His Girl Friday: Retired Dog Detective Finds A Home in Oceanside

The county’s first agricultural detector dog has reached retirement age and is trading in her K9-to-5 routine for a life of leisure with handler Jeremy Partch in his Oceanside home.

“I took her down to Baja for a surf weekend, and she had a blast,” Partch says in a feature video produced by the San Diego County News Center.

 At just nine, Friday is still a young dog. But USDA rules require working dogs to retire at that age regardless of how many more good years they have in them.

“She’s not ready to retire … she still wants to work, loves to work,” Partch says. “She’s learning to enjoy life, relax. Be more of a dog than a machine.”

The transition hasn't been without some bumps. Friday was used to visiting up to 10 sorting facilities over the course of a week when she was working, spending up to four hours daily on conveyor belts or in trucks sniffing out contraband hidden in packages. And as a career canine, she spent her nights in a kennel. Now she’s working on being a house pet.

“Having Friday home is like having a nine-year-old very intelligent puppy in the house, because she doesn’t know the house rules,” Partch says. “She doesn’t know ‘Oh, I’m not supposed to get on the couch, I’m not supposed to jump in the garden, I’m not supposed to eat the strawberries.' She doesn’t know that.”

For fun, Partch, an agriculture, weights and measures inspector, brings home boxes he’s using to train Friday’s replacement, Venus, and let’s her sniff them out in the backyard.

Watch the feature video above to see Partch and Friday in action.