Buddy to the rescue
Buddy, who has been trained as a detection dog, is stationed at the West Rand's K9 Unit. He has helped to make an impressive number of arrests in the last months, and seize millions worth of drugs.
Buddy, a Border Collie works as a sniffer dog for the West Rand K9 Unit in Roodepoort. In the last six months, Buddy has been responsible for the arrest of 56 suspects and more than R31 million worth of drugs being seized.
Buddy was donated to the K9 Unit when he was two years old. In 2017 he took the basic course in narcotics for three months, and once he completed the course, he started working in the field. Warrant Officer Bennie Wiese, who works with Buddy in the field, said Buddy is trained to detect heroin, cocaine, mandrax, ecstasy, crystal meth, khat and cannabis. “When we get tip-offs or hear of warrants for narcotics, we go and search those areas. We do schools, bus terminals or any place where people will go for transport. The last couple of months, we have started looking at courier companies,” Wiese explained. He said that on a weekly basis, they seize between 10 and 40 packets from courier companies with the use of a narcotics dog.
The biggest outcome for the canine narcotics training course is for the dog to identify the smell of certain drugs. The warrant officer said part of the training is playing with the dogs and imprinting the scent of substances where they are concealed in a container, because the dog should not be in direct contact with the substance. Wiese admitted that he prefers working with Border Collies because of their intelligence and their high work rate. Animals generally tend to have more acute senses that humans. Trained K9s can have up to 300 million olfactory receptors (smell detectors) in their noses, compared to about six million in humans. “So if you have done the imprint, as soon as he picks up that scent he keeps on doing it to get his reward.” He explained that they train the dogs to detect drugs in different environments. “The hotter it is the better dogs will react on the chemical smells, and if it’s cold, it’s more concealed. We have found people who try to conceal the drugs using peri-peri, vinegar or biltong.”
Border Collies can work with the police until the age of around 16 years, and Buddy has been working as a sniffer dog for three years. Many of the arrests he has helped to make were of people attempting to smuggle drugs out of the country. In a case they worked on in March, Buddy reacted positively towards a crate that was headed for New Zealand. In the crate they found a stone statue with 22 kilograms of crystal meth valued at R6,4 million concealed in its head. A subsequent arrest was made.
Warrant Officer Wiese revealed that Buddy is the third Border Collie he has worked with. “I enjoy working with Buddy. He’s my partner,” he concluded.
