Billie hunts evidence of sex crimes

A ONE-of-a-kind police dog is leading a force’s fight againstgainst sex offenders.

Cocker spaniel Billie helps s investigate rape and assault cases by y sniffing out evidence of semen – cutting ting laboratory delays at a time when sexex crimes are increasing.

Billie’s handler PC Dean Allen said: “All he finds is seminal fluid. There are other dogs in the country that can detect it but they look for blood and other bodily fluids too.

“We didn’t want to go into a crime scene and find those things. We need the one speck of seminal fluid that might be among everything else.”

A special eight- week training programme devised by PC Allen, dog trainer Dave Heaps and crime scene investigator Zoe Parnell involved exposing three-year-old Billie to a wide cross-section of samples.

PC Allen said: “Morally and ethically, it’s a difficult subject to train for.

“We have to ensure the court has no doubts over how the dog was trained.

“We used a representative range of samples from different ethnicities and ages, pre and post-vasectomy.”

While crime scene investigators can use special lights to find the fluid, other biological matter such as broken leaves can also cause them to fluoresce.

This means officers have to do timeconsuming and expensive presumptive tests on everything they find.

“The beauty of this is, we are the presumptive test,” said PC Allen. “We OUR vet Brian Faulkner, from Petplan, has 16 years of experience and is a freelance working all over the country. Send your questions to Brian at: Petplan, Great West House, Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8 9DX or via Petplan’s Facebook page facebook.com/ PetplanUK. I have a German shepherd who’s hard to control and causes chaos at the vets. I need to go often to get his nails clipped or for medication. How can I keep him calm?