WELL I went “Aww” when I saw this picture and I’m sure many of you did too.

You would be hard pushed ever to take a bad picture of a puppy. Not that this was a gratuitous puppy portrait inserted into the newspaper merely to make us all feel good.

The story in July, 2007, was that the then Strathclyde Police had installed a web cam in the birthing suite at their kennels in Pollok Park so that the public could simply click on it and watch the progress of six new-born Cocker Spaniel puppies.

Here is one of the pups who appears to be reading a critique of the wannabees who were in television’s Big Brother House that year.

You can imagine the conversation that took place at Strathclyde’s Pitt Street headquarters that summer. “We need something in the press to suggest we are nice people rather than gruff men in uniforms who arrest you for no apparent reason.” “What about pictures of puppies?” “Sold!”

Our spaniel here would have been trained at the Police Dog Unit in Pollok to be a sniffer dog, either for drugs, money, firearms, or in some cases, for human remains.

Don’t think they get to choose though. Once trained, the dogs live with their handlers rather than being stuck in the Pollok kennels. Doesn’t seem such a bad life once you get over the intrusive cameras.