Have you ever wondered what happened to the dog, Koton, from the movie K9? Quite often the animal in a movie is practically the star, but after the movie they are soon forgotten. Well the Story of Koton is a pretty sad one.
K9 was a movie that was released in 1989 that starred James Belushi as Detective Michael Dooley, a police officer that was trying to track down a drug cartel. He was teamed up with a smart aleck police dog called Jerry Lee, who was rather unorthodox in the way he did things. The movie received mixed reviews at the time, but nearly all critics praised the performance of Jerry Lee. K9 had two sequels, K911 and K9: PI. At the end of the movie Jerry Lee is shot during the arrest of the main foe and is taken to a hospital for treatment, and survives.
What many of you may not know is that Jerry Lee was a real police dog with the Kansas City police department and his name was Koton. Koton was responsible for 24 arrests during his career and even uncovered 10 kilograms of cocaine worth $1.2m. Unfortunately life would imitate art. On November 18, 1991 Koton was shot and killed while trying to arrest a suspect wanted for the murder of a police officer.
But wait… There has been some disputes as to whether or not Koton was Jerry Lee. There is a counter claim that the actual dog cast for the role was a dog named Rando. Apparently Rando was found in Germany and cast as the main character, Jerry Lee in K9. Although the dog who portrayed Jerry Lee was credited as himself, unlike Neil Patrick Harris, according to many reports, Jim Belushi included, the dogs name was indeed Rando. However, and this is where things get muddy. There were several dogs cast for the role, some were backups and stand-ins. Koton just happened to be one of them. He unfortunately died not many years after the film was released.
The below video is not of Koton, but we felt it resembled Jerry Lee’s cheekiness.
