Bonus: Probe The PoPo - The Dog Squad

It's time for our favorite segment.

Lawrence, tell me what you know?

Yes, proper. We are big fans of the Victorian police and we've got.

The cuts police officer we've ever seen. Touching it can't stop playing.

Please don't touch him. His name is Senior Sergeant Mark Boyson.

Mark, here you go go.

We are excellent, also very handsome. Mark has brought with him Riggs, puppy police dog.

Is it true?

Twelve we called German shepherd.

Has Riggs been named after leitha weapon? Riggs and Merton?

Yeah, that's true, he's Yes.

We give the handlers an opportunity to come up with some names and we sort of victim and see how we go.

And hear that went past the.

Master Riggs in the studio.

Guys, we got a.

Situation could be so okay, So Riggs in, when does he start training? He's twelve weeks.

Well he started now effectively, but it's more with his age. It's more about the environmental training and making sure he stands up to those sort of rigors that we want him to show when he finally gets operational down the track, which would probably be we're not looking for him to be a police dog. For another twelve fourteen, sixteen months even it just depends on how that development goes. And yeah, so there's a lot of development happening now.

Though what sort of thing will he be sniffing out? Is he like an attack dog?

Not that we don't call him that, no, but no, definitely not. He's a tracking dog.

So he'll be used on frontline policing for general purpose work we call it. So that'll be tracking for criminals effectively, and we'll train him to look for people. It could also be a searching at this scenario for missing people, could also be for subduing.

We've just got to know.

The facts are that sometimes the scenarios where we need the dog for seat scenarios top.

Safe Clint's committed a crime.

Believable hypothetical, I give you something of Clint's to sniff, like.

His hat, for example, is that what they do do they.

Sense a bit of There are dogs that do sense discriminate like that, and so that's probably a lot of what you see with bloodhounds and things like that. And so no, it's about we do know that they send discriminate to a point, but it's about most recent human sense. So that initial imprinting is about understanding human sense. So the dog will will just basically scuff the ground whence the dog indicates that they get a little reward and it develops from there in terms of to a track.

Now indicating PCs Clint outside down down the street right, and you're like, that's our crim Do you let him off the lead and can he bring Clint down?

Hopefully that is never required, but look, the realistic nature of the job is that we do have to train the.

Dogs to do those types of things.

Yes, and are they taught to like do they fight or they just latch on, to latch on and hold.

Yeah.

So now German shepherds are amazing because I have one growing up and it could jump over like a six meter fence. They're quite six meters seems a lot. Maybe not six, maybe like two and a half meter defence, but they're pretty amazing.

And we do train them to do that. Now, we also have other breeds, but probably the good thing about the German shepherds they are all around U so to speak. They could day track, they search, they bite, they do everything we want.

Yeah, no offense, I'm not scared about a beagle latching on no.

But now Melian was which are Belgian shepherds. They are farm more agile, and we've got a number of them at the moment. We've probably got up towards ten at the moment, and they're becoming far more predominant now they're used in the military, etc. We've sort of moved into a number of those dogs. They've got a they're far more agile than the shepherd.

Now, I'll tell you what while we've got the cops here thirteen twenty fourteen, if you have any questions for the dogs this morning thirteen twenty four ten to join us on the air. You were saying it could be sixteen months till he's fully trained. If he passes, he then becomes a fully fledged police officer. So any rules like us touching you, If we touch him, technically we've assaulted a police officer.

I think what's like that with the horses too.

Yeah, Well, we prefer we're very risk averse with our dogs in terms of we really you know, if someone is approaching us, if they ask, more often than not we'll say no because they were in working mode. But certainly we want dogs that are really they can be out there and we can comfortably walk them down the street.

They're not just going to latch on the sorder. We don't. We really got to look at temperament. Temperament's a massive part of what we're looking for.

And we were the same when building this show.

We three dopey people, put them all together and see what happens?

Do you do you grow attached?

Oh, without question. I've had a number of dogs over the years, and and there's no doubt about it. I'm not too proud to say that I've eyes had over a couple of dogs. And you know, once because of that association, you have that your partner because we work by.

Ourself, and did you get partnered up?

And then you're there your dog for life? They live with us, they live with their families, come home with you.

To hang on. How long would they stay in the service?

For generally speaking? Can hear and growling over there?

We what's he found.

By protein powder around thee The probably do on average around.

Eight years of service and then they retire them. Do you keep absolutely so many dogs you got at home?

I've only got the one at the moment, but I'm sort of not in I'm not chasing too many dogs these days, or behind too many dogs these days, I'm leaving it to the younger men.

Most cops keep keep the dogs.

Or with that question, you.

Couldn't give you fifty years Next year is the squad Wow, And I'm yet to see one person who's never kept their dog.

Yeah, that's nice, Yeah, because you would spend so much time together. I love when you see those videos about the dogs retiring and they throw them a little farewell party. I saw one of the airport dogs the other day did its last service, and they dropped from the escalators in the airport like fifty tennis balls and the dogs.

You're going to say fifty dogs.

Actually, that was really really I brought in a thing just recently in the last couple of years that when they do retire, we frame up a photo and a.

Park and that for the dog and the handler.

And I think it's really important to really acknowledge them for what they've done. I mean they've been we ask a lot of them.

Yeah, absolutely, all right, thirteen twenty fourteen. If you have a question to probe the popo, there are so many calls coming through.

All right, well we'll come back and take your calls on the other side of.

This, we're showned by Seni Sergeant Mark Boyson from the Victoria Police dog Squad with puppy Rigs, who's a twelve week cold German shepherd that's one day going to save the world.

Ding Why he got his name clipping wrong? No, I haven't done that for a couple of days. Now next time, Yeah, Lauren, have you seen Letha weapon?

I have seen leath weapons. I've also seen police academy.

Okay, different vary.

So you have a is there a tackle berry dog on the square?

Senior sergeant voice and just turned to me and said, I remember you.

Oh god, what music festivals?

No, no, no, we ran into each other in the World Cup soccer World Cup.

Yes, that's true Russia.

Is he behaving himself?

He was very good actually with his film the.

Second you introduced yourself with Senior Sergeant Mark Boyce, and I bet he did.

It was just a coffee at the time.

Hey, Mark, I just touched on music festivals there.

What sort of dogs would you guys use to sniff out like firearms, narcotics?

Money?

Yet that they're are labradors. So we have fifteen of those and yeah, they're are detective dogs out Dubble. They're really in high demand, so on any given day of the week they're they'll be doing warrants on premises.

Basically might be a stupid question.

If you're a dog, you'd be a labordor Jason. You could sniff anything out bit dopertally.

Wouldn't be a whippedtrror.

The pastries come out here in the kitchen, Trust me, how do they know the scent?

Like? Have?

You got to get them around money and drugs and get them used and.

It's all so odor recognition and it's just repetition.

So you introduce an odor to them, you can get them to find, you know, whatever it is, and you just keep introducing that odor, and once they give you that impression that they've understood it, they're rewarded, and it's just it's compounding from there. You continuously introduce that odor, have that oidor present and they order and they understand it over time.

And firearms have an odor.

Absolutely, so you've got obviously it's the powder itself quite obviously, and also the cleaning, the oils and these types of things there we're not specifically talking about the metal and the wood, etc.

Depending on the makeup of the actual firearm. It's all the other componatory around it and.

The odors that are associated with a firearm and if the firearm's been fired.

The dogs are gorgeous and they do an amazing job, but are they protected at all?

Do they wear protective gear?

So out of general purpose dogs, they will wear a vest that basically covers the cross the chest area. It's actually a New Zealand development in this in the protection for the animal. So we do have the ability to put some panels into the sides of the vest. Yeah, to give them added protection. Absolutely, you can whistle because I can't. For certain people go to music festivals and think about putting things up there. Dogs dogs can sniff it up there.

They're pretty good about them, you.

Know, sniffing butts at the dog parks. I'm sure they like it.

At music festival, where's the most where's the strangest plays?

You've found someone trying to hide something?

You might have hit on it, but yeah, that isle will try all sorts of things, so you've probably I don't know as far as your imagination can take it.

Surprise.

Hey, we have got many calls coming through because people love asking the police questions, let's go to Phillip Island. Colleen, good morning. Do you have a questions Mike.

I'm just wanting do the dogs get to come home with you every day as part of the family, and then like you work with them every day and then when they retire.

Do they get to live with you?

Yeah?

Absolutely, And I think that's a really good part of that that bond is that mayor handlers have these dogs from early phase, like he's going on with Rigs at the moment, all the way through the career. And yes, and we're fifty years old as a squad next year, and we're really proud to say that there's not one dog in all that time that hasn't been retired to a family.

Can you train that out of them? Like, because they retire, they've got to sort of settle into a retirement life. Can you actually train what you mean, if you've got a naughty uncle Christmas time, you know, all things happen at Christmas and it's really.

Hard for him because it's their high drive dogs and all they want to do is get into.

That car and go to work, and it is hard for some of them.

Over time, they sort of wean themselves off at a bit, but you always see that glint in their eye when they.

They want to go to work.

My uncle's yeah, right from Geelong.

Good morning. Have you got a question?

Yes, I do a good minding everyone. So once this thing is your training, how long does it take actually be something sort of got the dogs and what are some of the things that you actually do to kind of get that sort of training.

So Riggs is an example.

He's starting off now it's more of and environmental, so making sure that he can stand up to the rigors of being basically exposed to anywhere we take him, noises and also you know in dark areas, all those.

Types of things.

He'storally a good job in the studio so far. He's peed once and done a pool on the carpet, so he's sitting into this environment.

Yes, he shamed himself.

Unfortunately it's not the first person to do it in the studio.

But now we develop from there, so it's over time we just continue to build up the disciplines that we want from him. And that's mainly for him to use his nose for tracking, and it's anything that's sent bearing after that. So it's all about finding just discarded pieces of evidence. But also then we've got to obviously understand

Do you know when he's onto something like I've heard the dogs at the airport will sit next to the luggage.

And you know what, they're all different, they're all unique in the way they do it. But as a handler, you are looking for classic indications and it's about.

A bark and no barking with these dogs.

It's about head movement, it's about change and in his posture and the.

Way it's to you as a handler.

Because we run off, we run off a long lead, so we'd be ten to fifteen meters behind the dog. He's in a harness and we're tracking along with a long lead and we're casting him across an area to try and understand or see a change of behavior.

Right, that's why you have to know the dogs.

So absolutely we.

Won't borrow some of them for the kids at Westfield, you know when the kids run off for me at the shop. All right, Jackie in too longest to wrap things up, jack wats your question for the paper.

It was just pretty much more like the training actually as the police officer, is what you need to be doing to actually be a dog handler?

Like what do you go through once you go through the academy?

Yeah?

Absolutely for what four years you were saying, we want to we want a minimum of that, and it's really just to because we're going to ask them to work on their own but out there making good decision makers.

So they've got to have that really.

Good background in policing and understanding of the role before we put him into this, because this is a completely different dynamic now we're asking him to perform.

Yeah, Locky here is pretty fit.

It is absolutely fascinating, isn't it. Yeah, we love the Victorian Police amazing this morning.

Mark, You've no good job, sir.

Thanks guys, thank you.

Good luck Locky with your new pup that you've got on the way.

He's bloody adorable, isn't he?

And Riggs you're so cute.

Look at that sloppy little now. I was talking about Riggs when I said he's adorable. Lucky is too. But yeah, the gonna be good.

Jason Lauren Jason Lauren Wake Up Feeling Good on number one hundred. Jason Lauren Bollywood on Socials,