On July 1, in Latvia (Dog handling centre of the State Border Guard) and Lithuania (dog handling centre of the State Border Service), the Border Management Programme in Central Asia (BOMCA 10) launched the second round of the 12-week Train – the – Trainers (ToT) course for K9 instructors from five Central Asian countries. These programme activities are aimed at improving dog handling instructors’ theoretical knowledge and practical skills for the training of dog handling teams and service dogs, used for daily border guarding and law enforcement tasks.

The ToT training in Latvia  aimed to improve dog handler instructors’ theoretical knowledge and practical skills for daily tasks, such as  searching for explosives, ammunition and weapons, while the training in Lithuania focused on searching for drugs and precursors.  

As per the activity’s expected results, it is foreseen that the trained dog handling - instructors will be able to use the acquired knowledge and practical skills in their daily duties, as well as  sharing them with the personnel of their institutions back home, therefore strengthening institutional K9 capacities.

It is worth  noting that BOMCA 10 has organised the first round of ToT training for ten K9 instructors from Central Asian border and law enforcement agencies / BOMCA beneficiaries in 2022.

This training course was organized under Component 2 of BOMCA  10, “Improvement of detection capacities” which aimed to strengthen detection capacities for drugs, precursors, arms, ammunition, explosives, currency, and other illicit goods at the borders.