By LILIAN C. MELLEJOR DAVAO City-- The Philippine National Police (PNP) does not only assess the performance of police officers. Even the K-9 dogs are also tested if they were really capable of sniffing and identify bombs and explosives thereby saving the lives of Filipinos. This developed as 30 K-9 teams from various police offices in Mindanao went into evaluation test and training held at Davao City Police Office (DCPO). They graduated on Saturday from the crash course that started on June 16. Senior Superintendent Dominador Tubon, chief of Security, Canine Management Division of the PNP Supervisory Office of Security and Investigation Agency (SOSIA), said that prior to the evaluation, the K-9 handlers were given K-9 handling crash course that started June 16 and ended on June 24 as requirement for the issuance of a certificate of training. The evaluation would test the proficiency and capability of the dog as well as the handler to detect explosives and its components. Tabon said the dogs with their handlers can only get certificates if they can really detect bombs and explosives. Most of the K-9 teams were owned by different security agencies that were employed by the business establishments all over Mindanao. It is one way also to help the business establishment in ensuring that they hire a K-9 team that is really useful, he said. In the past, some of the K-9 did not even know how to detect explosives prompting PNP to conduct the training and evaluation. Tubon said the K-9 training is the very first in Mindanao. pna