RCMP dispel police dog misconceptions at emergency services showcase

Sep 28, 2019 | 12:00 PM

Police dogs play an essential role to the RCMP’s work, but ask any officer in the unit and they’ll tell you there are many misconceptions about police dogs.

That’s why the police dog services unit took center field at Polson Park for the Emergency Services Showcase to educate the public on the amount of education, discipline, and hard work that goes into becoming a police dog.

“One of the things that we find the public has a misconception of, because of what’s reported in the media, is the fact that our dogs are savages, or our dogs are aggressive, or our dogs are hard to be around. That is not the case,” said Const. Reg Sahay.

Cont. Reg Sahay and his dog Ice provide a police dog demonstration to the public on Friday (Tiffany Goodwein/ Vernon Matters Staff)

“When I do these kind of demonstrations, I like to show the professionalism and all the hard work the RCMP and other police forces put into police dogs because we understand that there is a lot of power with these dogs, so we understand that as police officers we have a lot of responsibility as to when to deploy these dogs,” he added.

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Const. Sahay has worked with police dogs since 2007 and said contrary to popular belief, the dogs rarely bite the bad guys they are deployed to deal with.

“We only make contact with probably less than five per cent of the people that we catch because more often than not when we give that warning that there is a police dog on site and that there is a possibility that they are going to be bit because they are under arrest, nine times out of ten the bad guy is going to give up,” he said.

Prospective police dogs begin their schooling at just seven weeks old at a training facility in Innisfail Alberta. Once they pass their first test, they are sent off to work with a quarry – an apprentice RCMP dog handler.

“They get raised by that quarry and then there’s certain training that we do with those pups. We test them at three months, six months, nine months and 12 months and then if they are fit for duty then they get matched up with an actual handler who has been selected to go into training and then there’s a six month training program that the handler and that dog do in Innisfail.”

Const. Sahay isn’t shy to admit that he has the best job in the world as an RCMP dog handler but admits becoming one takes a lot of hard work and dedication.

“To be a police officer is one thing but to become a dog handler, on your days off, you have to volunteer your time and apprentice.”

And those apprenticeships can take six to nine years before officers are selected to go into dog handler training.

“It’s a highly sought-after field. It’s definitely tough but it’s absolutely worth it,” Sahay said.

There are currently two dog handlers working in the Vernon North Okanagan RCMP detachment, four in Kelowna, two in Penticton and three police dog handlers working in Kamloops.

by Tiffany Goodwein

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