Toy Poodle Joins Japan Police Force
A police department in Japan is adding a toy poodle to join their two legged crime force to help detect explosives and drugs.
The four-year-old toy poodle joined Kyoto's prefecture police force last month after he passed his sixth month training course and will be used as a bomb sniffing dog, according to ABC.
Mochi is the third toy poodle to join the Kyoto police force, but it is the first toy poodle to be used in order to detect bombs.
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Kyoto police explained that Mochi was trained to detect drugs, explosives, and other odors and the canine will be used on a "case-by-case" basis for the rest of the year.
Mochi weighs a mere 4 pounds which is considered small for a toy poodle, but his owner Naomi Yasuda said he has all the tangibles that all the larger dogs have.
"Mochi has always been at the top of his class, in training school…I just wanted to find a way for him to help others," Yasuda told ABC.
Yasuda explained that his dog already has had training dealing with people. Before joining the police force Mochi was trained as a therapy dog that would provide companionship and comfort to elderly patients in nursing homes.
Police departments normally have used larger dogs to add to their ranks such as Labradors and German shepherds, but there is a new trend which sees that smaller dogs can be more useful in certain situations.
Smaller dogs proved their worth in Japan after the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami last year. They were able to fit into tiny spaces to look for survivors that larger dogs were not able to get in to.
Last year, toy poodles Karin and Fuga became the first poodles in Japan to earn a spot in the canine police force in Tottori Prefecture.
