HELENA — The Helena Police Department’s K9 program has grown from one dog to three in under a year. The newest addition to the program, a one-year-old German shepherd named Brutus, was purchased with the help of a $15,000 anonymous donation, and he is already making an impact on the job.

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“The reality is he is the best partner I can have, the most loyal partner I can have,” Helena Police Department officer and K9 handler Nathan Weems said.

Weems and Brutus have been patrolling Helena together for the past couple of months. Before that, they spent six weeks training together at Southern Police K9, Inc., in North Carolina. That six weeks was just the beginning of training for the pair.

“I have to do at least 16 hours of training per month—eight hours per discipline, and I have a dual-purpose dog,” Weems said.

Brutus is trained as both an explosives detection dog and a patrol K9, meaning he is used to sniff for bombs, can help clear buildings, track people and apprehend suspects.

That wide range of abilities means he can get called out on a wide range of situations—from bomb threats at schools, to suspicious packages and abandoned packages at the airport, to burglary calls.

Weems said one of the biggest benefits of having Brutus on shift is officer safety, because Brutus can sense and alert to things officers may otherwise not be aware of.

“Just the change in behavior you see when there actually is someone in the house, it’s an amazing difference for officer safety,” Weems said.

Brutus’s skills will also used outside of Helena and Lewis and Clark County--for example, he will help clear Bobcat Stadium before football games in the fall.

Training, responding to calls, patrolling—it’s a lot of work, but for Brutus, it’s what he loves to do.

“When he sees me loading up the car in uniform, he knows it’s time,” Weems said. “Usually he’ll sit there just vibrating, ready to go.”

Along with Brutus, the Helena Police Department also has K9 Copper, a narcotics detection dog, and K9 Billy, a dual-purpose dog trained in explosives detection and patrol.