New police dog team ready for action after graduating last week
A new police patrol dog team is fully trained and ready for action in Southland after graduating from the Police Dog Training Centre in Trentham on Thursday.
Southern based handler, Constable Nic Ah Kuoi and his 2-year-old dog Dax will head back down south to begin work as a team.
This is Ah Kuoi’s first operational dog and he said he was “excited” to get started.
While this may be his first time in a patrol team with a dog, Ah Koui has extensive experience working in a variety of work groups.
Most recently he was the supervisor of a Public Safety Team after being promoted to sergeant in 2021.
Ah Kuoi said he was looking forward to the change from managing a team of staff to just one staff member – a dog.
Ah Kuoi and his canine counterpart Dax have trained together since May last year, and he had discovered Dax’s passion on his days off was river swims.
Ah Koui and Dax were one of two dog patrol teams to graduate on Thursday.
Auckland constable Matthew Morris graduated with his second dog, 20-month old Ragner. They have been training together for the last 18 months.
Deputy commissioner frontline operations Tania Kura congratulated both teams for graduating.
“It’s a proud day for you and thank you for your commitment to what is such an essential part of our style of policing in New Zealand.”
Kura said as a dog patrol team, they’ll be called into situations where their skills and “highly trained” dogs will help to resolve or conclude challenging experiences safely.
“You and your dogs are a critical component in our tactical response model, with support from other specialists such as armed offenders squad-qualified staff and the introduction of tactical dog team roles,” Kura said
Inspector Todd Southall, national co-ordinator police dogs, said the new teams have worked “ardently” in their districts and on all their formal courses to qualify as operational.