My state still does the quarantine whether you can prove they're still covered by their last rabies vaccination or not though I understand that this is not typical of most states and is really rather stupid seeing as if the owner has documentation that shows that the dog is covered for rabies according to the date of the shot and the date of the bite then there is no useful purpose for the quarantine. The quarantine exists only because of rabies, and police dogs are not exempt since any dog can get rabies. Besides, the police have nothing to do with the decision - it's the state.
If Indiana has the same law as my state does than unfortunately the dog will still have to be quarantined for the required days though it may be at home like is done for most civilians. A K-9 also lives in the home of their officer partner, and I would expect that the officer would be trusted like most civilians to follow the required restrictions for quarantine in the home.
What bothers me most about this incident is that at the end of the article it says that the dog is only off the job until the vet clears them. This dog should never have bitten, and is in need of more training. Until such time that it can again pass the certification then it should be off the job.
Bad idea all around though to involve children in such an exercise. The children would certainly have had just as much fun if they hadn't actually used the kids as props (whose idiot idea was THAT?). That poor child should never have been put into this position and will remember it for the rest of their lives. It's also likely that the other children may also be very negatively affected just by being there and seeing it happen to their classmate.
For the past year or so I've been working with our local police department's K-9 and his officer handler and sometimes also with the trainer not with my own dog though. I just got really interested especially with the sniffer training (our police department has only one K-9, so he's trained in just about everything... cadaver search, drugs, various other chemicals, etc. along with average police work). I had trained my previous dog in cadaver search though I never got him certified. I never had any intension of that since I knew there was just no way that I was ever going to be able to deal with having to look at dead bloated and rotting bodies (and even worse pieces of them). They say that you adjust to it, but nope, not me... I wouldn't even want to try adjusting to THAT. I really have to admire the people that can though. It was really interesting training for it anyway, and it gave my dog something to do that he really liked.
Anywho, I know that the officer I've been working with and the trainer would both be aghast that they intend to let this dog back on force after a mistake like that without re-certification. I really hope that this was some kind of error in the reporting or something.
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