a school, a stadium, or a mall, in a rapid fashion. Humans can use equipment that can also detect explosives, but dogs can find them quicker.”
 Grant also said the materials the dogs were being trained with were often used by terrorists. 
 
 Rice said while the chance to train with the materials was very important, it was also a valuable to work closely with nearby agencies. 
   “We basically had just about every police dog and their handlers working together,” Vance said.
   Senior Airman Valentino Blank, a military dog handler, said he agreed on the importance of joint work.
   “We respond to a lot of off-base incidents, so the face time with the people outside the military is beneficial,” Grant said.
   MSU Police Department Officer Patrick Jenkins, who has worked with his K-9 partner Miguel, a Belgian Malinois, for three years, said college campuses need dogs with versatile temperaments. 
   “For a campus, they want it to be a highly sociable dog,” Jenkins said in a press release. “At the same time, if it’s needed for patrol, the bite work, the guard work, they can still do those aspects of the job as needed.”
   Grant said it is important to establish effective K-9 units in order to keep large venues safe.
   “This is a collaboration between the FBI, the Military, and state and local law enforcement who run K-9’s,” Grant said. “Without that collaboration this ability to detect explosives at venues like this would be greatly diminished.”