An award-winning colleague who excelled at his job and a loyal family member - that's how explosives detector dog E-Zak is being remembered.

The nearly nine-year-old labrador, more commonly known as Zak, died this week.

He graduated with handler Senior Constable Hamish Todd in 2016 and they've been together in Wellington Dog Section ever since. 

They were operational until late 2023, when Zak was retired due to illness.  

During that time, they regularly finished in the top three of the Detector Dog National Championships, taking out the title in 2019 (pictured, right), and were runners up in the Australasian Explosive Detector Dog trials in 2018.

"He loved his work," says Hamish.

"He certainly loved searching. His strength was his natural ability to detect the odours of explosives from any distance and differentiate them from all the other smells that are out there.

"He was a once-in-a-lifetime dog. They come along rarely and he was one of them."

Detector Dog Trainer Sergeant Mike Robinson, who fostered and started training Zak when he was a six-month-old pup, agrees. 

"Right from the start E-Zak excelled in training and had the right drives," he says. 

"He would be the most all-round detection dog that I have had the pleasure to be part of training and watching Hamish develop him as an operational dog.

"It would be a lot easier to train dogs if they were all like E-Zak."

As with many of our canine colleagues, there was so much more to Zak than his skills on the job. Outside of work, Hamish says he had a gentle nature and was a lovely family dog.

"If I was out and about, he'd be out and about with me," he says. "He was more than happy just to follow me around or he'd lay by the pool or come out to the duck pond (pictured, right). He loved swimming.

"He had a pretty happy life really." 

RIP Zak. Thank you for your service. 

-Police Ten One Magazine.