Belgian shepherd steals show at medal parade

Chennai: Rocky, a

Belgian Malinois

aged one and-a-half-years, and attached to the Tamil Nadu Commando Force (TNCF) and Commando School at Boat Club, was the show-stopper at the chief minister’s

police medal

event on Wednesday.

When Samuel Raj, a constable attached to the

dog

squad as an assistant trainer for canines, who posed as a real-life criminal, held an AK-56 gun, the

canine

held to it tightly and rolled, forcing him to yield and leave the weapon on the ground. Enthralled by the dog’s performance, the audience broke into rounds of applause. Rocky also performed acrobatic tasks following its trainer Karuppaiah. TOI was the first to report when the city police dog squad inducted two Belgian Malinois puppies in September 2017.

Commando force head additional director-general of police Mahesh Kumar Agarwal said, “Initially, we decided to have only a piece of cloth (to be held by the constable), but it was later changed to a real weapon.”

Rocky was trained continuously to follow the instructions of Karuppaiah. He said, “The Malinois was bought from a unit developed by Masood Ahmed and Balaji Venkataraman, who run an IT firm in Bengaluru. They started a specialised training centre for Belgian Malinois, Dutch and German shepherds.”

“The dogs were given intensive training for about nine months before they were handed over to us. The Malinois specialises in assault, tracking suspects and detecting explosives. We give 200g of dry fruits as morning food after walking and running the dogs for about 5km and then practice for assault, tracking and explosives detection on alternate days. In the evening, we give 1kg of refrigerated meat, which will be hard. The dogs are trained to bite and eat the meat,” Karuppaiah said.

Police took a policy decision to induct Belgian shepherds instead of German shepherds nearly two years ago. The puppies have grown into agile, well-trained sniffer dogs that could hunt hand-in-hand with police personnel and track down suspects. Many who witnessed the

event

said they were waiting to see the canines in action and bring laurels to the force and the city.


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