Last week, photos of dead working dogs surfaced from Kuwait showing the unnecessary killing of at least 24 working dogs after Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) cancelled the contract with Eastern Securities. KNPC ended the contract with E Sec after their dogs failed to detect explosives in an explosive detection test during training.

Following the initial SOFREP article, we spoke to many of the vendors and K9 trainers that have interacted with E Sec in the past decade. In particular USK9 Unlimited, has been very active in helping to track down the facts of the case even though they have not had any direct interactions with E Sec since 2009. USK9 Unlimited wants to convey that they condemn such a gross and vile act against defenseless animals. USK9 Unlimited believes that the dogs that they sold to E-Sec have already been medically retired as the last dog sold to them was in 2008. The timeline still has some holes, as some vendors and trainers don’t want to come forward due to the circumstances of the incident. Here is a broad timeline of what we know so far.

Timeline:

2008 E Sec bought 21 trained explosive detector dogs from USK9 Unlimited.

2008 E Sec enters a contract to provide security services using K9s for KNPC

2009 E Sec sent their contracted handlers to conduct training with USK9 Unlimited

2009 USK9 Unlimited chose to no longer do business with E Sec due to contract disputes over money owed to USK9 for services rendered. There were also numerous complaints from E Sec employees (handlers and Kennel Masters) regarding extremely low compensation levels for handlers, late payrolls, poor working conditions, housing issues etc.

Large gap in the timeline

2012 The last dog purchased from Castle K9 by E Sec (unknown number of dogs purchased from Castle K9)