Recent Book: The Police Dog: Police Dogs at Work
| Published date | 01 January 1971 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7104400118 |
| Date | 01 January 1971 |
| Author | Arthur Hambleton |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
gation and in particular company fraud. Until specialist fraud units
are set up, complete with a career structure in the specialisation,
reliance must be placed upon the maxim that in most situations the
need generates the required skills.
RECENT
BOOKS
THE POLICE DOG
TOM
MAHIR:
Police Dogs at Work Dent. £2.
For
the layman this book will
stimulate and answer many questions
on police dogs; for the expert it will
inevitably provoke argument and
discussion.
Although some attempt has been
made to set the general scene in
relation to police dogs in this country,
the result is a Metropolitan Police
viewpoint by a former Metropolitan
Police officer who can be justly proud
of
the
Dog
Section of
that
force. This
treatment
of
the subject does not in
any way detract from the success of
the book
but
occasionally leads to
misleading statements, for example,
",
..
The period between 1946 and
1956 was one in which more and more
police forces decided to form dog
sections and when the main emphasis
in training was on man-work
....
"
This was certainly
not
the case in most
86
provincial forces in the late forties and
early fifties where the need was a
combination of tracking and search
coupled with man-work. The emphasis
was, if anything, on tracking and some
very proficient teams of tracking dogs
and handlers were in existence.
The book is in the main a clear
and
concise report on police dogs and their
work by someone who obviously had a
great affection for them. But for this
reviewer the writing becomes alive and
the personality of the man comes
through in the anecdotes, whether the
account is of good police work or bad,
particularly the bad.
It
is in these
flashes
Tom
Mahir showed that,
although he had great affection for a
good dog, he loved a good policeman
and good police work.
ARTHUR
HAMBLETO:'-l
January 1971
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