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Police service welcomes additions to the canine unit

By: Gabrielle Giroday

Posted: 08/27/2010 6:31 PM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

JANEK LOWE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

Winnipeg Police Service's K9 Unit introduced their new recruits Friday. This is the only municipal police agency in Canada that runs its own in-house breeding program. (From left) Insp. Jim Poole, Const. Dennis Robert, Const. Scott Taylor, Lexi Taylor and Patrol Sgt. David Bessason. Const. Taylor's family has played host to the eight puppies born July 11.

They’re eight adorable additions to the Winnipeg Police Service.

Members of the city police welcomed eight new six-week-old Belgian Melanois’ Friday as part of the service’s expanding canine unit.

Officers bred the police service dogs (PSDs) — named Jeya, Rubee, Hope, Blade, Tahoe, Pistol, Justice and Copper — so that hopefully one day they’ll work the streets in hot pursuit of suspects or sniffing out dangerous goods.

Friday, the puppies yelped and squirmed about at a police press conference, basking in attention from media and the officers in charge of turning them into experienced trackers or drug detectors. The canine unit has more than doubled in size since 2008, said police, from 11 dogs to 23 dogs.

"It was a snowball effect," said Patrol Sgt. Dave Bessason, head of the canine unit, which has 10 officers.

"The more success you have on the street, the better it gets, and the better our knowledge base is, and the better the (police) executive and our bosses see what we’re producing...they’re giving us great support and that’s a huge thing within the program."

The WPS is the only municipal police agency in the country that has its own breeding program. The breeding program was stopped from 2005 to 2008, but Bessason said it’s now back in full swing.

The 23 dogs the unit now boasts includes breeding dogs and pups.
PSD Reya and PSD Judge, two of the unit’s most valuable dogs, were chosen to breed the puppies. After they were born July 11, all eight puppies have lived with Const. Scott Taylor, who is the handler for PSD Judge.

He said he already sees promise in one of his female puppies.
"She’s just fearless," he said.
"The things she does at six weeks of age, it’s incredible. I mean, at home, she’ll grab onto my pant leg and I’ll drag her right around the entire garage and she’ll never let go. That’s a pretty good quality for a six-week-old police dog."

The Service will keep four puppies so they can be given to officers within the service.

"Anything that you could think of, that’s where we want those dogs to go, escalators, elevators, conveyor belts, because that’s where they’re ultimately going to work," said Taylor. "So we want to just expose them to as much as we can."

There, they’ll can be raised and trained to potentially work the streets by August or September 2011. They’d have to do a 16-week course next spring. Four others will be sold to police agencies outside the province.

"A lot of it is from the genetics of the dogs that we’ve bred," said Bessason.

To purchase a dog from overseas it’s about $15,000, he said, so it’s less expensive to breed and train dogs locally.

The press conference featured some amusing moments, including when one excited puppy peed on the carpet of a Public Safety Building room.

One crawled up the neck of one of the officers.

Gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca

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