A Day in the Life: Police Dog Handler
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so I never gets any easier the highs and
lows of dogs diction must have been
definitely low not ideal
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my name’s grant burrows I’ve been in the
police over 11 years and on dog section
now for over three years so this is a
little bit of a day in the life of a
police dog here
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typical stretch so Haven is two and a
half
she’s been operational for about three
months and this last little fortnight
some of the pennies really dropped for
her
and she’s had quite a few trekking
catches which is really exciting she a
couple of nights ago she even found a
guy submerged in a creek out at PETA
that had run from a pursuit which
commenced in Manukau City so that was
pretty cool for her pretty cool for us
so she only just has a bit of a run
around with the twelve-year-old Labrador
you never sees you out we just have to
watch our dogs obviously they make sure
that they don’t knock the kids over or
or do anything like that and also make
sure that they don’t learn bad habits
she does have a few floors she’s got a
bit of an underbite so I don’t think
she’s their breeding material but hey
you know that’s it’s all right well I
suppose we’re well matched gotta cut it
out for a little princess otherwise
she’ll complain
got the old Hello Kitty cap I don’t know
how they managed to get in there but hey
here you go
so her days off and overly exciting I
suppose for her because workers wear fun
errs
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it’s Friday morning just about to start
a series of seven shifts
first thing we’ve got to do in the
morning essentially once we get to work
and get the equipment we need for our
seven chefs is run and feed the dogs
that are in the kennels but yard so we
can run two dogs outside at once but we
generally don’t run them together
because they they’re all think they are
our alpha male well four female so
they’ll often they’ll fight if they get
the opportunity a steel bowl that one of
our AOS dogs obviously had a
disagreement with so I’d hate to be
apprehended by him so that’s falklands
bowl and it’s differently crime for you
today look at the state of it you can
imagine over Christmas New Year time
when there’s 18 dogs or whatever in here
this this particular part of the job is
not not for the faint-hearted County
have the good without the band so this
is our day spa area for the dogs a lot
of the females like to spend a lot of
time in here etc but um yeah this is
this is where we give the dogs are clean
so we’re inside dog basin elderly this
is your master room their computers
printer acceptor etcetera phones
this is where we do our paperwork in
relation to our tracking CAPTCHAs and
stuff like that here give you the tour
through to the meal room really locate
me if no obvious the kitchen this is the
NCOs office or the sergeant’s office in
the Senior Sergeant obviously dog
section officer in charge of the dog
section I think it might be so
essentially this is I suppose the
utility equivalent to what the frontline
guys have with the sedan version of
their vehicles it’s the you in its
modified for our police dog
we’re assigned vehicle for us to use and
to take home because the dog is part of
the family and it’s a 24/7 job really in
regards to the care of the dog so the
dog has to come home with us we’re quite
lucky we can Jimmy logon and start our
shift from home because you never know
where your first job will be it could be
literally around the corner from where
you live so we can log on and commence
work as soon as we leave our driveway
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I’m sorry
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no idea good ad image we don’t want to
be caught by him I can tell you that for
free
big big angry dog
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we’ve just finished her training track
and now we’re over here at having our
race course we’ll do some obedience work
what that essentially looks like as a
few different exercises which maintains
and also assesses the dogs obedience to
us and different sort of disciplines
it’s they speak in the borrowing place a
dog come here near the stove used to
find you
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please don’t kill us Davi Loco
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so pretty confident hippy in there and
so she’s trained to find or locate
humans or retrace my steps
the mortising and water always chasing
kill as you can imagine like a female is
drop screwdrivers tools weapons property
with clean yeah and so basically she’s
trained to locate humans so she knows no
different so it’s just a really fun
exciting job really you get to work with
animals
it’s very outdoors orientated very
rewarding you know
tracking and locating criminals that
have committed serious offenses job
satisfaction in relation to that for me
is through the roof it took me about six
and a half seven years to get my trainee
job with the worth the effort for sure
this job ever yeah girl oh dear
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