Tayside Police are looking forward to welcoming their newest four-legged recruit.
The pup will come from among a litter of five German shepherds born last week as a result of the force’s breeding programme.
The two males and three females are the offspring of Amstel, from Tayside Police dog section, and Willow, from Durham Constabulary.
Constable Steve Ritchie will be in charge of training the puppy.
He said: ”I am delighted that mum and her pups are doing well. We will be travelling down to Durham in a few weeks’ time to test the pups and decide which one we want to bring back to join the team.
”The ideal time to test the puppy is at 49 days of age when the puppy is neurologically complete and it has the brain of an adult dog. With each passing day after the 49th day the responses will be tainted by prior learning.
”Not only do we examine the pups physically, we test them in a number of key areas to see if they show the qualities needed to become a police dog including their willingness to follow a person, if they show restraint or dominance, retrieving, and their overall confidence.
”We also test their touch, sound and sight sensitivity as we need a dog that isn’t going to be startled or afraid of loud noises or by strange objects.
”The benefits of using German shepherds are that they are generally very loyal and hard working, as well as being intelligent. From that point of view they are excellent to work with.
”Our breeding programme has introduced strong working blood lines to the pups being born so we are confident that whichever puppy we pick it will have the qualities that we are looking for.”
The puppy will be trained to become a general purpose working police dog and while official training will not start straight away, Steve said conditioning the puppy from day one gives them the best opportunity to prepare them for the jobs they will do.
The dog section is based at Baluniefield Police Station in Dundee but has responsibility for providing police dogs throughout the force area. It has specialist search dogs and general purpose dogs.
The public can follow the fortunes of the pup on the Tayside Police Facebook page (link)