THE WINNIPEG POLICE SERVICE CANINE UNIT BREEDING PROGRAM

The Winnipeg Police Service is the only municipal police agency in Canada that runs it’s own in house breeding program in Canada.

The program originally commenced in 1999, and over a period of 6 years the Service has bred 42 pups, supplying all the dual purpose canines within the Service as well as canines for Brandon Police Service and Manitoba Natural Resources. The pups have been sought after by agencies as far away as Salt Lake City, Utah.

The program took a short hiatus from 2005 to 2008. In the fall of 2008 an 8 week old female Belgian Malinois pup named “Reya” was purchased from Southern Minnesota for the purpose of to re-instituting the program.


Due to a shortage of quality canines available to the Service for training, the breeding female which was only 8 months old at the time was brought placed into training to be become a Police Service Dog (PSD). Due to the qualities that Reyapossessed, she quickly completed the course and was working the street at 12 months of age. On her first night of duty, she made 5 arrests as a result of a Commercial Break and Enter investigation.


Since that this time, 2 more of Reya’s sisters have been purchased as breeding females.

Reya was bred in May 2010 with PSD “Judge”, a 7 year old Belgian Malinois that was one of the original pups from our breeding program in May. PSD Judge is handled by Constable Scott Taylor and is one of the most successful canine teams in this unit’s history. They have compiled an arrest record of just under 400 arrests.


On July 11,2010, 8 pups were born, 5 males and 3 females. The Service will be keeping 4 of these pups with the remainder having been sold to outside agencies in the United States including British Columbia.

The ongoing success of this program will ensure the availability of quality police canines for future years.