CANINE PARTNERS FIGHT CRIME, TOO

Wetaskiwin Times Advertiser -- Const. Robin Haney has his trusty
canine partner Maddie when he's out searching for drugs.

Cpl. Scott Chapman is teamed with Kazan during a search for a suspect
in Hobbema.

Such are the partnerships of an RCMP member and his four-legged
partner in different facets of policing.

In 1935, the RCMP purchased two dogs, Dale of Cawsalta and his son,
Black Lux, for use in police work.

Thus the RCMP dog section began and continues with Maddie and
Kazan.

Like many other dogs before him, Dale had actually helped his owner
with police patrols for several years prior to this, but it was in
1935 that he and Black Lux became official members of the force.

Two years later, in 1937, the RCMP established its first training
program for dogs, near Calgary. Originally, dogs such as Dale were
used for tracking people and for locating articles, including hidden
stills and caches of illegal liquor.

For the first several decades that dogs were members in the RCMP, a
wide variety of breeds were used.

Currently, however, the RCMP's dog training program is more
structured. Dogs are carefully selected -- the RCMP likes perfectly
healthy German and Belgian shepherds -- and the ones that are chosen
undergo about 17 weeks of basic training.

Today, individual police dogs are used for more specific tasks than
they were in Dale's time.

For example, Jack, one of the Force's newest police dogs, has been
trained as a narcotics detector, not unlike what Maddie does working
alongside Haney.

During his eight weeks of training, he learned to locate six different
major drugs. By 1999, the RCMP had 108 dogs working in various parts
of the country, each with its own handler.

The many operations these dogs are trained to participate in include
searches for criminals and lost persons, security for VIPs, crowd
control, hostage situations, avalanche search and rescue, and like
Jack, locating illegal narcotics.

Almost 70 years after Dale and Lux became the first official RCMP
canine members, the RCMP's police dog service section has come a long
way.

While the dogs of today are no more intelligent or capable than those
of Dale's time, their training has been improved and their numbers
have been increased.