The 11-week-old German shepherd male puppy has begun the training designed to turn him into a fully fledged police dog.
Dunedin dog section head Sergeant Craig Baron said puppies began training from about the age of 10 weeks, with "just some basic stuff"'.
If he made the grade, training would be ongoing throughout his working career - likely to be up to eight years.
Between 18 months' and two years' training was required before a dog became operational. This included about nine weeks of intensive training for dogs and their handlers at the police dog training centre in Trentham, Wellington.
Halo was being fostered in a Dunedin home until he was assigned a handler. He would live at home with the officer, as the job required them to be on call.
Police dogs were not pets, but were working dogs who worked shifts with their handlers, Sgt Baron said.
Halo was likely to be paired with one of the six Dunedin-based dog handlers, but could be allocated elsewhere in the country. If Halo was "not up to scratch", he could be given away.
"Whether he makes it or not ... who knows?" Police dogs were often used for tracking offenders, but also worked with the armed offenders squad and search and rescue.
Sgt Baron said the Dunedin dog section had five patrol dogs and one drug dog, and were all German shepherds.
"Basically, the New Zealand public accept a German shepherd as a police dog, and they are good across the board for everything we want them to do."
Halo was part of the national police dog breeding programme, where each each litter was assigned a letter to name them, in this case 'h'.
