Barrie police welcome new member, Poppy, the search and rescue dog

Poppy is the K9 unit’s newest addition, trained to find missing and vulnerable people.

The Barrie Police Service has welcomed a brand new member to its team. Poppy is a search and rescue dog, trained in locating people.

The name, Poppy, comes from the flower, the symbol of the First World War, in honour of our Canadian veterans. Barrie police say she was purchased from the Canadian Veteran Service Dog Unit, an organization providing service dogs to veterans and first responders.

Poppy is a 2-year-old lab, trained in Human Remains Detection and Search and Rescue. That means she can search for people whether they are alive or deceased and safely locate them.

Her K9 handler, Constable John Lamont, says she is trained to search for people whether missing or in crisis. He says she can track human scent over different types of terrain. The training for that took several months.

Lamont says they train the dogs by having them search for a ball, which then becomes their reward. He indicates he can throw a ball out into the wilderness and have her search for it. He says he can hear her sniffing and the rate of sniffing (how quickly a dog is sniffing).

“I’ve got her on a 20-foot leash attached to her harness and I’ll be behind her as she tracks,” Lamont explains. “I can read her body language, whether she’s tracking or not tracking, in human odour or out of human odour,” he continues.

Lamont says in rural areas, he can have her search off lead.

Another handy thing about Poppy is she has a GPS tracker so police can tell where she’s going, how fast, whether she’s stopped or moving, and the distance between her and her handler. The GPS tracker will also show if she’s found someone and how long she’s been with the person or item, Lamont says.

Lamont says Poppy is a non-biting dog and that’s a good thing.

“If she’s used to search for someone who might be vulnerable like the elderly or young people, she’ll give a bark indication on locating them, rather than biting them,” Constable Lamont says.

He says one of the trained behaviours she has is passive indication, which means when she finds someone who is deceased, the dog will just be with that person, usually lying beside them and staying with them.