ludhiana with sandy a narcotics specialist passing away last year and pixie a tracker and sheru explosives specialist exceeding their retirement age the ludhiana police commissionerate has almost lost services of one of its most dedicated squads which had stood by their police masters in thick and thin and helped solve murder mysteries robberies thefts bomb blasts besides tracking drugsthe dog squad of the commissionerate presents a sorry picture today as sheru has been grounded following joint problems and pixies services are availed only in rare cases of theftsgiven the situation the city police have to borrow dogs from government railway police grp or jagraon khanna and nawanshahr police to crack crimesthe dog squad incharge has already written to ludhiana police commissioner kaustubh sharma urging to get five new dogs for the dog squad of the police commissioneratethere are three categories in which police dogs are trained which includes a tracker specialist an explosive specialist and a narcotic specialist each dog gets a separate handler who also trains the dogs for different specializationsasi gurdev singh incharge ludhiana dog squad said we had three dogs of which the youngest was sandy who was a narcotics specialist he died last year at present we have pixie and sheru who are aged above 10 years sheru has been diagnosed with a joint problem and therefore he cannot be used for any task though pixie has also grown old we do take her once in a while for some cases when neededduring vvip visits or any other special occasion we borrow specialised dogs from grp ludhiana rural police or khanna police the asi addedgurdev said i have already raised a demand of purchasing five dogs including three explosive specialists one tracker and one narcotics specialist we are hopeful to get new dogs soonimportantly pups are purchased for the entire state when they are five to six months old the handlers train the dogs for five months after which they are used as specialists of the dog squad an official said the retirement age of dogs is 10 years however they can be grounded prior to this age too depending on their health conditions a committee purchases pups and further they are trained and appointed for different districts in 2019 48 dogs had been purchased