KEY POINTS:
The Customs Service's newest recruit had his first shot at sniffing out drugs at Auckland Airport yesterday.
Anzac - a 22-month-old black labrador who is halfway through his 12-week training course - successfully detected a cloth with the odour of cocaine planted on a customs officer acting as an incoming passenger.
"He did really well," says Dave Huff, chief customs officer in charge of detector dog training. "In another six weeks we'll have him up to speed with the other dogs."
Anzac comes from the Australian Customs Service's detector dog breeding centre in Melbourne, and was named in honour of an agreement between New Zealand and Australian Customs to liaise on breeding and training drug detector dogs.
Australian Customs gave three dogs to its New Zealand counterpart in March.
Most of Customs' existing detector dogs were selected from the SPCA. The benefit of the specially bred Aussie dogs is that they are already socialised, says Ruth Bennett, who is the detector dog training course instructor.
Yesterday's exercise was part of Anzac's training to detect "body packing", where people strap drugs to their bodies or conceal them in their underwear.
Drug dogs are an invaluable tool in the fight against drug smuggling, says Mr Huff.
"We've been training the dogs on pseudoephedrine products, which are used in the manufacture of crystal methamphetamine. We've just gone over seizing 100kg of that after four years, just with drug detector dogs, which would have been manufactured into about $25 million worth of crystal methamphetamine - so that not going into the community is massive."
