The Vancouver Police Dog Squad and representatives from the BCIT Centre for Rehabilitation Engineering and Technology and the School of Construction and Environment were on hand at Strathcona Park this morning, putting the final nuts and bolts into a uniquely crafted obstacle course designed to assist police dogs in training.

The obstacle course was donated by BCIT, a leader in developing initiatives that promote the long-term health and safety of police dogs.

“With this generous donation from BCIT and the continued support of the Vancouver Police Foundation, we know our police service dogs will be trained to the highest calibre, using the best possible equipment available”, says Sergeant Scott Hogg of the VPD Dog Squad.

Rod Goy
Acting Dean School of Construction and the Environment
Statement

The BCIT School of Construction and the Environment provides knowledge and skills to our students in a wide range of options from building trades to environmental technologies and more.

We are guided by a sustainability framework with six guiding principles. Two of these principles complement the work done by the men and women who serve with the Vancouver Police Department:

• protecting the assets in our built environment and
• ensuring safety and access to services

This obstacle course is an example of how our Carpentry graduates have learned, not only how to build the homes we all live in, but also how to build things that contribute to safe communities – in this case a heavy duty obstacle course that helps keep police dogs fit and ready for their jobs.

We hope that these obstacles will help the VPD police dog squad keep Vancouver and its citizens safe.

Silvia Raschke, PhD
Project Leader BCIT Technology Centre
Principle Investigator, Centre for Rehabilitation Engineering and Technology that Enables (CREATE)
Statement

In 2007, a Police Canine Performance and Health Initiative was proposed at BCIT to carry out practical, applied research projects to advance practices in police dog health and safety in support of creating healthy, safe communities. The first donation toward this initiative was a generous $100,000 from the Vancouver Police Foundation, and it allowed BCIT to do groundbreaking work in the area of police dog movement.

A next step in supporting initiatives to improve the ways we protect and take care of these very important four-legged members of the police service, was to build an operational obstacle course for use in researching dog movement, as well as for regular police dog training.

In 2008, I approached BCIT’s John English to help secure funding for the building of the obstacle course. John and the School of Construction and the Environment became the sponsor as part of the School’s commitment to supporting safe and sustainable communities.

The course was successfully built and we are now pleased to hand it over to the Vancouver Police Department for their Dog Squad to use in training and in future collaborative research projects. This is a small way we at BCIT can give back to the VPD and the VPD Foundation in thanks for their support of our research with that first grant.