NCSO Names New Bloodhound Puppy “Angel”
Yulee, Fla. – The Nassau County Sheriff’s Office has named the new Bloodhound puppy that will soon be on watch in Nassau County. The 9-week-old canine cop was donated to the K-9 unit at the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office Jail and Detention Center.
The pup will eventually be trained to search for missing and endangered children and adults. But, since this little female puppy came without a name, the sheriff’s office held a “Name our Puppy Contest.”
Sheriff Leeper and his K-9 Team reviewed over 1200 names that were suggested and finally selected a winning submission. Kansas Hogan, from Mrs. Bullard’s 3rd grade class at Callahan Intermediate School, was chosen as the winner. She suggested the name Angel because the canine “is an angel looking for those who are lost in order to bring them home safe and sound.”
Angel was donated to the Sheriff’s Office by the Jimmy Ryce Foundation — a non-profit organization created and named after a 9-year-old South Florida boy who was abducted from his bus stop, sexually battered and killed as he tried to flee his attacker in 1995. Jimmy’s parents, Don and Claudine Ryce, started the foundation less than a year after the boy’s death because they believed their son would have been found sooner, and possibly lived, if their local law-enforcement agencies had access to a bloodhound.
Since 1996, the foundation has donated more than 400 AKC certified bloodhounds to law-enforcement agencies all over the country.
- Kansas Hogan, 3rd grade student at Callahan Intermediate School, and Sheriff Bill Leeper present NCSO’s new bloodhound “Angel”
