Dog teams vie for national honours

This week twelve police dog patrol teams and eleven detector dogs and handlers are competing for national honours in the National Police Dog Championships being held in Upper Hutt.

Auckland's Senior Constable Craig Foote and police dog 'Lore' (pictured) are back to defend their 2011 national championship title. They will compete in the patrol dog section against teams from Nelson, Timaru, Blenheim, Hawkes Bay, Tauranga, Waikato, Whakatane, Wanganui and Wellington.

Nelson based Senior Constable Julian Lewis and 'Saegar' return to defend the Colin Guppy trophy for best tracking team and Senior Constable Hamish Todd and police dog 'Cindy' from Wellington defend their explosive dog team title. Cindy is the sole police representative up against dogs from Aviation Security and Customs.

Six narcotic detector dog teams and five explosive detector dog teams are competing for top honours. The dogs and handlers have travelled from across the country to represent their respective agency, Police, Aviation Security, Corrections or Customs.

The forecast looks fine for the week which bodes well for the dogs and handlers. Over the next few days the teams will be facing a series of challenges around, tracking, agility, obedience, searching, and detection capability.

Each of the teams starts with a set of points and they’re put through a range of realistic but testing scenarios with points deducted for mistakes. The team that loses the least marks is the winner.

The prize giving takes place at the Trentham Police Dog Training Centre, Dante Road, Trentham, at 2pm on Thursday, 26 April. Deputy Commissioner Viv Rickard will attend, along with representatives from the other agencies competing.

Media are welcome to attend Thursday afternoon’s prize giving. Please note that due to the nature of the competition it is not possible to arrange ‘in field’ photos/filming during the competition itself.