Retired security dogs & adoption

Not sure about security dogs but I have a relative that is a K-9 officer. His dog is on the verge of retirement and I know his family will be adopting/keeping the dog.

Let me know if info on police dogs would be helpful and I can message him.

as Lizbeth said, here it's standard for the officer who handled the dog to have the first option of adopting him. Most of the dogs retire this way. The same for sniffer/drug dogs. After all, if you have spent 10 years or more of your life with a dog then you usually want to keep him. I've known a couple of people who worked the dog unit and they kept their dogs after the dogs retired, they said they couldn't imagine them not keeping them as the dog was used to them and might find it difficult to settle in a new home with a new person at that age.

I don't know what is standard for things like guidedogs, but I worked with one girl who was in the process of retiring her dog and getting a new, younger dog. She was keeping the other dog though, despite offers to rehome him. She said he had earned his retirement and that he owed her nothing.

If you mean a dog owned by a private security company, then the company could make whatever policy they want. That policy would be driven by liability concerns.

There was also a soldier who was killed in action, and his parents adopted his K-9 dog.

It depends on the firm and the dogs. Many retire with their primary handlers, if they have one, or are rehomed. If the dogs are felt to be too aggressive or "vicious", they are put to sleep. One large private firm made the news this past year for putting a large number of dogs to sleep when they liquidated. They claimed they rehomed all they could and the rest were unsuitable for public life.

I would think that a big factor is the company's definition of, and use of, 'security dog'. If the dog in question has spent a career doing routine patrols, leashed to a handler, and never been trained to be aggressive, he'd be very adopable and rehomeable. If the dog has been trained to be aggressive and left to prowl warehouses and building sites at night, you'd be taking a chance on moving him to civilian life. Even moreso if you give him to strangers who won't understand his previous life, and what might set him off.
This might well be the unfortunate case with the Enfield dogs. In an ideal world, no healthy dog would be euthanized, but in reality, there are just some risks that are too great.

A dog that is private property can be rehomed however the owner sees fit.