A dog's life

Try to imagine 30,000 excited people, together with their eager pets, converging in one place.

The sheer scale of the Pedigree and Whiskers Pet Show being held at Nad Al Sheba Club on Friday is enough to set even the calmest pulses racing and limpest tails wagging.

But keeping their cool on the day will be the stars of Dubai's K-9 Police Department who will be demonstrating their amazing skills with four-legged colleagues from Al Ain and Ras Al Khaimah.

Vital skills

As a former dog-owner - who misses her black Labrador, Fluke, to this day - I was very keen to watch the specialist hounds at work at a preview demonstration this week.
 
As anticipated, they didn't disappoint and illustrated perfectly the vital skills used to sniff out missing people, uncover narcotics and locate explosives.

By employing their acute sense of smell, these canines can detect crime and save lives in a fraction of the time it would take humans.

Crowd control

First Lieutenant Abdul Salam Al Shamsi, Director of the K-9 Training Department in Dubai, says the division boasts 75 trained dogs and 45 handlers.

Together, they dealt with more than 3,400 individual jobs last year.

He says, "One dog is as effective as 80 policemen when dealing with crowd control because people will fight with other people but they cannot fight with dogs. For police officers to search for explosives or drugs you need to have time but dogs can find it in seconds."

The intelligent animals before us seem to revel in their sense of purpose, with their concentration on the task and pleasure at the outcome plain to see.

Search and find

Schoolchildren also enraptured with the preview were thrilled, if a little apprehensive, at being asked to act as props in search and find exercises for the dogs.

Out of 11 boys lined up, one of the police dogs managed to locate in three seconds the child who, moments earlier, had been planted with a tiny quantity of explosive in their sock.

To indicate his find, the dog simply sat beside the student and waited to be rewarded with his ball to play with for successfully rooting out the target find.

Other demonstrations involved a dog being given a shoe to sniff and then tasked with finding the other shoe hidden in one of five metal boxes filled with confusing smells from the footwear of volunteer pupils.

Temperament

Al Shamsi explains different dogs are used for different purposes depending on their temperament which is why their characteristics need to be developed before joining the profession.

"When you choose the dogs, you should know what they will be used for. Dogs for explosives should be cool and very friendly while for crowd control they need to be tough and not afraid," he says.

Breeds of dogs used by Dubai Police include German, Dutch and Belgian Shepherds, which are particularly good for crowd control and for using as "cadaver dogs" - those who search for bodies.

Labradors are also used as cadaver dogs and to find explosives while Cocker Spaniels can access smaller spaces and Malinois dogs can sniff out explosives and drugs as well as control crowds.

The dogs cost a minimum of Dh25,000 each and are bought from Holland and Germany when aged between one and two.

Their first requirement is to pass a temperament test before journeying to Dubai for up to six months of training prior to starting work.

Rescue

Their career is destined to be varied, from working at the airport and supporting the Royal Family to covering major events and helping out in disaster zones around the world.

When the earthquake hit Pakistan last October, four Dubai Police dogs and their handlers helped in the search for survivors and found three people alive.

One of them was a little girl who had been trapped by debris undetected for four days.

The K-9 Department also volunteered their help in the badly affected Banda Aceh, in Indonesia, following the tsunami and assisted at a bomb site in Iran.

Awareness

Since it was founded 30 years ago with just six dogs, the K-9 Department has come a long way and learnt many lessons.

Following the September 11 attacks, it has doubled the number of dogs it uses and increased its training in searching for explosives.

Friday's demonstration is a way of raising awareness about what the Department does and may even serve to warn people against smuggling drugs or planting explosives by showing them how easy it is to detect.
 
With their noses on the job, there is no doubt the best trained canines in Dubai truly are a force to be reckoned with.

The show

The Pedigree and Whiskas Pet Show will be held between 8.30am and 5.30pm tomorrow at the Nad Al Sheba Club in Dubai. Now in its 18th year, the free event is expected to attract 30,000 people and their pets.

As well as the police dog demonstrations, there will be international judges selecting the best pedigree in different classes and a public agility competition to show off your own pet's skills.

The popular fancy dress competition invites owners and their pets to enter in all sorts of creative outfits on the day. And collections will be made throughout the event to raise money for the animal charities K9 and Feline Friends.