On Tuesday July 18, we visited one of the kennels of the Muscovite police. This was a first time for us, and probably for the Western press too.
Thanks to the kindness and help of the managers of the Russian Kennel Federation, the Police Center of Kynologia, located at the north east of Moscow, opened its doors to us.
See the picture slide show realised by Christophe Hermeline.
This kennel is not recent, as it has been working for 30 years. There are about thirty dogs working in it, including a majority of German Shepherd Dogs, but also 3 Labradors, and other breeds such as the Rottweiler, and a typically Russian breed, the East European Shepherd. This breed has not been approved by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale yet. It was one of the latter – an 8 year old dog – which began the demonstrations: first, defence exercises, then obedience work, and then back to the kennel.
Unfortunately, the scorching heat – over 30°C – made the demonstrations quite tiring for the dog, especially the biting exercise. The obedience work – walking along the policeman and the positions – was perfectly done.
The next dog was a large German Shepherd Dog, which distinguished himself many times in the search of drugs, under the handling of the manager of the Centre.
We also had the opportunity to see two of the three Labradors trained at the Centre. The third one was on operation this day. There was Mira, the yellow bitch, and Sky, the black dog. These two dogs are specialised in the search of weapons and explosives.
The Labrador has been used in the Muscovite police for only a short period. It all began with the war in Chechnya, when the first Labradors were trained. For safety reasons, it had become urgent for the teams to use dogs more discreet than the traditional German Shepherd Dogs. Hence the Labrador, which is less noticeable in urban operations. In Caucasus, the Labradors were very useful during missions of weapons and explosives detection.
Nowadays, two centres are operational in Moscow, and they count from 20 to 70 dogs. In a near future, ten new centres will be operational too for the complete forces of Moscow, a city which counts almost 15 million inhabitants. There is also a kennel outside of Moscow, whose goal is to produce puppies and then to select the future generations of police dogs (like the puppy on the right). Still, most of the times police dogs come from private kennels.
There are four major fields in the training of police dogs:- Drug detection,- Tracking, - Weapons and explosives detection- Patrol and guard. This field requires skills in the three previous disciplines, be cause when patrolling, a dog may very search for explosives or drugs, to track or discover a hideout.
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