Supporting police dogs means keeping them in the job they love

2 October 2024, 11:23

For thousands of years, we’ve harnessed and utilised dogs’ abilities to carry out vital jobs.

Police dogs provide an invaluable service; we could never effectively or efficiently replace them with people or technology. Removing police dogs from our streets would be to the detriment of us all.

The dogs selected to be police dogs go through a rigorous training programme and are chosen because they have natural abilities but also because they love it. Many of these dogs would struggle to settle into a normal, domestic home; they’re dogs who love to be busy, to go to work, and to have a role to play.

It’s ludicrous to claim that the dogs who don’t make it through training add to the homeless population, as there are stringent rehoming procedures in place to ensure these dogs – and those who have retired – go to new homes with loving families.

This discussion is drawing attention away from the important conversation we should be having: how we ensure the welfare of our police dogs is better protected.

The Thin Blue Paw Foundation was established to do this. We provide vital support to retired police dogs and campaign for better protection for working dogs.

We’ve carried out first aid training for police forces across the UK and provided hundreds of first aid kits to handlers.

We continue to campaign for personal protective equipment for all police dogs and we champion the use of Finn’s Law – introduced after the vicious attack on my own, late police dog, Finn – to properly punish those who injure dogs in the line of duty.

More could be done to better protect police dogs and to support them when they retire.

Lessons can be learned from incidents whereby police dogs are injured during active service.

But to say police dogs should be phased out is ridiculous.

While a police dog may, from time to time, find themselves in a perilous situation, their daily quality of life – spent physically and mentally stimulated, using their natural behaviours such as sniffing and chasing and by their handler’s side all day – is arguably better than many pet dogs.

We owe these dogs a debt of gratitude. We should celebrate the work they do, we should call for better protection for them, but we shouldn’t take away a job they love.
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Dave Wardell is a former police dog handler, owner of the late Fabulous Finn, and trustee of the Thin Blue Paw Foundation.

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