The police dogs from Henri Coandă Airport

Tasha is a Belgian Shepherd Malinois of six and a half years. Like us, she works at Henri Coandă International Airport, where she has the special mission of detecting and signaling the presence of prohibited substances or narcotic drugs. I learned more about Tasha from her instructor, Police Chief Agent, Melu Paraschiv. He has been working at the airport since 1994, and from 2005 his job includes collaboration with some very special colleagues… furry and four legged! Which doesn’t make them any less professional; first there was Blackie, a Labrador, recently “retired” after nine years of activity, and then, five years ago, Tasha joined the team. Given that she belongs to a breed of guard dogs with a well developed sense of smell, Tasha is very resilient, being able to adapt to hard working circumstances. At some point, she managed to identify forbidden substances in a bag full of spices.

Training a dog for such work takes four months standard, but the general training is more extensive though. After going through an initial training while she was a puppy, Tasha received proper training so that at the age of one and a half years, she was ready to join the Police forces. Her training was designed as a play in three easy steps:

The dog looks for the training ball which is placed inside the bag.
The narcotic is hidden in the ball and then the first step is taken.
After the dog gets used to the smell and associates it with the object to be searched for, the ball is withdrawn and the narcotic is left inside the bag. Now the dog has to look for it directly.      

To strengthen desirable behavior using reward and positive encouragement, Tasha is being praised after each successful discovery. The Belgian Shepherd and her instructor have a very special bond; in fact, Tasha was even purchased by Mr. Paraschiv with its own funds and was later enrolled in the program with the support of the Romanian Police Chief, Quaestor Petre Tobă.

Out of the 12 to 13 years of life, the professional activity of a police dog runs for 7-8 years or… until he loses interest. Tasha is so alert and involved that we could only predict a brilliant career for her! And hopefully a long one!

Nata is a German Shepherd of four and a half years old and she works for the Border Police. She was taken from Sibiu Dog Center when she was four months old. She went through the initial training by the time she turned one and then she received the specialized training from our Border Police colleague, Chief Agent Constantin Mucenic, who worked together with the canine center trainers in Sibiu. The basic principles learned in the canine center are then developed and refined by the instructor.

Like Tasha, Nata has the same specialization (drug screening) and works the same long hours in day and night shifts. She is so attached to her instructor, that there is no way to convince her to go for a walk away from him. We learn about this from Mr. Mucenic and in order to fully convince us, he encourages Nata to take the walk with my colleague, Lili. Not a chance! Nata doesn’t move!

We also learned that the instructors and the dogs go through an annual evaluation, after which the instructors are being recertified and the dogs are being tested according to the category they belong to. The estimated period of activity for the dogs from the Border Police is around seven years, also.

Our visit to the luggage-belt area is about to end. The system at belt two starts beeping, that means the luggage from the last landing is about to arrive. Before my mind gets a chance to outline this thought, Nata pricked up her ears and became attentive. Well, her reactions are definitely faster than mine!

The Customs Service also uses specially trained dogs in their activity, but in the day of our visit, their dogs were out for training, so we are left to tell about them in a future episode.

All areas that luggage goes through – departures, arrivals and transit, the industrial area, the cargo area, car parks, even the space next to the aircraft are all supervised and secured by our colleagues from the Air Transport Police, Customs and Border Police, together with their four-legged officers, which vigilantly oversee the activity of the airport.

Translated by Ancuţa Gălice