Harms to Police Dogs: Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Abstract

In the Netherlands the welfare of other than human animals (aothas) has a prominent role in political and social debate. It is remarkable that, within that context, relatively little attention is paid to aothas that work in law enforcement. In this chapter the spotlight is on the police dog. The literature focuses on training, judicial aspects of the deployment of dogs and descriptions of the achievements and successes of police dogs. There is little literature on welfare aspects or the nature and frequency of abuse, let alone explanations of abuse or reactions towards abuse. However, based on findings from the existing literature and interview data collected by the author, some tentative findings are drawn out and an outline for research in the (near) future is described in order to raise more attention for welfare aspects regarding police work by dogs.

I also saw the suspect putting his right arm with a large piece of wired glass stuck in it through the smashed window of the front door and subsequently put his head through the hole. I saw that he could see me and my leashed on surveillance dog. I heard him shouting: ‘And you bugger off with that fucking dog!’ I saw him throwing wired glass at my face (…). I felt very much threatened and feared for my life. Then I saw the suspect (…) with another piece of glass threatening my colleagues again. Because my colleagues were driven in a corner and had nowhere to go and the suspect continued making stabbing movements and continued to threaten them with the broken glass, I instructed the surveillance dog who was still on leash to attack the suspect. I saw my dog Rex biting the suspect in his right arm and the suspect pulling his arm back into the house again with force. Due to this, the surveillance dog, which weighs forty kilogram and which still had the suspect’s arm in his grasp, was partly pulled through the smashed window of the front door (Naeyé 2005).