Heather Latter
There’s a new dog in town.
“Briggs,” a seven-year-old German Shepherd, has joined OPP Cst. Chris Halverson and “Diesel,” a six-year-old German Shepherd, of the K-9 unit here.
He arrived in Fort Frances on Nov. 14 and did his first patrol with Diesel and Cst. Halverson last Wednesday.
“Briggs is a general service dog,” Cst. Halverson explained.
“He does tracking for wanted people, he’s able to do search-and-rescue for lost and missing people, he does drug detection and gun detection, and criminal apprehension—that’s where you get your bite and hold,” he noted.
“He also does evidence recovery and we just do general deterrent patrols, the three of us,” he added.
Cst. Halverson said the difference between the two dogs is Diesel now will be utilized more for search-and-rescue in the Northwest region while Briggs mainly will do the criminal apprehension tracks.
“Because we have so many search-and-rescues and missing people, a dog gets tired very fast,” he noted.
“Where Briggs can do the other type of work, Diesel will strictly be for the search-and-rescue aspect of it and he won’t get worn out doing all of the other general service duties,” he reasoned.
Cst. Halverson said search-and-rescue is one of the busiest aspects of their mandate here for the emergency response team.
“Especially at this team of year, with hunting, etc., it really keeps us going,” he remarked, noting the K-9 unit is posted to the Rainy River District but is responsible for the whole region.
“It’s great,” he enthused. “At a long search call, if one dog gets tired, I can get the other one out of the truck and continue searching.”
Cst. Halverson said the reason the K-9 unit got the additional dog was to need the province-wide standards.
“Now I have two dogs in my truck that do meet all the standards,” he noted.
And Cst. Halverson said the two dogs get along just fine.
“Two male shepherds, they don’t seem to pay much attention to each other,” he said, adding they both live with him and patrol together in the truck.
Cst. Halverson explained the initial training for a general service dog is 18 weeks long.
“And then there is your weekly, monthly, daily maintenance training,” he noted.
“I went down and did six weeks of training with Briggs because he was already an in-service dog, whose handler got promoted, so I just took him over,” he added.
“There’s been no problems; we jive pretty good,” Cst. Halverson chuckled. “We basically have the same type of personality so we get along just fine.
“It was a pretty easy transition.”
Cst. Halverson noted Thunder Bay had a general service dog and an explosive detection dog, but this is the first time in a long time that there’s been two dogs in the region with one handler.
“We’ll be around town unless we are away for training,” he remarked.
“If anyone wants to meet the police dogs, just flag us down [and] we’d be happy to introduce them.”
Cst. Halversonadded the trio also will be doing some demonstrations at schools soon.
“They are both great partners,” he said of his canine partners.
“I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
