The Penghu County Police Bureau yesterday held a farewell party for a police dog renowned for its ability to detect even the faintest smell of drugs.
The party for Ou-ti (歐弟), who is retiring at the end of this month, coincided with the Penghu International Fireworks Festival, the bureau said.
The yellow Labrador retriever would be retiring from the bureau’s narcotics unit after seven years on the job, the bureau said in a news release last week.
Photo: CNA
Ou-ti started his career at the K-9 branch of Taiwan’s Third Special Police Corps at the age of one, the corps said.
He established his reputation in a drug bust in 2015, which resulted in an illegal drug factory in Kaohsiung being closed down and more than 600kg of amphetamines being seized, the corps said, adding that the drugs had an estimated street value of more than NT$500 million (US$16.07 million at the current exchange rate).
As the highest-rated police dog in Taiwan, Ou-ti was in April 2017 transferred to Penghu and became a founding member of the county’s K-9 unit established to combat drug smuggling to the islands.
That year at Magong Airport, later renamed Penghu Airport, Ou-ti helped police arrest a teenager trying to smuggle 49.3g of ketamine into the outlying county.
Ou-ti is to be looked after by Penghu’s K-9 branch after he retires, with six newly trained young sniffer dogs to join the unit next month, the bureau said.
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