Page 14 - Chiron Issue 2 2014

It is beyond question that a dog has an amazing sense of smell. It is 100,000 times better than humans. Where we have a mere 5 million scent receptors, a dog can have up to 250 million!
Wagtail UK, has harnessed this amazing olfactory ability, teamed it with a dogs love of retrieving and play, added specific scent training and created an award winning specialist dog training company supplying trained dogs to the Police, UK Border Force, HMRC,Trading Standards plus a number of overseas clients.
At their established dog training facility in North Wales, Wagtail’s Managing Director Collin Singer, and Director of Training, Louise Wilson have built a strong reputation for quality training, dog welfare, professionalism, experience, excellence and reliability that is second to none.
Collin, a dog handler, trainer and instructor with the Royal Air Force for 24 years says, “The key to effective dog training is making it fun – it has to be a game. If a dog doesn’t enjoy what he does, he won’t work effectively. We simply utilise the dog’s natural instinct to hunt by encouraging him to search; and when he finds the desired scent, he will “win” the “prey” – usually a favourite toy, or tennis
Trained For Success
ball.”
As a Wagtail Detection Dog Handler,
there is no knowing where your working week can take you – one day you may be searching for explosives or firearms at a stadium, or blue chip company; sniffing out drugs or cash at an airport or port; working with Trading Standards countrywide revealing a concealment of illegal tobacco; at a port detecting illegal immigrants in vehicles, lorries or containers; as a rescue dog in mountain and urban disaster scenarios or sometimes the very hard task of searching for cadaver and hydrocarbons. Each dog will have its own speciality - ie he will detect drugs or explosives or illegal immigrants
In 2008 Wagtail commenced operations to provide Live Body Detection Dog Teams to the UK Home Office, and are the ONLY Company contracted by the UK Border
Force, European Operations to detect illegal immigrants trying to enter the UK hidden in or on vehicles leaving Northern France. The dogs have had phenomenal success, and it is a testament to the skills of both the dogs and handlers that so many illegal’s have been found in so many unusual spaces, including tankers containing powdered gluten, freight containing cat and dog food, Christmas trees, beer and food, wheelie bins, coffins, toilet rolls and car parts.
Wagtail are also suppliers of tobacco dogs to Trading Standards and HMRC where they have a proven track record with concealments of millions of illicit cigarettes and tonnes of tobacco being detected by Wagtail Tobacco Detection Dog Teams.
Additionally Wagtail UK are approved by the Career Transition Partnership (CTP) of the Ministry of Defence to deliver courses toserviceleavers.Thecoursesandtraining is based on the British Military and Civil Police methods of training incorporating ACPO guidelines.
The team at Wagtail are always on the look-out for crazy dogs or people crazy enough about dogs to become a part of the team.
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14 Chiron Calling