Five new police dog teams will start work in Canterbury, Tāmaki Makaurau and Wellington next week after graduating from the New Zealand Police Dog Training Centre in Trentham, Wellington, yesterday.
Joining the Canterbury team is new handler Constable Josh Yeoman with Lenix, aged 20 months.
“Training has been great and I’m really looking forward to starting my first shift,” Yeoman said.
Meanwhile, it’s a case of like father, like son for Constable Michael Lamb who joins his father, Senior Constable Bruce Lamb, on Christchurch’s dog section.
“Being a dog handler is something I’ve always wanted to do,” says Constable Lamb who has grown up with police dogs all his life.
There’s been no shortcuts to training, however, and he’s fostered patrol dog Usain, detector dog Luther and now his own patrol dog – two-year-old Griffen.
Police Minister Poto Williams congratulated the teams for their hard work and achievements, saying they are part of a police service “making a meaningful impact in our communities every single day.”
Three of the officers are first time handlers, with graduation marking the operational start of their careers within Dog Section. This follows several years of working on other frontline policing duties, fostering pups and successfully completing months of training in their home districts and on dog training centre courses.
They join 108 other operational police patrol and detector teams, with a further 13 dog teams in active training. The police also have 30 dogs which are used for breeding and in the last 12 months have bred 105 german shepherd and labrador pups.
