Pipi celebrates her retirement for National K-9 Veteran’s Day

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - You may not know this but Wednesday was also Veteran’s Day, just for a different type of veteran. On Wednesday, K-9 units nationwide were being recognized for their service and one four-legged vet in Rapid City is celebrating her retirement.

Meet Pipi, a dog tasked with one of the most dangerous jobs a K-9 can be responsible for, finding bombs.

“Any time we have people coming on to the military installations we want to make sure that there’s no bombs there’s nothing that’s going to cause any damage hurt anyone anything like that. So she was very vital in making sure that they were searching people and searching vehicles to make sure that there’s no bombs,” said Heather Funk a Veterans Service Officer for Pennington County.

Pipi served in the Air Force for four years and during that time, she experienced a wide range of missions, some of which she remains quiet about.

“She was able to go on a secret service mission while she was active duty, due to some medical issues she did have to get retired back in November of 2023 so we were able to adopt her,” said Funk.

With the years of hard work behind her it can be tempting to ask, what does the future look like for Pipi?

“We have about an acre of land and so she gets to run around she gets to have fun, we have another dog that she gets to play with she’s the queen of the couch now so she’s just enjoying retired life,” said Funk.

Funk emphasized that many of these K-9s still need a good home to retire to, she says anyone interested in adopting one can contact the US War Dogs Association to get the process started.

You can find out more about the organization here.

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