Ask any police officer and they’ll tell you that a police K-9 is as important, if not more important, than any of the other officers in a department.

K-9s near Elizabethtown, Pa., recently took part in high-pressure detection method training, according to WITF in Harrisburg.

The state Department of Corrections ran the two days of training, which focused on teaching K-9’s how to find drugs, cell phones, and explosives while under pressure.

About 60 K-9 teams took part at the DOC training facility in Elizabethtown, Lancaster County.

Being a police K-9 isn’t the same as being a normal dog even when the K-9s are not on the job. Officer Christopher Darhower of the Carlisle Police Department in Cumberland County and East Pennsboro Township’s K-9 officer Keith Morris both told WITF that the K-9s they work with are “always on the clock.”

“Most of the dogs all but live with the handlers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so it’s almost like another kid, but it’s not a house pet. And that’s the big difference,” Morris told WITF. “This dog doesn’t go home and play with the kids and throw a tennis ball in the backyard with them. He’s pretty well isolated from the family. He is a working dog.”