Bps Karma

PSD Karma is the newest addition to the Brandon Police Service. This dog is going to be developed and some of the things you will see happen The dog, first and foremost, needs to bond with the handler. So that’s what they are working on right now, and that’s going to be a period of months. Some dogs bond quickly, others dogs take longer. It’s just like people, right, everyone has a different personality, so they will have to see how that goes. Once the dog is bonded to the handler you work on familiarization, which is basically exposing that dog to as much as you possibly can. So that when it comes time to do the actual job the dog is not apprehensive about going on certain types of floors or crawling over certain types of objects. Or worried about what’s going to hurt me. They basically develop almost an invincibility. We have a K9 Unit with the Brandon Police Service. There’s two members that are assigned to that Unit. It’s not a cheap unit to run but it’s a much needed one and in the end it does save on man hours and resources for us. The police service dog is used in all profiles and we kind of follow the RCMP philosophy with that. And the only exception to that is that the dog is either drug trained in all profiles or bomb trained in all profiles. And the reason for that is obvious, right—if your dog is sitting you want to know well is it a drug or is it a bomb? You really want to know (chuckle) because it wouldn’t be good. That encompasses tracking, aggression work, crowd control, narcotics, searches, and if I haven’t already said it tracking is probably the biggest one. That’s the meat and potatoes of it, here anyway. And small articles searches and what I mean by that is if somebody we have a crime scene for example and there has been a shooting the dog can actually help us find the brass. They will find things like knives definitely. If you have a stabbing, they’re just a perfect tool to send down the laneway and actually look for a smell that’s not familiar. So, in other words, they’re going down that laneway and they’re—everybody always wonders how they do it—well that’s how they do it The dog knows “okay everything is smelling the way it should smell here, wait a minute what’s that over there.” So then you will see the dog tail off and go find the article. I think one of the biggest things, and anyone who has been in the canine world will tell you, is it’s a tool and you have to respect that. You put that dog in a home environment, as a handler you’re always cognisant that, yes, it’s a part of your family, but it’s a tool and you want to be very careful and that any stuff with kids and that is monitored quite closely by the handler. Because the dog can perceive things very differently. You’re lucky if you get eight years out of your dog, that’s kind of the average. The handler will wind up going to the Winnipeg Police Service and their training program last anywhere from 3 to 4 months, depending on how the handler and dog do.