Mysuru; With the city growing multi-directionally coupled with a proportional growth of population, obviously cases of crimes too will be on the rise. Police personnel for detection of crimes need to have sophisticated gadgets.

A Dog Squad plays an equally important role in assisting Police in crime detection. To cite a few examples, bomb blast at City Court premises and presence of alleged explosive devise at People’s Park were two incidents where the Dog Squad played a vital role.

City Dog Squad

The Dog Squad has an exclusive status in the City Police Department – located at the premises of City Armed Reserve (CAR) grounds at the foot of Chamundi Hill, the Dog Squad houses strong well-bred dogs belonging to Doberman, Labrador and German Shepherd breeds. Experts among them in crime detection are Bheema, Bharati, Rashmi and Jessy while Hari, Seema, Raksha and Dutta are for detecting explosives. Hero, Gaja and Balarama are good in detecting narcotics. Gaja and Balarama won silver medals at the State-level Police Duty  Meet held recently.

Food and Safety

The dogs are comfortably housed in individual kennels at the vast CAR grounds. Each room for the dogs has a fan and a mattress. As per the instructions of a veterinarian and nutritionist, the dogs are methodically fed meat, milk, egg, rice, ragi porridge, fish oil, calcium syrup and cooked vegetables.

Health Check-up

All the dogs are covered under medical insurance. Every dog is subjected to a thorough health check-up once a month at the Government Veterinary Hospital. In case of an emergency care or a surgery, the services of private veterinary clinics will also be utilised.

Training

The dogs will initially be trained for a year at the CAR Police Training Centre at Adugodi in Bengaluru and then brought to Mysuru. Each dog will be assigned a Handler and an Assistant Handler who will be entrusted the responsibility of care taking, feeding and maintenance.

Once a week, the dogs are trained in swimming at the swimming pool in CAR grounds. Once in a fortnight, the dogs will be taken to Balamuri near Belagola, where they would be groomed to swim against the water flow which will be an arduous task. The CAR grounds has a separate Control Room for the Dog Squad, a well equipped kitchen, a maintenance register and a crime call register. The Dog Squad is maintained by one Police Inspector, one Sub-Inspector, 12 Constables, a sweeper  and a cook.

Retirement

The retirement age for Police dogs is 10 years. The senior-most dog now is Seema at 8 years, who will be retiring in 2019 and Dutta born in 2017 is the youngest dog.

Emotional Bonding

Dogs obviously have an emotional bonding with humans. If the assigned handler is unavailable for two days, the corresponding dog refuses to eat. The dogs can take commands as good as humans. The Police dogs are used daily to inspect Railway Station, Bus Stand, DC’s office and Court premises, according to K.M. Murthy, Inspector, Dog Squad.