City Council Authorizes Sale of ZPD K-9

ZANESVILLE, Ohio — City Council passed an ordinance tonight authorizing the sale of Vesly, a K-9 dog for the Zanesville Police Department.

Vesly is nine-years old and came to the ZPD from the Ohio Highway Patrol. Public Safety Director Fred Buck said it was time for Vesly to retire.

“He’s been with us after serving a stint with the Ohio Highway Patrol. I think Vesly at the time was six-years old, so we still had 3-4 more years good life out of Vesly to work. I think a lot of people don’t realize these dogs become really attached to their handlers,” said Buck.

Selling Vesly to his handler was always the right decision in the mind of the city, as placing the dog with another handler wouldn’t be fair to the current handler, or Vesly himself.

“It’s hard to take him and put him somewhere else after spending 8-hours a day working with the officer in the car, and then they take them home and they do training with them all the time. They live at home with them, we don’t board them, they are taken care of at home,” added Buck.

The sale only cost Vesly’s handler $1.00, and the ZPD will look to replace the two K-9’s they’ve recently lost to retirement in the near future, though the K-9 is funded through charity and donations and not public funding.

Other ordinances passed at tonight’s City Council meeting, among others, included a resolution of the City of Zanesville supporting an application for Ohio Housing Finance Agency Funding, the authorization of the Mayor to submit an application to participate in the Appalachian Regional Commission and/or Ohio Governors’s Office of Appalachia Programs, and authorization of the appropriate City Officials to enter into agreement with the “IBI Group” for bidding construction services for the Putnam Hill Water Tank and Heritage Tank Improvement Projects.

The next City Council Meeting will take place on Monday, April 10th at 7:00PM.