As part of our ongoing work with community organisations, the weekend of 27th March saw Felsted hosting one of the many Police Dog teams who have taken advantage of our offer of using school facilities for their training.  

These dogs are specially trained to assist in missing person searches, searching for criminals or property, locating drugs or explosives, hostage situations and crowd control.  
 
PC Mark Snoxell (with PD Sky), accompanied by PS Dave Mayne (PD Chilli), PC Gavin Upton (PD NaIla) and PC Andy Davey (PD Finn) all made use of two of our boarding houses for their training, which involved the dogs and their handlers accessing all areas of the buildings and the immediate environs.
 

In recent times, the police teams have mainly used our academic buildings, but with the ever increasing challenge of day to day policing operations, the opportunity to use multi room and multi use buildings (considered live as they were still in use by our staff) was too good to miss.  The dogs and their handlers moved through and cleared rooms and areas in Gepp's House, before then moving onto Elwyn's House, where the differing layout and areas proved a challenge for dogs and handlers alike.
 
After a hard day's training, the dogs and handlers left with the promise that we will soon welcome them back in April and May to continue their training within our other Boarding Houses.