Surrey’s Police Dogs

Published on: 27 Sep, 2024
Updated on: 27 Sep, 2024

This healthy labrador gets senior petting.

Phil Kemp of Vantage Point chats with two of the managers of the Dog School and Kennels, based at Surrey Police HQ in Guildford, to discover how police dogs are managed and cared for.

I have always been intrigued by how dogs working with police officers and handlers not only fulfil their role but also have the ability to effectively communicate whilst out on duty.

One of the primary elements is in breeding dogs that are suitable for training and undertaking tasks that they will be responsible for when they are fully grown.

The kennel team find a direct balance between having a dog that is confident, independent, and an environmentally and socially confident puppy that connects well with its handler. It needs to want to play with the ball, and needs drive and enthusiasm to please their handler.

Not quite ready for active duty!

When they are eight weeks old, all of the police puppies are taken on by foster families, or puppy walkers, across Surrey and Sussex, who care for around 65 puppies in total.

The foster families phase is crucial as it’s important that they are not raised in a kennels environment. The pups need to go out and experience everything that young dogs are normally exposed to, so they have connections with other animals and other people – making for social and environmental exposure. The young dogs live with their foster families until they are about 12 months of age.

Obstacles must be surmounted when in pursuit.

Peter Greenfield is the Head Instructor based at Mount Browne and was keen to highlight how the dog school successfully meets expectations in the development of their dogs.

The dog school here was one of the first in the country founded in about 1948. And the New Zealand police dog section was started from Mount Browne 60 odd years ago. Peter confided that he’s been at Mount Browne for 36 years and has trained people from all over the world.

“In our early days we used to go to dog rescue centres where they would offer us dogs – but the real issue was finding enough dogs of the right calibre we needed because of the high demand. The only way for us to be in control of our own destiny was to breed dogs to our needs.

“When we first started, we only had a couple of German Shepherd bitches and a Labrador bitch which was limiting as you can only rely on them when they come into season to use them as your brood bitches. And of course if you get more brood bitches you greatly improve your options.”

That strategy has proven to be highly successful as Peter outlined that they now have around 80 puppies in development – and this has really broadened the capability of the kennels.

“As an organisation we cover Surrey Police, Sussex Police – and Gatwick airport where they have a standalone dog section with 32 dogs just at the airport. In total we have over 100 operational police dogs. We also sometimes service other organisations. We have trained the Luton airport dogs and those at Dublin airport. We also service Guernsey, Jersey and sometimes Gibraltar and other parts of the globe if we have spare capacity.”

As Head Instructor at Mount Browne, Peter has the key role of training both the dogs and their handlers.

“You could have the best dog in the world but if you don’t put it in the right place you’re not going to end up with what you are looking for. So teaching the dog handlers how to work the dogs to their best advantage on different skill sets is vital. We have instructors with different skills for a lot of important roles.”

Apprehending suspects is just one of a police dog’s roles – but an important one.

Geoff Wiltshire, the Dog School Manager, joined us to explain how the training courses are run.

“We only breed the dogs that we need for our courses, and we don’t breed to sell them on,” Geoff explained. “We’ve got 47 dog handlers spread across four different teams, with supervisors and police sergeants within that.”

“Once the handler has been out for two years we give them a secondary dog, usually a big breed that is used as a GP (general purpose) dog and which are trained to go out and find missing people. One of our Surrey Police dogs ‘Birkin’ searched for and found 19 missing people in a year! The dogs are saving people’s lives and these include people from care homes who have gone out wandering and have got lost.”

The amazing detective skills their police dogs have were featured in a new BBC series ‘Killing Sherlock’ when they visited Guildford to see just how efficient their dog units are at using scent to assist in detection.

“As well as finding people our GP dogs find property. And it is often the missing link. So for example there is a car crash and somebody runs away from the scene. Then the officers find a person who denies being involved and has no car keys on them. The dog comes out and finds the car keys. They detect the human scent on them.”

“The big dogs can also provide firearms support. For example, there is a threatening person hidden in a premises. The firearms team don’t just go wandering into buildings. The most effective way is to first put the dog in from the front door and let them search the building. And the dog barks if it finds something. If there is no human scent in that building, there is no person hiding in there.”

Another police dog course underway.

“We run two or three courses. On an initial course we will have 12 new dogs to train, and this can include dogs from Jersey and Guernsey. In the training we cover things like victim recovery, for example finding decomposed bodies and bones. And skin, blood and semen that can be used for forensic evidence.“

“We can also work our dogs off boats, so in the River Wey, the Arun down in Sussex and parts of the Thames. When in the boat the dog can detect smells coming up through the water, and you may get different reactions from the dogs.

“Some dogs lick the water. Some dogs paddle on the water from the boat. But sometimes due to the water current and wind over the river we need to work together with dive teams to help locate a body that may be trapped under trees and vegetation. And we’ve had three finds this year from dogs locating people in quarries.”

What breeds make for good working dogs? They have Springer Spaniels, Sprocker Spaniels – and some Cocker Spaniels which they don’t breed. Labradors, German Shepherds and some Belgian Malinois as well.

The different breeds have different strengths. The Spaniels are very proactive dogs that make for good detection dogs. They enthusiastically search a room, or a vehicle and jump all over bags at the airport for example. Spaniels are good drugs detectors too.

Labradors do patient work. They are passive detection dogs and scan people, sniffing them as they walk past. The German Shepherds and the Malinois are GP police dogs who do the tracking, looking for a missing person or for a criminal for example. Or helping with crowd control.

If you’d like to find out more about volunteering as a puppy minder, go to www.surrey.police.uk/ and search for ‘dog school’ and contact them using the online form.

Phil Kemp is a Godalming-based writer and photographer. www.creativethinking.xyz

For more information on Surrey Police’s Dog School, please visit https://bit.ly/3VNLehQ.