Pet Ponderings by Tracey Walshaw - Name That K 9

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Name That  K 9 Contest

The RCMP need your help naming a new puppy for their K9 Unit. The RCMP “Name That Puppy” contest has been running for over 10 years and has had a fantastic response! The deadline is March 7th (sorry for the short notice) and the winner will be announced April 4th. It's really simple: contestants can suggest only one name (one entry per person), the name may be for a male or a female pup, it must start with the letter "D" and contain no more than nine letters and one or two syllables, only. Colourful drawings are most welcome too!
The contest is limited to residents of Canada you must be 16 years old or younger. To enter just print their name, age, address, telephone number and the suggested name for a puppy on a postcard and mail it to: Attn: "Name the Puppy Contest", Police Dog Service Training Centre, Box 6120, Innisfail, AB T4G 1S8. The contest is open to more than one entry per household as long as each person submits one puppy name per postcard. Be creative and original, keeping in mind this puppy will grow up to be a working officer of the RCMP and not a pet. It could be embarrassing for an officer to be shouting orders to “Precious” in the middle of a tense situation – catch my drift? Check out the RCMP website: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ottawa.
While you are thinking about that here are some interesting facts about RCMP Service Dogs: it takes approximately three minutes for one of these dogs to search a car, the dogs can work up to four hours with breaks, there are 112 RCMP dog teams (one human and one canine) in Canada, it costs approximately $60,000 to train a handler and dog team, it costs less than $1000 per year to keep a healthy police service dog on the “payroll” and the average retirement age of a police service dog is seven.
In 1935 the RCMP dog section was formed and three German shepherds were purchased: Black Lux, Dale of Cawsalta and Sultan. 1965 saw the opening of the current RCMP police dog training centre near Innisfail. The dog breeds that are preferred are purebred German shepherds as well as Belgian shepherds (Malinois) and they must be in perfect physical shape. The dogs start training anywhere from 12 to 18 months of age. Basic training takes about 17 weeks, but just like their human counterparts they never really stop training and face a yearly exam of sorts.
Duties and responsibilities of these amazing dogs include finding the lost, tracking criminals, protecting VIPs, crowd control (with members of a tactical team), hostage situations, avalanche search and rescue, police/community relations and sniffing out drugs, explosives, illegal alcohol and stills as well as finding evidence at crime scenes and lost property.

So, have you thought of a name yet? Hurry and get those entries in!