The most reliably popular thing Victoria Police puts on its social media accounts is a photograph of a puppy with a high-visibility vest. Behind the photogenic side of the Victoria Police Dog Squad sits a large training and operational program — drug detection, explosive detection, general-purpose tracking, search and rescue, and a long-running volunteer program where members of the public raise the next generation of working dogs in their own homes.
Our newsroom has been asked to put together an explainer of how the Dog Squad is structured, what the different specialisations do, and how the volunteer puppy-raising program actually works. Tom Whitford has done that, drawing on Victoria Police’s published material, the Police Association of Victoria’s submissions and interviews with serving and retired members.
How the Dog Squad is structured
The Victoria Police Dog Squad sits within the Operations Infrastructure Department, alongside the Air Wing, the Mounted Branch and other support units. Its members are sworn police officers who have applied for and been selected into a specialist role. They are paired with their dogs as a single operational unit and the partnership generally lasts the working life of the dog.
The squad’s home is a purpose-built training kennel facility outside Melbourne. It includes runs, training yards, scent rooms, an obstacle course and accommodation for dogs who are between handlers or in their initial training pipeline. Members live with their dogs at home throughout the dog’s career, then usually keep them in retirement.
The categories of working dogs
Dogs in Victoria Police are not all doing the same job. The squad operates several distinct streams.
General-purpose dogs — usually German Shepherds or Belgian Malinois — are trained to track suspects, locate evidence outdoors, perform building searches, and provide a presence in public-order situations. These are the dogs you see deployed to a barricaded offender, a fleeing offender into bushland or the perimeter of a major incident.
Passive Alert Detection (PAD) dogs are the units most often seen at music festivals, train stations and licensed precincts. They are trained to detect a target odour — typically illicit drugs — and indicate by sitting passively next to the source. The “passive” part is what distinguishes them from the older “indicate by digging or scratching” approach, which is unworkable in a crowd. PAD dogs at events have been a feature of Victoria Police operations for more than two decades, including at Big Day Out before its end and at most large outdoor festivals since.
Drug detection dogs in a search context, as opposed to the PAD role at events, are deployed to premises searches, vehicle searches and prison-related searches. The training is similar but the operational use differs.
Explosive detection dogs are trained to detect the constituent compounds of common explosives. They are part of the response to bomb threats, dignitary visits, large public events and any post-incident scene where an unexploded device may be present. A small number are trained to detect firearms residue rather than, or in addition to, explosives.
Search and rescue dogs — sometimes called cadaver or human-remains detection dogs depending on the specialisation — are deployed to find missing persons, victims of homicide or remains in environments ranging from bushland to collapsed buildings. The squad works with the State Emergency Service, the Country Fire Authority and other agencies in these deployments.
A small number of dogs are cross-trained across two specialisations where the operational case justifies the additional training time.
The training pipeline
Working dogs in Victoria Police typically start as puppies bred either by the squad or by partner agencies in other Australian jurisdictions. The dogs are evaluated for temperament and drive at around eight weeks of age — the right combination of confidence, food or toy drive, and tolerance of new environments is what selects a dog into the program.
From there the puppy goes either directly to a dedicated trainer or — and this is the part the public does not always know about — to a volunteer puppy raiser.
The volunteer puppy-raiser program
For roughly the first twelve months of life a Victoria Police working dog is, in many cases, raised in a private home by a volunteer puppy raiser. The job is to give the puppy normal household exposure: stairs, vacuum cleaners, children, public transport, traffic noise, vet visits, walks in busy places. What the volunteer is not doing is operational training; that comes later. What they are doing is making sure the puppy grows up neutral and confident around the chaos of ordinary life so that the operational training — which happens in adolescence — has a stable foundation.
Volunteers are selected through an application and home-visit process. The squad provides food, veterinary care, equipment and ongoing support. The dog visits the squad regularly through the raising period for assessments and short bursts of structured activity. At around twelve to fourteen months the dog returns to the squad full-time for assessment and then for the operational training course.
Not every dog passes. Dogs that do not make it into the operational program are most often rehomed — frequently with their puppy raiser, who is given right of first offer — and live out the rest of their life as a pet. Dogs that do pass go on to the operational course and are then matched with a handler.
The puppy-raiser program is the unglamorous engine room of the squad. It is also one of the few places where ordinary members of the public have direct involvement in the working life of Victoria Police.
What PAD dogs at festivals actually do
The deployment of PAD dogs at music festivals has been a long-running point of public debate. The squad’s role at an event is to detect drug possession at points of entry or in crowd flow areas. A passive indication by a dog gives an officer reasonable grounds to conduct a search under the relevant search powers; the search itself is what either confirms or excludes possession.
Not every indication leads to a charge. Some are explained — recent contact with a substance, residual scent on clothing — and result in no further action. Some lead to a caution. Some lead to a charge of possession of a small amount, which is generally diversionary in outcome. A smaller number lead to charges of trafficking where the quantity, packaging and other indicators point to supply rather than personal use.
The criminological evidence on whether PAD-dog deployment at festivals reduces drug harm is contested. Health-policy researchers have argued that the deployment can shift behaviour in ways that increase harm — pre-loading before entry, swallowing larger quantities to avoid detection — and have called for pill testing as an adjunct or alternative. Police and government have, to date, taken the view that detection at the gate remains a deterrent. The debate is one we have written about elsewhere and will continue to.
Search and rescue work
Of the categories of working dog, the search-and-rescue dogs are perhaps the least visible to the public and the most quietly important. A dog with a tracking specialisation can follow a scent trail for kilometres in good conditions. In the case of a missing elderly person who has wandered from a residential aged care facility, or a missing child in bush country, the dog and its handler are often the difference between a recovery and a worse outcome.
The squad’s deployments are coordinated through the State Police Operations Centre and tasked at the request of the lead investigator. In rural and regional Victoria the request often comes through to a Highway Patrol or Crime Investigation Unit member who has worked with the squad before.
Welfare and retirement
Welfare standards for working dogs are governed by Victoria Police policy and by the relevant animal welfare legislation. Dogs are veterinary-checked regularly, fitness-tested, rotated when fatigued and retired when their working life is done — typically at around eight or nine years of age, sometimes earlier where injury intervenes. Retired dogs almost always remain with their handler.
If you are interested in the puppy-raiser program, Victoria Police publishes details on its website. If you have information about a missing person, the line is 1800 333 000; in an emergency, 000.
