A
li Tod is having a tricky day. Eager two- year old German Shepherd, Barron, is
supposed to be demonstrating his obedience in a series of tests, but today the playful canine is not playing ball; instead he’s choosing to creep forward whenever his handler’s back is turned.
It’s a futile game – and one in which there can be only one winner. Ali has a discreet word with Barron’s handler and the dog is made to repeat the task until he gets it right. Fifteen minutes later and Barron is rock still: a short command from his handler and he comes running, completing the task in the way it should.
It’s a job well done for Ali Tod, a retired senior instructor at the Metropolitan Police Dog Training School and the man in charge of Ward Security’s Dogs Division. Responsible
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for the training and welfare of 30 dogs, all of which are trained in general purpose security or explosives and narcotics detection, he’s used to the odd bit of ‘showboating’ from his dogs.
He also knows that, when it comes to the real thing, he can rely on the dogs and their handlers to perform. “There is an expectation on handlers to attend training, but unlike other companies where the handler has to pay for training, at Ward Security it is all provided as part of the job,” he says. “There is a minimum amount of training required but the vast majority of trainers achieve a level of competence far in excess of these minimum standards.”
And there’s no doubt that business is booming for the Dogs Division, with several prestigious contracts currently in negotiation.
In his role with the Met, before which he’d served for 22 years with the City of London Police before transferring as a full-time instructor, Ali has seen dogs in action for more than 20 years and is well aware of the advantages that using dogs in specific situations – many of them high risk – can have. Most obvious are the physical advantages that dogs offer: a patrol dog can identify a sound's location much faster than a human can, as well as hear sounds up to four times the distance that humans are able to.
And, while we might think we have a good sense of smell, it’s nothing compared to our canine friends: a patrol dog’s sense of smell is about 36,000 times more powerful than a human’s.
“Dogs have the ability to find intruders, even on patrol when perhaps a normal security guard may miss them, because their sense
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