Brandy, Correctional Officer and Buddy, Detector Dog

Hi, my name is Brandy. I'm a dog handler at Edmonton Institution for Women.

I am on my 24th year in Correctional Service of Canada. I started my career when I was fairly young. I've got to do lots with the Correctional Service of Canada. CSC has been super good to me. Currently, I have a job which I don't really call a job. I have a lifestyle. I have one of the best jobs in the service. I work with a Detector Dog. 

Currently, I'm working with a golden retriever, his name is Buddy. When I first got him, he is a long-haired dog, I'm going to be full of dog hair, I wasn't too excited about that because my previous two dogs were black labs. But I actually love him, he has the greatest personality ever.

Our job entails caring for our dog 24-7. Buddy comes to work with me. I get up in the morning actually at 5 a.m., five, 530, take him for his walk. I like to keep him on a pretty good routine. He works well on the routine, I know what's going on. He gets me up, I get up at 530, take him for a walk around the block, come home, he gets fed, I load him up in the van. He's all excited to get to work. We drive to work when we get here. I come in, I do my briefing, and the very first thing we usually do is his little search of the yard, which takes us about 20, 25 minutes. We run around the yard. His most favorite time of the morning. Cold, snow, rain, he's out there. He's enjoying what he's doing. We run around the institution, do a little search. He gets to chase rabbits every once in a while. He gets a little distracted, but he's loving what he does. I work with him throughout the day, doing many different types of searching. At the end of the day, I take him home.

I live with him. On my days off I take care of him. He still gets his two walks a day. Basically, it's like having a pet, but you bring your pet to work. All his fun time is working time and all our home time is kind of his relax time.

As a detector dog, we work shift work. We search all areas of the institution. We're in the inmates houses here, or inmate cells in male institutions. We search inmates, we search their property coming in. We search visits, we search their mail, we search visitors, official visitors coming in.

The dog pretty much has a roam of the entire institution and at Edmonton Institution for Women lots of people love the dog. He loves his job. Our job is to keep the institution safe and do what we can to help facilitate the drug free environment. The most rewarding part of my job is coming to work everyday with pretty much my best friend.