Meet Windy.

When we found and rescued her, she was filthy, underweight, dehydrated and sick. Now she is a happy, healthy fully trained and prizewinning agility dog.

Actually we were on a roundtrip to various dog dealers to find a replacement for our beloved big black male GSD whom we had lost to cancer. But as things don’t always work out as planned, we came back home with a small black and white female Border Collie.

When driving along a road quite close to a notorious township near Pretoria we saw a hand painted sign placed on the ground saying "dogs", nothing else. We turned in and found some less-than-perfect kennels in a back yard, packed with dogs of all sizes and shapes. No black GSD anywhere. But one dog caught our sight immediately. It was a small border collie standing upright against the kennel door, hammering against the wire mesh with her front paws trying to get our attention. And with the head slightly tilted sideways her beautiful brown eyes continued to send out the message "take me with, take me with, pleeeeeze!"

We had the caretaker open the kennel to let her out. She was very thin, clearly underfed, and had diarrhoea. But she was cute and definitely seeking love and attention. "But she's not a black GSD" we said, " and she's female, she will not get along well with our other dogs". But regardless, being members of the "Border Collie Rescue" organisation we could just not afford to leave her behind in this environment.
"How much?" we asked.
"Special, 80 bucks, she's an ex police dog".
Deal made.

When we tried to enquire about the history of the dog we were referred to the owner of the kennels, a certain Marius. We had heard this name before, mostly in conjunction with not-so-nice stories about dog trading and shipping. So we phoned him. He also insisted that this was a police dog, but when we tried to dig a bit deeper, he just hung up on us and never answered the phone again.

On our way home we passed by the Onderstepoort Veterinary Academic Hospital and had the dog checked out right then and there. The doctor stated that she is in principle o.k., except that she is about 30% underweight for her size, grossly dehydrated and of course she needed deworming, a bath and a dip. The diarrhoea should go away with normal regular feeding.

Just prior to leaving the place I detected a small little lump under the dog's skin just below the left shoulder joint, which could have been a microchip. Unusual location for a microchip, it must have slipped from the neck all the way to the top end of the leg. This is a thing that doesn't happen with modern IDENTIPET microchips. Strange enough, none of the microchip readers available at the clinic could read a return signal from the implant. So, somebody suggested that this might indeed be a police dog, because police use a different type of transponder that cannot talk to the "normal" readers.

Through our channels in the dog community we got a name and a number of a member of the Roodeplaat Police Dog School. We phoned in, were referred about 20 times (as expected, but doesn't matter, but eventually we were invited to come in to have Windy checked out.

We met Dr. Stydom and Sister Corbitt (whom you have featured previously on the Identipet web-site). Sister Corbitt is extremely busy and difficult to get hold of, but always friendly and very helpful to everyone (that's what keeps her even more busy). She applied her microchip reader and - surprise - got a readout! With the number obtained she simply pulled a file, and there was all the information we could ever hope for. "Personal" history, medical reports, vaccination records, training received and all.

Windy's "real" (previous) name was Roxy, she was then 2 years old. At the age of 6 months she was "donated" to the police (I immediately translated this to "dumped at the police") by someone in the Eastern Cape who didn't want her anymore. She was taken in and trained as a sniffer dog, first on explosives and then on drugs. But alas, from both courses she was discharged early because (quote the file) "she doesn't want to work when it's hot". Eventually she was released from duty and auctioned off.

WHAT??!! Auctioned off? How can one auction off dogs? Very sad story, I was told. Previously Police used to SELL off dogs that were not needed anymore. This gave them at least some sort of control and influence on who should be allowed to buy a dog and who not. But then the State's financial controllers stepped in, saying that police dogs are state property, and the rules say that state property must never be sold, but always be auctioned off. Without exception. Whoever pays most will get the object (note the wording!).

That's how dubious people like Marius get their dogs. This name and the bad stories associated with it are well known to the people at Roodeplaat Police Dog School, but they can do nothing about it. Luckily Windy got a second lease with us. A few days later and she might have ended up in a back yard in Shoshanguve. What a horrible thought.

We reported the dog dealership and their kennels to the local SPCA. They stepped in almost immediately and confiscated some of the dogs they found in a very bad state of health. And the place is being monitored regularly ever since.

A few months into our new "partnership" with Windy we got more and more doubts whether Windy was indeed Roxy. Windy had not the faintest idea even about the most basic obedience commands, no matter which language we used. We had taken it for almost granted that any police dog is first taught how to behave him/herself before being subjected to specialized training. Maybe there was a mistake or an error...

On occasion of an awareness seminar about dog poisoning which we attended and where Dr. Strydom was expected as a speaker, we asked him to bring his microchip reader along to re-check Windy's identity. But no, the number, the name and the file is o.k., this is Roxy, no doubt. We later heard from a sniffer dog handler that some of these dogs receive some sort of obedience training, some don't. They feel this is not necessary, because a sniffer dog is either in a kennel or out on duty on a leash. And as long as it reports the substance it is trained to find, everything is o.k. …

POISONED POOCHES: Sophie Trollope, of the Service Animal Monitoring Unit,
with Windy and Senior Superintendent Hannes Strydom at the launch
of a dog poisoning awareness campaign in Pretoria.
Picture: Etienne Creux Pretoria News, May 28, 2004

 So, what do we learn from all this? Of course there is the undisputed invaluable advantage of having an animal IDENTIPET microchipped in the lost/found/"re-patriated" scenario. But even in a case like Windy's where a dog is "rescued", bought or otherwise acquired - it is just absolutely fantastic if one can, with the help of a microchip, establish the true identity of an animal, and details like age, vaccination record and whatever. And imagine the (for us) worst case scenario: It would have broken our hearts, but mended somebody else's, what if it had turned out that the dog has been stolen? Luckily that wasn't the case with Windy. A strong bond had very quickly formed between us and we are determined to stay together as long as we can.

Well, eventually, that's it.  It is great to hear that police decided to "convert" to the IDENTIPET system. Makes sense. What if a police dog gets lost? Not everybody has a direct hotline to police. And for many vets no read-out would mean no chip, end of story.