By Bronwyn Gerretsen
Udain and Butch are not just working dogs to top police dog handler Jack Haskins.
They are like family to him and, together, the trio is one of the most formidable police investigative teams in the country, providing closure to families of missing loved ones and bringing criminals to justice.
Haskins, 50, joined the South African Police Services in 1977 and was transferred to the Dog Unit four years later, because he had a passion for dogs and admired the thorough way in which the members of the Dog Unit conducted their work.
His dedication to his work and the success attained by him and his canine colleagues has seen him travel to Turkey and India to assist with emergency and rescue services after major disasters.
Adding to Haskins's expertise and work ethic are his latest team members, Udain, a Malinois, and Butch, a Labrador-cross-pointer, who are well known throughout the province for their rooting-out skills and keen sense of smell.
Both fill important but different roles for the police, with Udain specialising in search and rescue, and Butch trained to smell out body fluids such as blood and semen. He and Haskins are the only team of their kind in the province.
Haskins said that since he had started working with Butch in December, he had been used on 22 cases.
Haskins explained that each search and rescue mission to locate bodies was different, based on the place and the temperature of the area in which bodies were buried. If they were buried in a humid area, decomposition would be a lot quicker.
He said the most dramatic case he had attended to so far in his career was in India in 2001, when he had accompanied emergency services to the country to assist in the locating of bodies after an earthquake.
"We were going into a situation which we didn't know, as we don't deal much with earthquakes . . . we located between 50 and 70 bodies, some under 4m of concrete and debris.
"We only got there a few days after the earthquake, so it was too late to find anybody alive," he said.
Haskins said that, since then, no search and rescue team had travelled overseas without the dogs.
Asked which types of cases interested him the most, Haskins said any case that involved the locating of children.
He said the Shanae Muir case was one in particular that had meant a lot, as was the case of the six girls presumed to have been kidnapped by paedophile Gert van Rooyen.
He added that cases like the Shanae one were also the most difficult, because it was never certain where they should start looking.
Haskins broke the news of Shanae's death to her mother, Alison, in 2005.
"It is rewarding to be able to go back to families and tell them we have found the bodies, as it gives them closure.
"Obviously, it is not nice to have to tell them about the condition in which we found them," he said.
Society can be assured that, together with Udain and Butch, Haskins will continue to uproot the truth and bring those responsible for the murder of the province's citizens to book.