BY GEORGE MAST For APP.com

GLOUCESTER TWP. — The sound of mournful wails from bagpipes intertwined with the baying of dozens of police dogs filled a park here Thursday.

Nearly 1,000 community and law enforcement members gathered at Gloucester Township Community Park as the late K-9 Schultz was memorialized with full police honors.

A volley of shots from a police honor guard at the end of the service was echoed by an equally loud frenzy of barks from nearly 150 police dogs that, along with their handlers, attended from as far away as Virginia and New York.

“We are honoring Schultz as a hero today,” Gloucester Township Police Chief Harry Earle said during the service.

Schultz, an award-winning 3 1/2-year-old German shepherd that has caught the hearts of a community, was killed Nov. 30 during the apprehension of a robbery suspect.

Police said 20-year-old Skyler Robinson swung the K-9 into oncoming traffic on Route 42 as Schultz clamped down on his arm. Robinson and Evan Scotese, 19, are charged with robbing a nearby Chinese eatery before Schultz and his handler, Cpl. Mark Pickard, tracked the pair nearly a half-mile to an area near Route 42.

While Schultz was honored as a hero Thursday, he was also remembered fondly as a mischievous pet that once flooded the Pickard family’s backyard with a hose and another time tore to shreds a $700 hot tub cover. Schultz went home with Pickard each night.

The pair recently trained more than 400 hours on their own time for a national police K-9 handling competition, where Schultz and Pickard placed 10th out of more than 100 teams from across the country.

Thomas Conroy, a former Stafford police chief and expert K-9 handler who helped Pickard train for the October competition, spoke Thursday of the bond police officers share with their dogs.

“No bond is stronger than that bond between a K-9 officer and his dog,” Conroy said. “He spends more time with his dog than he does with his wife and children.”

Pickard, along with his wife, three children and Schultz’s cremains, were escorted to the memorial service by a procession that included a horse, black hearse, police motorcycles and a long string of township police vehicles.