Vail Police introduce new bomb sniffing dog named Goldie
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A black Labrador named Goldie was the highlight of a joint meeting between the Vail Town Council and the Eagle County Commissioners on Tuesday.
The 15-month-old canine is the newest member of the Vail Police Department and one of the only bomb sniffing dogs on the I-70 corridor in Colorado, Police Chief Ryan Kenney told the group on Tuesday. Goldie is being handled by Detective Robert Genno and just spent four weeks training at Shallow Creek Kennels in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania.
“He’s trained to a certification standard right now, but we will continue training almost every day for the next 6 to 8 months to get him fully imprinted or fully trained on explosive detection and firearms detection,” Kenney said of Goldie. “The dog is excellent; he’s doing exceptional.”
Kenney, in presenting Goldie to the elected officials on Tuesday, referenced recent bomb threats in Eagle County as a reason why the addition of a bomb sniffing dog was needed in the area.
“It generally takes us 4 or 5 hours to clear out a school, where this guy can do it in under an hour and a lot more effectively than we can,” Kenney said.
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Several bomb threats were called into Eagle County schools during September of 2024, requiring law enforcement to dedicate more than 1,000 man-hours during the 10-day period in which the threats were coming in.
Kenney said the town had attempted to call in the help of a bomb-sniffing dog at that time but was not able to get one to Eagle County. When an incident like that comes up, police usually reach out to dog-handling officers in Jefferson County or Mesa County to use one of their dogs, Kenney said. But those dogs are often unavailable.
As events in Vail continue to grow and become more complicated from a security standpoint, Kenney said a bomb-sniffing dog would be at the top of his wish list in terms of tools the department could use to save time and resources.
“We just continue to have incidents where having a dog that could quickly clear a large area rather than 10 to 15 officers spending hours going through that same area,” Kenney said.
Kenney, during a budget planning session with the Vail Town Council in October, said he had previously attempted to secure federal funds to be used to implement a bomb-sniffing dog program, but was unable to do so.
“Vail has always led the way with things like this, and I do think we could help some of our partner agencies as well,” Kenney said.
The Town Council was convinced, agreeing to include $16,500 in its 2026 budget for the dog.
“We’re happy to have this in the valley,” Kenney said. “Hopefully we won’t need him but if we do, he’s here.”
