The nearly two-year-old, pale-yellow Labrador jumps in the air full of excitement and glee as his handler approaches the Israel Police kennel near Tel Aviv.
“He thinks I’m his mother,” Superintendent Avital Tzuriel says. Tzuriel runs the kennel, which is now breeding local dogs after years when all Israel Police dogs—a mix of German Shepherds, Dutch Shepherds, Belgian Malinois and Labradors—were imported solely from the Czech Republic.
The 250 police dogs, both male and female—trained to uncover weapons, explosives and drugs—are either guard/attack or sniffer dogs, each with its own specialized training. All are under the careful supervision of the superintendent.
“It’s the best job in the world,” Tzuriel tells JNS as she heads off for a stroll with her Labrador, Baz.
A love of animals from childhood
Working with animals was always second nature to Tzuriel, a 43-year-old mother of two, who from her childhood would always bring lost animals, including dogs, cats and birds, to her family home in the coastal city of Netanya.
“Whatever crawled and moved outside I would bring home,” she recounts. Her father was a policeman, but she dreamed of being a veterinarian.
Initially, she enlisted in the Border Police for her military service, where she first served in the Red Sea resort town of Eilat. After being moved to the more conflict-ridden Jerusalem border area, Tzuriel discovered that she could not enlist in the police dog training course as part of what was then the 20-month conscription period for women.
Undeterred, she signed on for additional service and was accepted to officers’ course. She became one of the first female officers to undergo the 22-week course as a guard/attack dog handler, which is physically harder and more intense than the course for sniffer dogs, which she also ended up taking four years later.
The police canine unit is separate from the Israel Defense Forces’ internationally acclaimed Oketz unit, whose dogs have been fighting in the war against Hamas in Gaza. Both units have been working around the clock since the war.
During her service in and around the Israeli capital, she undertook many weapons searches, recollecting one incident when her sniffer dog uncovered weapons stashed inside an abandoned washing machine in an Arab village in eastern Jerusalem.
“After a thorough search, the detectives could not find anything,” she says. “I said if the dog indicates that it’s here, then it’s here. We’re not going anywhere.”
Sure enough, after the machine was taken apart piece by piece, the weapons were found.
Climbing the ropes
Later in her career, Tzuriel would become the first female commander and instructor at the police canine unit; would realize her dream of becoming a veterinary assistant; and, in a striking turn of events in a unit once nearly off limits to women, is now running the police canine unit herself.
“I would like to see more women in the unit,” she says. “But today, there is an ever-increasing number.”
‘Blue and white’ police dogs
Meanwhile, the canine unit, with its team of 100 dog handlers, has begun training Israeli-born dogs, as well (one new litter is a mix of Czech and Israeli puppies), enabling them to start their training courses at the age of four months instead of 1.5-2 years old for the imports. This allows for them to serve longer before their retirement at around the age of eight.
“They are born into an Israeli reality—in terms of the climate, the crowds, the noises, the scents—which is less pastoral than in the Czech Republic, but exposes them straight away to the environment of their workplace,” notes police dog handler Rubi Tayar.
The vast majority of police dogs are still brought in from the Czech Republic, with about 80% passing the training courses.
Some of the dogs in the police canine unit are currently used to help victims of trauma from the nearly 15-month Gaza war, as well as to aid teenagers with disabilities or difficult backgrounds.
For unit commander Tzuriel, nothing replaces going out with her dog on a mission. “If I don’t have a dog, I don’t have my hand. The dog becomes your best partner. I am living the dream,” she says.