Snipe the dog sniffs out water to track down leaks in the system
A WATER company is hunting leads on burst pipes by deploying Britain’s first sniffer dog trained to hunt down water leaks.
Snipe, a 16-month-old cocker spaniel, has undergone weeks of training by ex-military personnel to detect problem pipes by sniffing out tiny amounts of chlorine in tap water.
The dog has now been recruited by United Utilities (UU), which supplies about three million homes in the North-West of England, in a UK first for dog leak detection.
Snipe will be used in trials to assess if his sniffing skills can pinpoint water being wasted in rural areas where leaks are hard to detect.
Owner Ross Stephenson, 32, the MD of Cape SPC, a pest extermination expert firm in Liverpool, has been putting Snipe through his paces since late last year.
He said: “All I did was start off with normal tap water, and then putting in extra chlorine levels to make it stronger.
“So we just put a tiny bit of that in, so the dog understands the strongest odour is the one we want them to find.”
Mr Stephenson, from Bristol, set up his firm after leaving the military two years ago, where he served with the Royal Veterinary Corps as a Corporal, deploying to war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq.
Hannah Wardle, regional leakage manager at UU, said: “The North-West of England is a notoriously wet region, and sorting the leaks from the puddles especially out in the fields can be a real challenge.
“This is where we hope Snipe will really come into his own, as his sensitive nose can detect mains water at incredibly low concentrations.
“Snipe is going to be an invaluable asset to the team.”