Hotel partnership offers rich sniffings for police dog training

The noses of Northamptonshire Police’s police dogs are getting stuck into a real-world training scenario thanks to a Northampton hotel.

The town’s Mercure hotel, in Silver Street, has teamed up with the Force’s Dog Section to enable training sessions to take place in rooms once guests have checked out, before housekeeping goes in.

This enables the dogs to be put through their paces in an environment packed with human scents, closely replicating real-life search conditions.

After each training session the rooms are cleaned by the hotel’s housekeeping team, ready for the next guests.

PC Sam Clark, the Force’s dog training instructor, said: “The dogs are trained to locate drugs, cash and firearms, and asking them to practice this in a place packed with a variety of fresh scents enables us to really challenge and develop their abilities.

“We’re really grateful to the Mercure Northampton for offering us this opportunity to really hone our specialist search dogs’ skills in a live environment.”

James Simpson, hotel manager at Mercure Northampton, said: “Being part of the community is hugely important to us as a hotel and we enjoy building relationships with key local partners such as Northamptonshire Police.

“We have been delighted to be part of this programme and watching the dogs perform their training has been a brilliant experience, they’re extraordinary animals and it has been fascinating to see them refine their skills in our rooms.

“We’re proud to have been able to play a small role in what will be a vital addition to the police’s resources in tackling serious crime and we look forward to seeing them in action.”