Students at the University of Toledo might soon notice a furry police officer on campus.

A new K-9 officer and his four-legged partner could start patrolling campus as early as today, although Officer Kevin Zimmerman and Quinty, a Belgian malinois trained as an explosives-detection dog, will be formally announced Tuesday during a news conference.

Having Quinty will “allow us to be proactive and just gives us another tool,” said Rod Theis, the university’s deputy police chief.

The K-9 officer’s cost is covered entirely by a federal grant and Ohio Homeland Security funds. For the dog, his food, and his training and training equipment, the cost is about $13,000, said Dustyn Fox, spokesman for Ohio Homeland Security.

The university will also receive a 2015 Chevrolet Tahoe outfitted as a K-9 vehicle, which costs $30,000. The only cost to the university was paying Officer Zimmerman’s salary while he was in Columbus for training — the training bill was also paid for by the federal grant and state funds.

The training is conducted by a contractor whose specialty is training police dogs.

The first five weeks of training is exclusively with the dogs. For the next five weeks, the dogs’ partners join them, Mr. Fox said.

“At the end of that they become one unit,” Mr. Fox said.

Four other Ohio universities will receive police dogs this week as a result of the state’s program: Kent State, Cleveland State, Central State, and Ohio University. Bowling Green State University, Youngstown State, and Ohio State got theirs in June.

“I had absolutely no idea what to expect,” said BGSU police Lieutenant John Stewart, who works with his K-9 partner, Jerry. “Even now I’m constantly adapting and learning new things to train him on and at the same time training myself with.”

Each dog presented to the universities is trained as an explosives-detection dog; the pup headed to Cleveland will also be trained as a general patrol dog, Mr. Fox said.

All of the dogs will be available for regional use. So if, for example, a bomb threat is called in to a school in northwest Ohio and local police don’t have an explosives-detection dog, Officer Zimmerman and Quinty could respond.

With Quinty, Officer Zimmerman will work in field operations — standard patrol — on a noon to 8 p.m. shift, which is a “peak time with the population on campus,” Deputy Chief Theis said. The partners will respond to calls for service but also do sweeps of buildings and property before major athletic events and when major public figures visit campus.

“We’re excited about it,” Deputy Chief Theis said.

Contact Taylor Dungjen at tdungjen@theblade.com, or 419-724-6054, or on Twitter @taylordungjen.

First Published November 17, 2014, 5:00 a.m.