Chronically ill children from The Children’s Hospital at Westmead will have the chance to name the latest litter of puppies from the NSW Police Dog Unit.
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The seven sable German Shepherd pups, including four males and three females, were born on March 1.
Six of the pups will be trained as general duties dogs while one will be sent to the New Zealand Police Force Dog Unit as part of the puppy exchange program.
Dog Unit Commander, Superintendent Dean Smith says the puppies are part of the ‘x’ litter and in keeping with canine recruit tradition, the six will be given names starting with the letter x.
“We are working with The Children’s Hospital at Westmead to give some of the kids who are chronically ill a chance to help choose their names,” he said.
“A list of suggested names has been provided to the hospital and the kids will research their names and hold a vote.
“Once the most popular names are chosen, we will assign the names to the pups and take them on a social outing to the hospital so the kids can meet them.’’
The six pups will stay at the Dog Unit in Menai until they are about 12-weeks-old and will then be placed into the foster carer program until they are old enough to begin training.
The NSW Police Force Dog Unit was formed in 1932 and is the largest police dog unit in Australia with its canine police officers including German Shepherds, Belgian Malinois, Dutch Shepherds, Labradors and English Springer Spaniels.
The breeding program has been running since 2004, and has bred 28 litters of German Shepherd pups, two litters of Labrador pups and two litters of English Springer Spaniels.
