Devon and Cornwall Police crowns its champion dog and handler

Devon and Cornwall Police has crowned its champion dog and handler at its annual trials.

PC Lee Adamson and dog Vinni from Barnstaple came out winners after a series of tests and trials held across the Force area.

Trials are used to assess the ability and standards of the Force’s general purpose police dogs and Vinni was victorious ahead of PC Tim Goodwin and Buzz from Camborne.

The German shepherds were marked by an independent assessor throughout the week and benchmarked against national standards.

All of the dogs are operational and were tested in areas such as obedience, agility, searching and stopping and detaining suspects.

Winner Lee, a former detective, has been a dog handler for five years with Vinni. Tim is a former firearms officer and has been with the dog section for three years. Buzz is his first dog and this was their first trial.

Following this success, PCs Adamson and Goodwin will go on to attend the regional assessment process in February 2014 where they will be benchmarked against other teams from the south west and Wales region.

Tony Jordan, Force dog training manager, said: “The dog trials give us the opportunity to ensure our dogs are meeting the required standards against a national benchmark.

“The week-long trial also gave the dogs the chance to show off what they are really good at. All the activities they undertake reflect the work they do operationally on a day-to-day basis.

“This year the standard was very high; all the dogs and handlers performed extremely well and we are now looking forward to the regional trials next year.”