Police force across the country engages dogs and security dog handler personnel to carry out special and complex cases. There are more than 2500 police dogs employed at various police forces in the UK. Belgian Malinois is the most famous breed when it comes to the best police dogs. In the year 2008, a Belgian Malinois female efficiently handled by PC Graham Clarke won the National Police Dog Trials with the best score ever on record.

All police dogs, irrespective of their security dog handler training, must be licensed in order to work for the forces. And to get this license, they need to pass a test at completion of the training and every year till they retire. The criteria required to be an operational police dog are given by the Association of Chief Police Officers subcommittee and are examined on regular basis to ascertain that the license and training reflects the standards and methods.

As a dog’s nose serves to be the best equipment available, a trained and licensed sniffer dog’s nose can actually detect ten year old smell as well which is approximately 2000 times better than human’s sense of smell.

So here we discuss what breeds are most police dogs:

Labrador retriever

Labradors are friendly, reliable, intelligent, gentle and outgoing dogs. Many labs are used as therapy and service dogs. While others are good in rescue and search work, they even make great drug, bomb and arson dogs. They have a high sense of smell and proper training makes them suitable for police tasks. When trained properly, labs can be a good narcotics detection dog. Apart from all this, they can be protective and loyal too when required.

German shepherd

It is no surprise that German shepherds are the top and well known police dogs. Many people know them as true police dogs because of all the shows that highlighted this breed. They are in fact officially the number 1 breed as K9 dogs and it is easy to see that because of their traits and habits. Fearless, fast and smart, German shepherds take the lead. As they are the most talented and fearless dogs they are highly trainable and work on commands just like a clock. They are perfect when it comes to finding the suspects- whether armed or not. GSDs are amazing who sniff out cadavers, narcotics and used in search as well as rescue missions.

Beagle

Beagles are another breed that started working as gun dogs and after that, they were used as K-9 officers used at airports and harbors to find illegal substances and narcotics. This is because the sense of smell of this breed is one among the best. There are various benefits of using Beagles as the police dogs apart from the strong smelling sense. For instance, due to their small size, they can easily get into areas where other huge breeds cannot have access and this is what law enforcement does with them.

Belgian Malinois

Somewhat similar to German Shepherds, the Belgian Malinois are used hugely as K-9 officers for many years and are even sometimes confused for GSDs. Because of their strong protection traits and loyal personality, Malinois serve to be the second most famous police dog breed after GSD.

These dogs are comparatively smaller in size than GSDs but have quicker reaction time. The breed is trained and used for almost exact purposes as the GSDs, mostly to bring down and find the criminals and even for other tasks like bomb or narcotics sniffing.

Bloodhound

Regularly ranked to be one of the most popular choices for police dogs, this breed has been in the list of top K-9 officers by law enforcement. The Bloodhound is a great tracker is also one of the original police force dogs. Powerful, masculine and large, the breed can easily track missing people even after weeks of their disappearance. Possessing a distinct look, these dogs have sharp nose for tracking and they can even find a needle from the haystack. They can follow a smell over miles to find the perpetrator or survivor.

In all, depending on the task they do, there are traits that must be taken into account when it comes to choosing the right police dog. If they are the protection breed, you will wish to have a sturdy dog that can do the scariest of jobs and listen to the commands. For search and rescue or even for narcotics search, it is a nice idea to choose the dogs with highest sense of smell and trained mind. Thus, police dogs are a big part of any police force that can actually bring their talents to situation.