Meet Walnut Creek's Police Dogs and Get Your Dog Washed to Help Raise Money for Bay Area K9s

Get a chance to see Walnut Creek police dogs show off their skills in drug sniffing and finding suspects at Pet Food Express this Saturday and Sunday. The dogs and their officer companions will be at the store for about two hours each day as part of an effort to help raise money for K9 programs throughout the Bay Area.

Kar--and his human officer counterpart Joe Donleavy--will be at Pet Food Express this Saturday, starting at about 3 p.m., while Orfas and Pat Duggan will be at the South California Boulevard store Sunday.

Pet Food Express, which has 34 stores in the Bay Area, is teaming up with the nonprofit Cover Your K9 Fund to help police departments that have been hard hit by budget cuts.  Last year, Pet Food Express raised $70,000 to help buy bullet-proof vests for Bay Area police dogs. This year, the store and Cover Your K9 would like to buy more vests for the dogs, as well as medical kits and heat censors for police cars. The fundraiser will also donate money to help pay for medical care for retired police dogs. 

On Saturday and Sunday, customers can come into any of the 34 Pet Food Express stores and make direct donations or they can purchase tokens for self-service dog washes. Pet Food Express will donate 100 percent of what it earns from these purchases to the Cover Your K9 fund. Customers can buy as many dog wash tokens as they like, and the tokens have no expiration date on them.

"These working dogs are on the street 24 hours a day in the Bay Area protecting all of us," said Steve LeCouve of the Cover Your K9 Fund in a press release. "With the help of Pet Food Express and their customers, we'll now have many more of these dogs working with the protective tools and medical kits they deserve."