It wasn't your typical day at the office for Seven Sharp reporter Rachel Parkin when she met Kaos — the first SPCA dog to make the cut at southern prisons in 10 years, and a star drug-detecting recruit for the Department of Corrections.
With one tiny Ziplock bag of cocaine tucked into my jeans and another stashed in the car console, I drove into Christchurch Men's Prison feeling irrationally nervous.
I say "irrationally" because even though I knew this was a set-up, butterflies fluttered in my stomach.
As I pulled into the visitor checkpoint, Corrections dog trainer Damian Hancock motioned for me to wind down my window.
"Morning!"
"Morning," came the timid response I vaguely recognised as my own. Faux guilt is an odd thing.
"What's your purpose on site today?" Hancock asked.
"Just visiting."
"So today we're searching vehicles under the Corrections Act 2004 and we're looking for contraband," he said. "Any alcohol, weapons, prescription medicine?"
"Nope," I replied with a bit more gusto.
"What about drugs?"
"Ah no... "
There goes my Oscar.
The next thing I knew I was out of the car, sitting on the naughty stool.
Chomping at the bit, metres away was Kaos, a chocolate-brown short-haired German pointer.
Wasting no time, he bounded over, circled me and butted his nose into my left hip (where the bag was), before sitting and looking up.
"Yes! Good boy! Good boy!!" Hancock exclaimed with contagious delight, before producing and dropping a tennis ball Kaos seemed to mistake for pure gold.
"He just loves to work," he explained with a grin.
The next couple of hours reinforced this.
Just to be clear, I was given special dispensation to bring contraband into the prison — so that Kaos the drug-detecting dog would pick up on it. Prisons, of course, have zero tolerance for contraband.
As we watched Kaos work his magic in the dog training centre at Christchurch Men's, he didn't miss a beat. Time and time again he searched, and time and time again, seconds later, Hancock whooped, calling "yes!" and threw that drool-sodden ball.
If ever there was a dog for this job, it was this one.
"Did you know straight away?" I asked Hancock.
"The first time I looked at him I had a pretty good idea he had potential," he answered with careful diplomacy.
"But you know, dogs need to develop… we put them through a number of rigorous tests… I've looked at hundreds of dogs over the past 10 years from the SPCA."
And that's what makes Kaos even more special — his life has turned around.
Earlier this year, he was rescued from a home with insufficient shelter.
"Then the owner elected to surrender him," explained SPCA Inspector Aleesha Everitt.
"Kaos is a very high-energy dog. He's from a working breed, so we knew he needed a job to do."
Just two months into prison life and fully operational, Kaos has already had some good finds.
"Bit of stuff in the car park and stuff inside the wire and really, really tiny amounts as well, sometimes literally a few flakes," Hancock said.
"So that's how good a nose he has. He can literally find a few flakes of cannabis."
As we sat on the back of the truck, Kaos between us, the perky pointer had his head up, alert.
"Always watching, eh," I said.
"Always watching," Hancock agreed, grinning. "He just loves to work."
The proof of that is in Kaos' tail — or lack thereof — you could say, a metaphor for his happy ending.
"He's got a bit of a stump?" I asked.
"He got what they call happy tail syndrome," Hancock said. "So, he's such a happy dog he literally wore the tip of his tail off."
"He wagged his tail off?!!" I asked, incredulous. "That's a thing?!"
"Yeah, it was a bit like a crime scene, so unfortunately the vet made a decision to amputate his tail — hence his wee solar panel here," Hancock said, motioning toward a shaved square-shaped patch above his stump.
"Wow, you really buried the lead there," I said.
This dog was the gift that kept on giving.
Next Hancock demonstrated Kaos' "party trick", using detector dog trading cards, which are part of a series of cards that Corrections staff give to kids in the community.
Presented with a row of cards, Kaos quickly found his own.
Spoiler alert — it was laced.
The other cards bore other detector dogs, Kaos one of 32 Corrections canines working around New Zealand prisons and in the community.
Hancock said the threshold for qualifying was high because the role was really important.
Primarily, they needed a good "hunt drive".
"So, we're looking for that tiny, tiny percentage… 99.9 per cent of dogs just won't cut it, we're looking for the best of the best," he said.
"They need to have that high drive, that great work ethic and the good environmental stability."
When not in work mode though, like any dog.
"He's a goofball," Hancock said, scratching his head and smiling.
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