WMP's first female dog handler

Watch as Elizabeth Dixon discusses how she became West Midlands Police’s first female dog handler.

Transcript

00:00I'm Elizabeth Dixon and I was a police officer with West Midlands Police on the old E Division.

00:06When at work though I was Liz Dodd, I used to use my married name.

00:10I was a guest speaker for International Women's Day here at the museum talking about when

00:15I was really a dog handler and I was the first female dog handler for West Midlands Police.

00:21Caesar came from a family in Northampton, he was donated to West Midlands Police when

00:25he was five months old and then I went off on a training course with him and it was just

00:31what I wanted to do.

00:33I was one of the first dog handlers to be trained in Birmingham, the kennels were at Harbourn.

00:39Having done the training, you're then not too sure whether the training is really ever going

00:42to work, was he going to catch burglars, was he going to be able to search and do what

00:47I trained and on the first set of nights that we worked we found some burglars in a scrap

00:52yard in Tysley, pitch black, great big scrap yard, couldn't see him, I sent him off searching

00:58and he barked to indicate he'd found somebody and two arrests were made and great success

01:04and I was happy, the shift were happy, we're all happy and you know I got on and just did

01:09the job really.