Treat sniffer dogs like police officers 

January 8, 2015, 8:19 pm

A police dog is trained to assist police and other law-enforcement personnel in their work such as searching for drugs, chemicals, hormones, fire accelerants and explosives, lost people and dead bodies, looking for crime scene evidence and protecting their handlers. In America many prisons use dog teams to intervene in fights or riots and to find escaped prisoners. The most commonly used breeds in India are the German Shepherd and the Labrador. As of this year the Delhi Dog Squad will take local Indian dogs.

Dogs have been used for law enforcement since the Middle Ages. Money was set aside in the English villages for the upkeep of the local constables’ bloodhounds used for hunting down outlaws. Bloodhounds used in Scotland were known as "Slough dogs" - the word "Sleuth" is derived from this.

Dogs first started being used in Europe. Paris police used dogs against roaming criminal gangs at night.  The police department in Ghent, Belgium introduced the first organized police dog service program in 1899. These methods spread to Austria, Hungary and Germany. The German police opened the first dog training school in 1920 in Greenheide. In Britain, the North Eastern Railway Police were the first to use police dogs in 1908 to stop theft from the docks in Hull. Now the most commonly used dogs are German Shepherd Dogs, Belgian Malinois, Rottweilers, Labradors and Airedale Terriers. The Metropolitan Police of London has the largest police dog breeding program in the UK supplying not only nationally but the world with police service dogs.

All over the world, dog squads are specially treated. The handlers are specially chosen, the dogs are kept well and when they retire, they either stay with their handlers or are given for adoption to loving families. Not so in India.

We use hundreds of dogs every year, but till now there is no uniform policy evolved for them, their handlers, their food, retirement or rehabilitation. Sometimes they are auctioned off when they cannot work. Other times they are shot. While animal welfare groups have repeatedly asked for dogs to be given for adoption, no decision has been taken so far.

The dog squads in India are mainly for show. For instance, the Mumbai police force’s dog squad, comprising around two dozen Doberman Pinschers, German Shepherds and Labradors, has not been able to sniff out a single accused since 2008. In 2010, the dog squad was called in for 267 serious cases such as murder, dacoity and robbery. The squad could not detect any accused. In 2009, they were called in for 337 cases – all failures. 

 Experts cite heavy work load and poor facilities as reasons for the squad’s dismal performance. "The police force’s dogs are forced to attend 12-15 calls every day. These include visiting a crime spot, surveillance during VVIP visits, etc.

And this is typical of all dog squads across the country. There are no comfortable vehicles for transportation. The dogs work in extremely stressful conditions. According to global health standards set for sniffer dogs, a canine must be given a break after 10 minutes of sniffing. Every three months, the dogs must take a refresher course, but this does not happen. Animal hospitals get cases of overworked and sick police dogs, many suffering from lung, kidney and liver diseases, a loss of the sense of smell and acute depression. They are fed irregularly since they are taken across the city the whole day. At any given time there are dogs at the Parel Veterinary Hospital. There is no retirement age for dogs in the Mumbai Police Department .They are used until they are too ill or old.

Old dogs are either kept in the existing kennels or given to the handlers and the expenses on their food and medical treatment is drawn from the budget allocated for working dogs.  Till today there is no post retirement plan.

The Karnataka dog squad functions as a part of the armed reserve unit of the Bangalore city police. But there is total confusion in its working. The handlers are temporary with no training and identity. As a result the dogs suffer and are of little use. The supervisory officers have no professional expertise. Occasional training cannot instil professional commitment or expertise when the officials know that their career is outside the police dog squad and their interest in police dogs is transitory.  

Though the Bangalore dog squad is supposed to be a training unit for police dogs and handlers from all over the state, no infrastructure for handling such a responsibility exists. No programme schedules to train handlers is available, nor refresher 

or special courses either to the dogs or their handlers. The function of police dogs is confined to checking of the airport during VVIP visits.  

There is no systematic approach in Karnataka for purchase of foods 

for dogs. The purchase of lifesaving medicines for dogs poses problems if the drug stockist refuses to sell medicine on credit. Often, handlers are required to pay for them from their pockets. There are no specific guidelines to ensure healthy practices in dog management. So, each handler engages his dog in his own way, leading to abuse and ill-treatment of dogs. There is no method to assess the performance of handlers and their dogs and their mutual compatibility. The handlers do not maintain any records or registers, like daily expenditure registers, medical sheets or call register.

In the Tamil Nadu police dog squad, a police dog retires when it is eight-years old. Earlier, they used to be auctioned off on being retired. But now the Police Department keeps them along with those dogs that are in service. The authorities have fixed the feeding allowance of serving dogs at Rs 200 a day but retired dogs are allowed only Rs 44 a day. You can imagine what the old dogs are given to eat.

A large number of dogs have died in service in the Railway Protection Force (RPF) of cardiac arrest and kidney failure. Strangely, not a single dog has been retired by the Railway Protection Force in the last five years, though the RPF guidelines stipulate that a dog should be retired if it is found medically unfit after reaching a certain age. Officials said the dogs were not retired as it would have created a shortage. In Pune, for instance, the dog squad has two animals. A 2008 report by a committee, appointed by the Ministry of Home Affairs on police dogs at railway stations, had recommended one dog for every eight trains. By these standards, Pune should have at least 18 sniffer dogs.

Now the Union Home Ministry has prepared a blueprint to prepare a 100 canine dog squads to save troops from bomb injuries and provide them early warning against any ambush during anti-Naxal operations. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police has been tasked with the training in the dog training institutes of ITBP in Chandigarh and CRPF’s Dog Breeding and Training School CRPF which started in Taralu in 2011.The plan however seems to be ill thought out -  deploying  one dog with each battalion of ITBP, CRPF, BSF and SSB across the states . It will mean more overwork and consequently little success. The Army and the paramilitary forces already use between 2,000 and 3,000 dogs in counter-insurgency and the border areas. But the programme faces several difficulties. Too few dogs, too few trained handlers, too vast an area. There are also serious limitations in the manner in which military dogs are trained and raised. The training is harsh and conventional. No new scientific and humane methods have been adopted. There is a National Training Centre for Dogs established in 1970 in Gwalior under Border Security Force which rears pedigreed dogs and imparts training to dogs and handlers of various Central Police Organisations, State Police Forces and other law enforcement agencies of India. It has trained 3000 dogs and 2600 handlers so far.

The truth is that in India we have not yet recognised the immense potential of the working dog. How many lives would have been saved in Uttarakhand had well-trained search and rescue dogs been used.

So much money being wasted, so many dogs suffering. This government needs to make a comprehensive policy on security dogs, their wages, food, living conditions and most important, their retirement age and pensions. They need to be treated as police officers and trained and used properly.

To join the animal welfare movement contact gandhim@nic.in, www.peopleforanimalsindia.org