CBC's Paul Karchut takes part in Calgary police dog training

The Calgary Police Service's canine unit has operated for more than 50 years and responds to thousands of calls every year.

Recently CBC Radio's Paul Karchut, an associate producer with the Calgary Eyeopener, was invited to visit the training facility and take part in some of the attack training. 

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​"As I was running away, I was thinking, 'How much is this going to hurt?' and 'I hope he goes for my padded arm!'" said Karchut after the training exercise.

The dog did lunge for his padded arm, so Karchut was left unscathed. He said it was amazing to see how dogs and humans can work so closely together with such impressive results.

"The sense of smell on these dogs is tens of thousands of times better than ours," he said. "It's hard to even fathom that. I hid a couple things around a football-sized field at one point and when Const. Johnston's dog was set loose, he literally found them in less than a minute. It blew me away."

Training a police dog

Calgary's training facility is in the northeast. It was completely refurbished in 2008 and includes state-of-the-art housing, training field areas and mock houses to search through.

Const. Aron Johnston said the unit is considered elite.

"We are a specialized section of the service so we're only called in for certain things," he said.

Applicants must be in the service for many years to even be considered for the unit. The officers start out as the person the dog is chasing.

"It's a lot of times hiding in dark and cold places," said Johnston. 

Sophisticated sense of smell

The dogs are a great asset in tracking people and finding drugs due to their sophisticated sense of smell. 

"They are able to break individual odours down," he said. "You can take marijuana and put it in oil or peanut butter or surround it in bounce sheets or whatever you want to do and it makes no difference ... they smell the bounce sheets but they also smell the marijuana."

The dogs are bred by a special breeder in the United States. Johnston says they expect a lot from the animals.

"They have to be able to deal with some our most violent and dangerous situations, but yet go to a picnic with Grade 5 students and go on their bellies and be petted. That's a big reason they live with us at home," he said.

"As soon as you take the harness off and it's calm and there are no sirens going off, and stuff like that, they are just like any normal dog. You wouldn't even know."