Meet Belle

Often, you’ll see German Shepherds, Labrador Retrievers or Belgian Malinois among the top choices for law enforcement.

However, German Shorthaired Pointers -- GSPs for short -- are becoming a lot more common, said Sgt. Nathan Dufault, a lead police officer at the VA Boston Healthcare System and dog handler for K9 Belle.

Belle, a GSP who will turn two in a few months, was about eight months old when she arrived at VA Boston HCS. She comes from a family of bird hunting dogs and is a great choice for police work at VA, due to her breed’s incredible aptitude for tracking.

“Tracking and trailing is definitely her strong suit,” said Dufault. “She is a tracking star. She loves it. We get her outside and tell her she must go find somebody, she’s happier than my 6-year-old on Christmas.” He added, “That has a lot to do with her breed and her natural instinct of finding and chasing birds."

Dufault emphasized that this fact is critical in an emergency. “If we can get a good last known location and a clean scent sample, that’s a huge time difference between having police officers do a search and having a dog do a track or a trail of the whole campus. Being in New England, if somebody wanders off in the middle of winter, you know temperatures drop very quickly, so time is critical.”

This past March, Dufault and Belle completed their training and certification. The 16-week course was based out of West Greenwich, R.I., and it provided certification through the American Police Canine Association.

“The certification is only good if it's me and her together, because we spend the entire training learning how to read our dog’s behavior and how to read the surroundings," said Dufault. "One of my happiest moments with Belle was right before we had graduated. It was a bad day out, raining, super windy -- and with tracking the conditions matter a lot. I was one of the last ones to go, after no one else was able to complete their tracks that day. After about two and a half miles, I thought for sure she was running me in circles. Suddenly, she's pulling, I take this corner and she's sitting at the feet of one of my buddies from school. That really solidified the fact for me that you need to trust your dog.”

Belle is trained in both tracking people and narcotics. She’ll either sit or lay down when she finds the scent, which is known as a passive alert. The indication is slightly different between detecting narcotics versus finding a person. If she’s found narcotics, she’ll lock up, sit and stare, look at the handler and then look back at where she thinks the odor is coming from. Both Dufault and Belle are required to maintain at least eight hours of training a month on both topics.

Also interesting is how K9 vehicles are specially designed for the dogs.

“It's designed for her comfort,” said Dufault. “She’s got a constant supply of fresh water ... you'll see most canine vehicles always have one or both of their windows down. It’s not just for temperature regulation -- they all have hot guard systems in the car that automatically regulates the temperature -- but it also allows the outside scents in, too, so she's always acclimated with what's going on outside.”

Dufault added, “Scent work is so time sensitive and so dependent on the circumstances that the sooner we know, the higher chance of a positive outcome there is, especially if it's after hours, nights or weekends. We're always on call, but we need time get dressed, get ready, get the dog ready and get to the campus. The sooner we know, the better our odds are of getting a good scent for a person or narcotics.”

“The other big thing that we to tell people is if you're going to request the canine, leave the scene alone and do not touch anything," Dufault emphasized. "When you touch the item that has the scent on it, my dog will then start tracking you, instead.”