K999, whats your emergency? Two dogs trained at South Yorkshire Police’s Dog School have successfully passed the final test to become two of only 17 Fire Accelerant Detection dogs working at fire and rescue services across the country. Etta, a Labrador, and Aston, a Springer Spaniel, have spent the last six weeks undergoing intensive training at the dog school based at Niagara, to get them ready for their licensing test on Thursday 21 January, which they both passed with flying colours. The fire accelerant detection training course was co-developed by South Yorkshire Police Dog Training Instructor John Ellis, who also trained the two dogs. John explained about the training: “The dogs are trained to detect flammable liquids that contains petrol at the scene of a fire that may have been used as an accelerant, to determine whether the fire may have been started deliberately. “It is quite an intensive training course, but both Etta and Aston were excellent dogs to train and picked it all up with ease.” There are five sections of the licensing test the dogs must complete to pass as an accelerant detection dog. They must detect a planted accelerant when searching a section of open land, a building search and a vehicle search. There is a scent discrimination test which involves six large tins containing general items found in a household, for example plastic, being set alight and an accelerant added to just one which the dog must alert his handler to. The final assessment is detecting a flammable liquid on a selection of clothing, without it being set on fire. The pair will be crossing the border to work with their fire fighter handlers at Humberside Fire and Rescue Service. Etta’s handler is Mike Shooter and Aston’s handler is Jon Willingham, both are fire fighters with Humberside Fire and Rescue Service. Harry Morton, Manager of the Dog Training School, said: “I’m really pleased we have been able to provide the training for the dogs to assist our emergency service counterparts and hopefully assist in detecting and reducing arsons across the county.”
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 13:50:42 +0000
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