Detector dog Iti retires as New Zealand reviews its dog programme for Pacific Island nations

RNZ News

23-05-2025

Eight-year-old explosives detector dog Iti in Tonga in 2024.
Photo:
RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
Eight-year-old explosives detector dog Iti is now staring down retirement.
Iti is part of New Zealand Police Pacific Detector Dog Programme (PDDP) and has been sniffing out potential bomb threats for years.
He was on hand helping to protect Pacific leaders and delegates at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Tonga and even the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa last year.
New Zealand provides trained police dogs to the Pacific region. They are sent to Tonga, Samoa, Fiji and the Cook Islands through the PDDP.
"[Iti] certainly never lets you down," his handler sergeant Chris Harris told RNZ Pacific.
"He loves to work. To replace him will be pretty tough."
The government has spent around NZ$3.5 million on the PDDP so far.
A spokesperson for MFAT
told RNZ Pacific
that "phase one of the programme is coming to a close", but that "MFAT and New Zealand Police are currently in discussions over the next phase of support."
Pacific leaders in Vavaʻu (an island group in Tonga) for FIFLM 2024 retreat.
Photo:
RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
Dogs that get sent out to the Pacific need to be fit and healthy.
In August last year, for example, Iti went from 6 degrees Celsius in cold Auckland weather to 28 degrees in sunny Tonga.
He was thrust into work, securing the accommodation Pacific leaders were staying at, checking their motorcades, the routes they were traveling and then even flying to a remote Island for the leaders' retreat and doing the job again.
"The transition is difficult," Harris said.
"We are only there for a short period of time, so the dogs do not have time to acclimatise to the temperature.
"We have to manage their working load, and so it means that we would work him in shorter spells; try and get him into air conditioning to bring his body temperature down."
New Zealand Police Dog Iti in Tonga.
Photo:
RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
Working alongside local police, Iti was the centre of attention in Tonga.
"He had a bit of a profile long before I got there," Harris said.
"They were all in open arms when he arrived, and they were really looking forward to seeing him work.
"It was really good. I felt like the Pied Piper at times. I had four or five local police following me around, which was really good.
"And if they could see him working in the operational environment and learn something from it, or pick things up that maybe they haven't seen before or done before, then that's great."
Sergeant Harris' career spans 32 years: 25 years in the dog section, 17 years as a general purpose dog handler, and currently overseeing the detector dog program in Auckland with Iti by his side.
He emphasised the significance of training both dogs and handlers from Pacific countries to enhance regional security.
"They come over here and not only are we training the dogs for those teams, but we're training the handlers as well," Harris said.
"So when they leave New Zealand, they're going back as a package and getting straight into their business.
"They have borders, but they're also a border to Australia and New Zealand. So it's very important that we maintain those relationships and we help them where we can and resource them."
"Majority of dogs, if not all, are not desex, so the population of dogs is uncontrollable in Tonga." - TAWS
Photo:
Supplied
With the right attitude, dogs in the Pacific could also take up potentially life-saving work like old hack Iti, Harris said.
"If a dog has got a drive and he is got a good nose on him, we can certainly look at them and turn them into very good police dogs," Sergeant Harris said.
While there is a "huge" breeding programme in Wellington, it was not that long ago that police relied "heavily" on the public and the community to sell or gift dogs to the police service of New Zealand.
"A lot of our German shepherds, and this only goes back 15 or 20 years ago, were gifted dogs that were given to us by members of the public," he said.
"They obviously bought them as puppies, and they did not work out at home, and they were offered to the police dogs section".
However, they still need to have the right drive and be determined, he said.
He added if they meet the criteria, "then they do make, or can make, very good police dogs."
"It has been proven over the years. A lot of our dogs came from the streets, and they were very, very good and very, very proven police dogs."
"There are hidden gems everywhere."
Vavaʻu (an island group in Tonga).
Photo:
RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis