News Release
Competition winners go barking mad for police puppies
Dated: 19 Feb 2010
Three youngsters have won a trip to the Northumbria Police Dog Section to meet the puppies made famous through their webcam antics.
Launched last November Puppycam gave live internet coverage of a litter of new police dogs and allowed people to follow their progress online.
Alongside 215 others entrants Danielle Stobbart (17) from Sunderland, Emily Young (12) from Houghton le Spring and Conal Scudamore (11) from Haydon Bridge entered a competition before Christmas to guess the names of the force's newest recruits.
The three correctly guessed that the puppies were called Bruce, Chase, Kaiser, Rick, Rico, Tala, Storm and Vegas and today they got to claim their prize.
Today, Friday February 19, the winners accompanied by their family and friends visited the kennels at Northumbria Police HQ in Ponteland to meet the puppies and see them training.
They also got to have their photograph taken with the puppies and had a tour of the kennels
Sergeant Dave Little from the force's Dog Section said: "Today our competition winners got the opportunity to come along to our Dog Section in Ponteland and see the puppies in person - rather than on-line.
"This has been the first time we've tried using a web-cam to film the dogs like this and we're delighted that it's proved so popular.
"People have been able to see the new born dogs and follow them through their first few weeks.
"Now they are moving on to their training to become future crime fighters and visitors will be able to continue to track their progress on the website through videos and photographs."
The competition formed part of the ongoing Puppy Watch section of the Northumbria Police website, which features a dog blog, pictures of the puppies and updates on their training.
Northumbria Police web manager Ian Sparham said: "Our website - at www.northumbria.police.uk - features contact details for neighbourhood officers, on-line community meetings, on-line crime reporting, blogs, crime prevention advice, videos, news and much more.
"Puppy Watch has provided an excellent way of getting people to visit our website who might not otherwise have thought to do so. We've found that since Puppy Watch was launched more people have been viewing information such as our crime prevention pages and finding how best to stay crime free."