TOKYO —

The number of cases in which police dogs have been mobilized in Japan has almost doubled in the past decade as more canines are used to search for people following disasters, officials of the National Police Agency said Saturday. There were about 8,400 instances across Japan last year when police dogs were mobilized, compared with some 4,300 cases in 1998, they said.
   
Of last year’s figure, approximately 4,700 cases involved the search for missing persons, topping some 3,700 cases in which dogs were used during a police investigation. There are about 1,500 police dogs in Japan.

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4 Comments

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  timorborder at 12:50 PM JST - 8th November

  There are about 1,500 police dogs in Japan

  Of which about 90% of the Labradors have some DNA from my grandparent's Labrador breeding program.

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  KallyPygous at 04:43 PM JST - 8th November

  All thorough-bred dogs are inbred - labradors particularly so - they have a lot of problems from it - susceptibility to poor eyesight, deafness, cancer, heart disease, smelly breath, and the inability to move the tail independently of the body.

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  timorborder at 06:04 PM JST - 8th November

  All thorough-bred dogs are inbred - labradors particularly so - they have a lot of problems from it - susceptibility to poor eyesight, deafness, cancer, heart disease, smelly breath, and the inability to move the tail independently of the body.

  Couple of quick comments - the incidence of deafness in Labradors is not very high. Bad breath is also not a genetic condition, it is an issue of diet.

  Anyway, none of the conditions cited above apply to our dogs, my grandparents, my parents and now a cousin have been breeding utility dogs for more than 50 years. We turn off more than 200 puppies each year at the current time, breeds being Labradors and Golden Retrievers (both American and UK). The vast majority of these dogs end up working as police dogs (both in Australia and we also export to Japan), guide dogs, social assistance dogs, and specialty dogs (bomb/drug detection). In addition to this, we also sell frozen DNA to other recognized breeding organizations like the Guide Dogs here in Japan (I actually have a female retriever on permanent loan from the guide dog association as part of their breeding extension program, my other dog is a mastiff).

  Anyway, for your information the most inbred pure-breed dog at the current time is probably the pug. In 2007, the Kennel Club in the UK did a survey of the DNA of 10,000 pugs, the result being that there was only enough genetic variation for 47 dogs.

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  hellhound at 10:14 PM JST - 8th November

  they should hire pugs

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