Grant County K9 Chika Retires, Replaced by ‘The Defender’

The Grant County Sheriff's Office announced Tuesday the medical retirement of K9 Chika, a seven-year-old Belgian Malinois that has spent the last four years on the force.

Chika will now enjoy her infamous sunbathing with her previous handler Sergeant Ric Char and his family in Moses Lake.

PIO Kyle Foreman said, "Generally we'll seen between four and six or seven years of service out of a K9. It depends on their health, every dog is different, and depends on if they get injured."

Foreman added that Chika was very fast and fierce in the field, but loved to do public presentations and is very approachable.

"One of the conditions that she barked to us when she was retiring was that she said she had to be replaced by a good quality K9." explained Foreman, "A guy named Mitch Ackerman over in Spokane had a two and a half year old German shepherd that he wanted to donate to our department. The shepherd met all of the requirements and so we took him on. His name is Zedd. It's short for Zadak, which in Czech means 'The Defender'."

Zedd joined the department at the end of June and will turn three this month. The K9 and Deputy Jimenez just completed 200 hours of training to get them certified to work the streets.