“Xiaohu, search!” commanded Wang Shiqun, next to a suitcase in the center of Shanghai Railway Station. Xiaohu, a police dog on Shanghai’s urban rail traffic police dog unit began to walk around the object, sniffing for anything unusual. After six years working with the police dog, Wang Shiqun speaks highly of Xiaohu, “He has done an awesome job! While we rely on our eyes, police dogs use their noses to search for suspicious passengers and their belongings.”

In 2006, the rail traffic and public transport corps of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau set up a police dog unit, which is also China’s first professional urban rail traffic police dog unit. Over the past 12 years, the number of explosive detection dogs in service with the unit has grown from the initial six to more than one hundred, with their responsibility covering 16 metro lines across the city.

During the China International Import Expo (CIIE), 204 police dogs were deployed. They could be seen around the host venue and the residences of the participating state leaders from all over the world. The detection areas covered nearly 3.3 million square meters.

At that time, in order to do a good job in securing the city, overnight inspections or patrols were a common occurrence.

“To guarantee the security of the CIIE, it was not uncommon for the unit to work overnight. The police dogs had to work non-stop for as long as 10 hours. Once they could have a break in the intervals, they were so tired that they fell asleep on the floor on all fours,” said Wang Shiqun while recalling the tough security tasks undertaken during the expo week.

Due to their docile appearance, the police dogs on the unit - mainly Labrador and Springer due to those breeds’ brilliant sense of smell - used to be mistaken for family pets, a notion quickly dispelled by Wang Shuqin: “Despite their looks, they are awesome warriors.” To the comfort of Xiaohu and Wang Shiqun, as more people have got to know about police dogs and their work, Xiaohu and his teammates are now rarely misunderstood by the public.