Senior Constable Lyal Bayliss headed back to Canterbury with Welles, his fourth operational dog, after the graduation ceremony on Thursday at the New Zealand Police Dog Training Centre in Trentham.
Lyal joined the police 23 years ago and has been a dog handler for 17 of them.
Over this time, he has served as a handler in both the search and rescue (SAR) and armed offenders squad (AOS) units.
Lyal received a Commissioner’s Gold Merit Award for bravery when apprehending a man armed with a shotgun after a home invasion in 2012.
He also has a Bronze Merit Award for his role in apprehending a male in another serious incident in 2009.
Meanwhile, experienced Canterbury handler Constable Tom Byrne was unable to attend the ceremony, but graduated with his second operational dog, two-year-old 'Sarg'.
Byrne joined the police in 2011. He qualified with his first dog Lex in 2016 but due to a back injury, Lex is now retired and lives with his handler at home.
The new dogs and their handlers paraded in front of Commissioner Andrew Coster, Deputy Commissioner Tania Kura, police executives, colleagues, proud families and friends at the New Zealand Police Dog Training Centre, Trentham, and at a smaller ceremony in Auckland.
There were three first-time handlers among the graduates. There are 123 police dog patrol teams in New Zealand, with 90 operational and the others in training. Police also have 12 operational detector dog teams. The operational teams respond to tens of thousands of incidents each year.
Deputy Commissioner Tania Kura congratulated the teams for their hard work and achievements: "I want to pass on sincere thanks from myself, the commissioner and the police executive for your commitment to this important and integral part of frontline policing in New Zealand."
