The heartwarming tale of a CIA puppy deciding to live a simpler life

A puppy which was not enjoying the rigours of training with the CIA has been retired from the service and adopted by her handler.

The CIA has shared the tale of Lulu on Twitter, creating a whole lot of puppy love for the dog.

Now, rather than detecting potential explosives, Lulu is able to sniff out rabbits and squirrels.

When Lulu, a Labrador retriever, first showed signs that she wasn’t interested in detecting explosive odours, her handlers and trainers put it down to a bad day or two, but it soon became obvious it was more than that.

“Lulu was no longer interested in searching for explosives,” the CIA shared on a blog.

“Even when they could motivate her with food and play to search, she was clearly not enjoying herself any longer.

“Our trainers’ top concern is the physical and mental well-being of our dogs, so they made the extremely difficult decision to do what’s best for Lulu and drop her from the program.”

Lulu was being trained by the CIA to work for Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia.

The CIA gave Lulu’s handler the opportunity to adopt her and he did. It means Lulu is now a family pet.

“She now enjoys her days playing with his kids, sniffing out rabbits and squirrels in the backyard, and eating meals and snacks out of a dog dish.”

The heartwarming tale has been shared by the CIA as part of its Puppy Class K9 recruits series.

It is showing the training that goes into making a puppy into a CIA explosive detection canine – or bomb dog.

The dogs go through six weeks of initial imprint training before 10 weeks of advanced training.

The CIA is sharing how the Class of 2017 is getting on via Twitter, using the hashtag #CIAK9.

Lulu’s replacement will join Suni, Heide, Freya, Nicola and Indigo on the training programme.

They will learn the smells of more than 20,000 different explosive mixtures during training.

There’s a lot of love out there for retired pup Lulu and her training buddies.