Redemption Ranch K9 Rescue

K9 Knox continues to wage his one dog war against his ring toy. While he still hasn't quite figured out an easier way to carry it- he has mastered the "confidence is king" part of how to handle himself in a crisis!

It's hard to believe that anybody could ever have given up a dog like this. Before we found him he was a stray dog living in the snow under a semi trailer near the Shelbyville casino. Barely surviving off of chicken nuggets that people were throwing at him until the good folks at the Shelbyville/Shelby County Animal Shelter were able to get him contained in a humane trap. From there he was taken to the safety of the shelter where the staff there knew he was meant for more.

Today K9 Knox proudly serves alongside his human at the Brown County Sheriff's Office - Indiana , where he has built a tremendous reputation as a narcotics detection and tracking dog. While at work he is all business, these dogs no matter the drive always have a slightly derpy side to them after they've found their people.

From a scared and frozen pup to now a proud deputy, K9 Knox clearly has life figured out, even if his battle of confidence versus geometry remains unresolved

K9 Kilo- How it started. How it’s going.

Somewhere in Indianapolis, in the middle of a winter storm, somebody wrapped a chain around Kilo and tied him to a dumpster. Then they walked away.

They left him there in the cold with nothing but the weather and whatever time he had left. By the time he was found, he was nearly frozen to death and so thin you could count every rib. That’s how his story was supposed to end: alone, hungry, and forgotten. And it almost did.

Once taken to a shelter, he was given a bowl of food for the first time in who knows how long. When given food he growled over his food bowl which labeled him aggressive and marked him for euthanasia. That's not aggression, that's survival.

Thankfully a dedicated volunteer at the shelter knew this "unadoptable" dog was meant for more and got ahold of us. Easiest decision ever. We would also like to thank our good friend Erica and her family who fostered him until we could find him a working home. They not only housed him, but got him the care, love and treatments he needed. We would also like to thank the amazing team at Healthy Paws Animal Hospital for all their care bringing him back from the brink. (Pics in the comments to see just how dangerously skinny he was)

As soon as you meet Kilo you are instantly struck by how sweet he is, and how intelligent. Today, the picture on the right tells the rest of the story. No chain, with a healthy weight, a smile on his face and no fear.

Just a police K9 with a family that loves him, a home where he’s cherished, and a purpose bigger than anyone could have imagined on the day he was scheduled to die.

Where the world looked at Kilo and saw a liability, we looked at him and saw potential. He and his handler excelled in our training academy and it was clear these two were meant for each other. The Wolcott Police Department is lucky to have them both.

Every time Kilo climbs into that patrol vehicle he will never know the fact that wasn't supposed to have this life. He was supposed to die nameless, freezing beside a dumpster in a winter storm or in some cold shelter back room. Instead, he stands between danger and complete strangers he’ll never meet, asks for nothing in return but some head scratches and throwing his toy, and comes home to people who call him family. The world threw him away, but the same world is safer because he survived it.

From death row to duty. Kilo, we’re proud to see you living the life you were never supposed to have.

Thank you to everyone who came and hung out today at the Plainfield Police Department's public safety day! A huge thank you to our amazing volunteers who stood out here in the hot sun all day to help promote our mission of emptier shelters and safer streets!

Kelly Clarkson unfortunately didn't make it though, she must've gotten stuck in traffic or som**hing- but to everyone who came out thank you so much for making any of this possible

Come say hi! Please join us and some of our dogs at the Plainfield Police Department's Public Safety Day Event tomorrow (6/13) at the Al and Jan Barker soccer fields at 451 Vestal Rd, Plainfield IN from 11 AM-2PM. In addition to our dogs performing canine demonstrations you can also meet some of our amazing team of volunteers as well as see every kind of police and fire equipment there is. For the kids there will also be food trucks, a bounce house and tons of other things to do as well! Map of the event in the comments.

Also if anybody knows if Kelly Clarkson is in the area that day and would like to stop by tell her we'll save her a frisbee and a hat!

Wow, we are absolutely overwhelmed and humbled by the amount of followers (we have tripled this week), donations and sales of our merchandise. Thank you to everyone who has cared, shared or donated to our little rescue. We are small, but we have big BIG plans.

As we welcome in the new folks please check out our intro video we have pinned on our main page and then this deep dive video that we have interested police agencies check out that explains us a bit more in depth. More importantly though it showcases some of our amazing dogs in action learning their craft. Huge thanks to Absorb Studios for putting this together for us.

Until I get invited to the Kelly Clarkson show (Kelly if you're reading this hi it's me, Rob!), this is as close as I'll get to being famous. Give it a watch!

Redemption Ranch K9 Rescue Deep Dive The video discusses a partnership between the Plainfield Police Dep...

Well…this has been a wild 48 hours. To everyone who found us because of K9 Sonny’s department portrait which somehow absolutely exploded all over the internet, welcome! We have literally doubled our followers overnight. There are far too many comments for me to answer individually, so I figured I’d introduce myself and explain what exactly Redemption Ranch K9 is.

My name is Rob. I’m a full-time night shift police officer and K9 handler with the Plainfield Police Department, and I also train police canines for departments throughout the county in addition to my rescue dogs. Redemption Ranch isn’t my job—it’s what happens before work, after work, on weekends, breaks and on vacation days. It’s run by incredible volunteers who have bought into what probably looked like a crazy idea.

My partner Jocko is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. He’s stood beside me for ten years through dangerous calls, career successes, and some of the highest highs and lowest lows of my personal life. My love for this dog led me to walk into an animal shelter for the first time and start volunteering. It was there that I saw som**hing I couldn’t stop thinking about: the unbelievable potential sitting behind kennel doors.

When I first started talking about shelter dogs becoming police canines, I heard the same thing over and over again from the “experts": "You can’t do this with pound dogs.”

Let me tell you som**hing I've learned- the word "can't" is bu****it.

Can’t is where cowards who never take a big swing hide. Can’t is where people too afraid to even start som**hing criticize the man in the arena. Every time someone tells me I can’t do som**hing, it lights a fire in me.

Less than two years ago my mom died completely unexpectedly. It hit me that there is never a perfect time to chase som**hing that matters. So with borrowed equipment, handshake agreements, amazing volunteers, and more determination than resources, Redemption Ranch was born.

In a year and a half we’ve saved 27 dogs from shelters. Twenty-six communities are safer because of it. (Plainfield cheated and took two.) And those dogs that supposedly “can’t” do this? They’ve found missing children, tracked dangerous suspects, recovered critical evidence, and gotten drugs, guns, and violent criminals off our streets. Turns out they never lacked the ability at all. They just needed someone to believe in them.

We did.

In the picture below I've got four dogs that launched this. The first is my partner, protector and best friend- my Jocko. The second is of K9 Echo who was my first ever rescue dog to be trained as a canine and showed it could be done. Echo came to the shelter a starving and scared Belgian Mal and would go on to make one of the biggest m**h seizures in Indiana history. Then we have Casper, my first official student in my first ever course. K9 Casper had been dumped at the shelter twice and is now protecting his school community as a drug, gun detection, and therapy dog. Lastly is Teeko, my second ever student in my first course who was labeled “unadoptable.” He wasn’t dangerous—he was scared. Today he’s a respected dog out on patrol who loves his new life, has a family he adores and job he was born to do.

For those asking exactly what we do, we train police canines exclusively for law enforcement. But we don’t just provide a trained dog. We provide the dog, the training, the equipment, veterinary care, monthly in-service training, and yearly recertification completely free to departments that partner with us to save a dog’s life.

A traditionally purchased police dog can cost $20,000 to $30,000 or more before equipment, making it a huge barrier for many agencies.

Our philosophy is simple: Emptier shelters. Safer streets.

Since we suddenly have a whole lot of new people here, let me answer a few common questions.

When a department commits to the program, that’s when we start recruiting through our shelter and rescue network. We look for high-drive, social dogs, generally between one and four years old. We don’t have breed restrictions, and as a rule we don’t take privately owned dogs because we’d rather save the dogs with nowhere else to go—especially those facing euthanasia because of heartbreaking overcrowding.

We train dogs for narcotics detection, fi****ms detection, tracking, or combinations of those disciplines, and we work with agencies from all over the country.

We’re still very small. We don’t have a permanent facility yet.

If a recruited dog doesn’t make it through training, one thing will never happen:

They will NEVER go back to a shelter.

We’ll continue training them, offer the handler the opportunity to keep them, or find them the best home possible. Once they come to us, they’re family.

People have also asked how this is funded.

We’re a 501(c)(3), and every donation is tax deductible. Our very first class was run with borrowed equipment, handshake agreements, and raw grit and belief. This organization was built by local businesses, generous people in our community, volunteers who have poured their hearts into it, and people buying shirts and hats because they believed in the mission.

Our biggest expenses are veterinary care—because some of these dogs arrive in rough shape—and equipment for the departments we serve. We’ve never charged a department a penny. Every dollar goes right back into giving another homeless hero a chance.

And the dream?

One day, if we’re blessed enough, we’ll have enough land and a permanent facility where, when a shelter calls and says, “This dog is out of time,” we don’t have to scramble to find an agency before the clock runs out. We can simply say: "We’ll take them.”

Everybody wins. The dog gets a home, a family, and a purpose. Police departments get another tool to protect their communities. The public gets safer streets at no cost to them. And a life that could have ended up as just another statistic becomes a hero.

Our website is in the comments if you’d like to read about every graduate, follow along with our journey, or help us save the next one through donations or buying merchandise. Thanks for following and supporting us, because we are just getting started. There are still so many incredible dogs sitting in shelters tonight that someone has already given up on. We haven’t

From Shelter to Shield.

K9 Sonny from the Lawrence Police Department tried so hard for his department portrait, and we thought everyone would wanna see it.

Since starting this program fewer dogs have affected me as deeply as this guy. He absolutely blew away his screener at the shelter he had landed at as a stray. As his euthanasia deadline drew closer and closer, I was on the phone, sending emails and texts, and reaching out to every police contact I knew—and plenty I didn’t. I checked my phone constantly, hoping for a call, a message, anything that could give this dog a chance. The clock had almost completely run out...then the call finally came. A huge thank you to the AMAZING volunteers at the The Animal Protection League Inc., Indianaa for fighting for every minute for him!

So thanks to those volunteers at the shelter he now he holds his head high as a ballistic detection dog. From almost at the end of the line to now holding the blue line, we are so proud of you Sonny!

*Pupdate- this post took off and some people in the comments seem confused by what we do here since they haven't heard of us before (we are both new and small). We recruit high drive and social dogs from high risk shelters that are pending euthanasia due to the shelter being overcrowded. We then train them to be police canines from scratch. So dogs that had almost no hope are given the training, equipment, family and purpose they need to go thrive as police dogs. We provide the training, equipment and vet care at no cost to police departments if they enroll in our program. Our slogan is "from shelter to shield" and we are an Indianapolis area based 501c3 non profit. If you'd like to support our mission consider purchasing some merch off our website, donating to help these homeless heroes find their purpose or following or sharing our page. Thanks!

Walker's got the right idea. He doesn’t ask for much these days—just a warm spot in the sun with his people who call him partner and family.

You can see it in his face here: eyes closed, finally at ease. The scar along his face carries where he’s been, but it doesn’t follow him into moments like this. Those are his now.

Simple days, soft sun, and a dog who’s learned what peace feels like. We hope you all enjoy the weekend like Walker here.

K9 Jocko says "Father, I see you have a Dorito. Fun fact about me- I too like Doritos"

While our dogs are highly trained working professionals, at the end of the day are still dogs. As such they will always demand the snack tax....and who's gonna say no to that face?! Good boy Jocko, have a chip.

Huge round of applause for K9 Newt of the Plainfield Police Department. She just finished the semester with 63 therapy deployments!

Kids at Plainfield schools will recognize her goofy smile, love of life and wagging tail as a friendly face around the school. But what they don't see are other students stories of loss, of abuse, neglect and trauma. Children trying their best to focus on homework and tests while carrying burdens that would break many adults. Some are trying to make sense of things that no child should ever have to experience. When those children need help, one of the first faces they often see is K9 Newt.

She doesn’t know if she’s walking into a counselor’s office, a classroom, or a room where a child is sitting with tears running down their face. She doesn’t know the details of the story. She doesn’t know what happened. She just knows someone is hurting. And she walks through that door like it’s the most important thing in the world. And that's because to her...it is.

She doesn’t know the details. She doesn’t understand reports, interviews, or the circumstances. She just knows a child is hurting. So she walks into the room, climbs up beside them, and gives them everything she has and a reminder that they are not alone.

Before she became a therapy dog, she was the victim of severe animal cruelty. By the time she was rescued during an investigation she was nearly dead from starvation and then spent time fighting for her life in intensive care. Someone who should have shown her compassion instead gave her suffering. Most would understand if that story had made her fearful of the world. Instead, it made her love it harder.

Today, Newt spends her life carrying pieces of other people’s pain. She walks into rooms filled with sadness or fear and somehow leaves them a little lighter than she found them. She takes frightened children and helps them feel safe. She takes children who have lost trust in the world and reminds them that kindness still exists. This little dog decided that if she survived her darkest days, she was going to spend the rest of her life helping others survive theirs.

What was meant to break her became the reason she helps heal others. And if you ask me, that’s what makes Newt so special. Not that she survived. It’s what she did with that survival. And to me, that will never not be incredible.

Good girl Newt, you're simply amazing.