Private firms prefer sniffer dogs for security

Visakhapatnam: Now, the pet zone owners are becoming as patrol dog trainers as the hiring of patrol or sniffer dog service is fast catching in the city with several private companies under the industrial belt and some of government establishments preferring canine security service over security guards.

According to sources, the police department is facing a dearth of sniffer dogs while the private agencies do have enough training dogs. At present there are 9 dogs in city police canine wing among them four are sniffers, four trackers and one narcotic and two more sniffers will be adding to canine team soon as the city needed more trackers and sniffers.

Speaking on this, Mohammed Basha, who is a famous canine dog trainer at Marshall Kennel patrol dog service agency in the city, had trained over 122 dogs. He said that even patrol dog service is very much popular in big metro cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Tamil Nadu, now the trend is very new, especially in Vizag.

“I learnt the art of training dogs from my father who worked in police department and used to train dogs. Realising the demand, I ventured in the patrol dog business in 2002 when the concept was very new," said Basha. “I have given 90 dogs on hire to many private and public sector organisations.

The demand of canine security service is growing so much that we are finding it hard to cater to it,” he said. He also said that they had provided patrol dog services to major organisations like Singareni Collieries Company Limited, Hinduja Power Plant, Tirumala Steel and besides this many high end residential colonies are also hiring their services.

K Bhaskar Raju, Hinduja Power Plant chief security officer, said that major burglary and security breaches are taking place in big companies owing to casualness of security guards. But these trained dogs are very sincere, active and intelligent when it comes to provide security and protection.

As the industries are in isolated places robbers threaten security guards and make away with valuables from industries, hotels, mines, banks and farms. But whereas here the robbers fear with the trained dogs, as they not only detect explosive and narcotics but also can smell intruders on a premise,” he added. The dogs are deployed for 8-hours every day.

According to the dog trainer Shiva Tanaya, the patrolling dogs keep moving on the premises and are not ferocious. However, the attacking dogs are ferocious and are especially trained to attack suspects or intruders. The guard dog securities cannot stop the attacking dogs once it is released to attack the suspect.

Labrador breed of dogs are used as sniffers while German shepherd and Rottweiler breeds used as patrolling and attacking dogs. The monthly charges for a trained dog varies from Rs 15, 000 to Rs 22,000. The sniffer dogs are trained for 1 year while the attacking and patrolling dogs are for six months, he added.