I'll give you an example. I think, obviously as a retired RCMP officer, you'd be very familiar with an incident that we had in and around Edmonton where that case did happen. That's with Corporal Jim Galloway who lost his life. We, as a service, went out and collected his service dog and brought him to our kennels at that time. In that instance, because he was a little older service dog, the decision was made by the Innisfail kennels to retire that dog.
If the dog was younger in age, two or three years of age, and still had a lot of years left in it, I would probably guess, as a section commander, I would reassign that dog to another handler if it was appropriate. The same things may happen that we see in other service animals. If there was something that was significant that affected that dog's ability to do the job from thereon in, after we tested him or her, then we may have to retire it because of the incident that had taken place. It's really dependent on the situation, the dog itself, and where you are as a service. Do you have the flexibility to retire this dog?
Sometimes it's a compassionate thing because all these dogs do go home to their families. Yes, they are service dogs and they are a tool, but they go home to families. When they go home to families they're just another dog. They're just another pet, and they're part of that family. That's what we saw with Constable Matt Williamson and his young family in Edmonton. We can't lose sight of the fact that they're still an animal. These dogs are loved, not only by the community but by the families that look after them. In a lot of instances I'd be hard pressed not to retire that dog and allow the family to have that memory of that dog.