Police Minister Judith Collins was in Dunedin for a general visit to police stations and probation officers, and to deliver a speech in her capacity as Veterans Affairs Minister.
While visiting the South Dunedin station, she spent time saying farewell and thanks to retiring police dog section chief Sergeant Trevor Bolt.
Sgt Bolt (52) is working out the last days of a 35-year career as a police officer, 25 of them as a dog handler.
Having entered police training as a 17-year-old, Sgt Bolt said he knew, after three years as a general duties constable, he wanted a job that kept him on the front line.
He settled on becoming a dog handler, despite never having owned a dog in his life.
After another six years of "maturing" on the beat in Dunedin, he finally landed a job with the Dunedin dogs team, and has been in charge of the five-man team since 2004.
He is also the drug-dog handler for the Southern police district, a job which fell to him when the last handler retired about a year ago.
He still enjoyed the team, drug-dog work and dog- and handler-training aspects of the job, but felt the administrative requirements - the paper and computer work, the financial justifications, increased accountability and statistical requirements - had become "too much".
He felt it was time to leave. It had been a great career, which he still enjoyed, he said.
One of his fond memories was his eight-year partnership with police dog Bear, during which they caught about 600 criminals together, and twice won the New Zealand police dog champion of the year and once the Australasian police dog champion of the year.
He had hundreds of stories he could tell about tracking and catching criminals - including the time he tracked a pair who ran from a taxi in North Dunedin through the botanic garden, into a student hall and up to their dorm-room door, and the time he tracked a jewellery thief who had been on a $250,000 six-day South Island crime spree - and he had always enjoyed working with his colleagues, most of whom had worked together in the section for many years.
He was leaving to start a bed and breakfast business with wife Kerry, and they were both looking forward to being able to spend more time with their two grandchildren, he said.
And, while he might take a break from dogs for a while, he was open to fostering a police dog puppy in the future, he said.
Sgt Bolt's last day at work will be Friday, April 8.
