The Genesis of the Modern Police Dog

By Amy Fernandez

Detection, protection, sentry work, and police dogs are ubiquitous in so many roles it’s hard to imagine modern society functioning without them. Therefore, it’s surprising to realize the basis of this respected canine profession traces its roots to the other side of the law.

As long as embargos, import duties, and nosy customs inspectors have been intercepting contraband, inspirational countermeasures have been circumventing them. And dogs have been at the center of it from the start. Remember this next time your sandwich mysteriously goes missing.

Dogs are born for a life of subterfuge.  Regardless of breed, they are preprogrammed with the required skill set: wariness, reactivity, instinctive opportunism, and uncanny sensory powers. It’s no coincidence that Belgian herding breeds remain the premier choice for this work. They were at it for centuries before law enforcement caught on to their talents. Smuggling dogs conveyed an inconceivable array of products for underground black markets that predictably blossom in the wake of scarcity, demand, and prohibitive import fees.

This particular brand of criminal activity really gained traction in connection with lace smuggling. In the 13th century fine needlepoint lace entered the shortlist of Europe’s priciest luxury items.  And nothing rivaled the quality produced in Belgium. Like precious Chinese porcelain, it was admired, coveted, and impossible to reproduce. Generations of Flemish lace makers monopolized this market through closely guarded skills and exclusive access to Belgian flax. By the 1700s, the cultural impact of this situation became an acknowledged influence in the development of several breeds.

Euphemistically known as “free trade dogs” they were the linchpin of these lace smuggling rings. Successful operations employed approximately 50 at a time. Thousands of them slipped across borders every night.

The secret of their success was fine tuned training. By the late 1800s those mysterious methods merited mainstream coverage, like this New York Times feature December 2, 1888,  “The smuggler trains his dogs one by one and always at night…from puppy hood they are taught to play hide and seek with pieces of tobacco, bags of coffee, and rolls of lace.”   It explains that throughout each stage of training recruits “were praised and received generous rewards … Once the dogs could reliably find their target in the dead of night, they were fitted with light backpacks…By degrees the weight is increased till the dog is accustomed to carry many pounds. When each dog knows its duties thoroughly it is taught to work in company with others.” Veteran smuggling dogs also supervised missions, keeping its pack quiet and in formation, scouting for uniformed officials, and rerouting the mission to evade them.

Classic protocols of modern positive reinforcement training are clearly recognizable in these descriptions. And it goes without saying that the dogs regularly exceeded expectations of their trainers, and consequently outpaced the most dedicated customs officers.

Belgian border patrols knew this all too well. Long before its official designation as a country, the territories of modern Belgium comprised a meandering, indefensible, network of borders that made it the smuggler’s paradise of Western Europe. Along with Holland, Germany, Luxemburg, and France, it’s also got a nice long North Sea coastline to patrol.

Considering this, it’s easy to understand why they adopted a radically different approach to the problem as Century Magazine explained in October 1906. “That a policeman on night duty in a great city would be more respected by criminals if accompanied by a powerful and sagacious dog is a reasonable supposition; yet it remained for little Belgium to carry out this innovation.”

This gave the first official sanction to an activity that was universally associated with criminal activity. However, history has given the lion’s share of credit to a French army lieutenant Jacques Jupin, who later published an 1887 book outlining smugglers’ training methods in hopes of pitching the idea to the French military. By then, police dogs were a standard feature of both sides in this escalating situation as the New York Times reported

April 7, 1889, “the commercial Belgian dog far exceeds in cleverness the French Governmental dog nine times out of ten…. By 1889, French customs officials employed 805 dogs. They managed to intercept one of every 100 “free trade dogs” smuggling goods into the country.”

Of course, within a few years, German and French military dogs would also become commonplace. It took a few decades for the concept to catch on in America. But underlying all of their subsequent success were a few frustrated, determined Belgian customs officers who decided to turn the tables and recruit these talented dogs as crime fighters.

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Posted by chesliepickett on Jul 23 2015. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.