Conan settles in to home with Pcs
A fearsome illegal Japanese fighting dog seized during a police raid in Smethwick has been settling into his new home with officers.
Despite being described as "the ultimate fighting dog" by experts, the Japanese tosa appears calm and placid in these images alongside its handlers.
The 11-stone animal, which has been named Conan, was the first of its breed recovered in the UK since being banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act in 1991.
Qumar Shamim, aged 31, has been given a suspended 20-week jail sentence and banned from keeping animals for 10 years, after the tosa and two illegal pitbulls were recovered from his Edgbaston Road home.
Magistrates ordered the destruction of the two pitbulls but made a groundbreaking order to transfer ownership of the tosa to West Midlands Police and allowing it to stay alive as long as stringent conditions are adhered to.
Dog experts from the force wanted to keep the animal to train other officers and organisations from around the country to be able to recognise the banned dog elsewhere.
Conan is thought to be around six-years-old and expected to live for at least another three and will be kept securely at kennels in a secret location and given regular exercise at police dog training areas. But it will not be exposed to members of the public or used in any police operations. Dog handler Pc Owen Evitts said tosas had been bred over 1,000 years specifically to become the "ultimate fighting dog."
"Having a living specimen is absolutely invaluable to the police and other agencies," he said. "We wouldn't want to use the dog as some sort of sideshow, it would only be exposed to people with a professional interest in this breed.
"The plan is to use the dog in an educational way, not to parade him around the streets.
"We have suitable kennelling facilities and exercising facilities and it would be exercised by comparable handlers like myself and it would be exercised in the most suitable way possible. We have not put the dog with other dogs."
