We spend time with police force’s Cheshire and North Wales Alliance Dog Section

The same officer will then head into the training space (a large field, in this instance) and walk around in a unique path using lights and landmarks as reference points. Along the route, “property”, which can be a mixture of hard and material objects, is dropped.

Once the trail is complete, Diesel is brought out by his handler.

Diesel then puts his nose to the ground and sets off searching for the scent he’s tracking. Once he’s found it, he determinedly sets his sights on the ground and follows his nose, handler in tow.

How does tracking work?As we watch Diesel track with impressive precision the trail set out by the officer, one experienced handler, who didn’t wish to be named, explained how it is that the Dutch Herder can tell where the officer has been.

While the idea that a dog can follow a scent is relatively straightforward – a dog’s nose has 220m olfactory receptors, compared to a human’s measly 5m – there’s a little more to our smell than body odour.

Humans drop what are known as “rafts”.

These rafts are DNA that is dropped all the time and include things like skin and hair. Rafts include scents both from the person and from their environment. This means every factor of your life is incorporated into that scent, from where you walked that morning to what type of detergent you use.

Even something as small as whether you have a leather or a fabric sofa at home determines how your scent is dif- ferent from someone else’s. These elements make everyone’s scent completely unique - even if the majority of the factors are the same.

However, there is a limit to a dog’s sniffing powers.

A police dog required for tracking needs to be at the scene as soon as possible, so the track is at its freshest. The longer an area is left, the less potent a scent will be, either due to natural factors such as the wind or by people walking across the track.

Handlers explained to me that their job is highly time-sensitive, and funding restrictions have meant there’s an onus on them to get to the scene as quickly as possible – no matter what end of the county their previous job was at.

Handlers’ jobs are made even more difficult due to the fact that there are only two active dogs for the whole of Cheshire and North Wales at the moment, with others either in training or retired.

Ideally, Inspector Dave Price explained, there should be six dogs working across Cheshire and North Wales, as this amount would allow them to cover the areas more efficiently and ensure they’re arriving at a scene with a good hope of being able to assist effectively.

Unfortunately, unlike firearms officers who can simply pick up a firearm and begin working, a police dog handler is reliant on finding the right dog and getting them trained to the required standard.

One handler explained: “There are