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The police dog was first used by the police in the countries of Belgium and Germany in the late 1800s. It was not until the 1900s that this field of work had spread into other countries---Italy, England, Australia, France, and Hungary. It had reached the United States by 1907 when the New York City Police Department first began to use the police dog as a force against crime, gaining a strong foothold around the 1970s. Truth be known, the police dog gives more of itself to the human than any other working dog on a day-by-day basis.

The police dog gained popularity due to its keen sense of smell, which is 50 times more sensitive than that of a human being as the nose of a dog has about 200 million scent-receptor cells, while a human has only five million. Many areas are used by the dog—finding bombs, criminals, drugs and weapons. Facts show that a drug sniffing police dog can cover the same ground as ten human officers searching the same area, with the dog 50 times more apt to find what the police officers cannot. Also, the criminals are more intimidated by a police dog which causes them to surrender rather than running from a police officer or fighting them. This proves that the simple presence of a police dog can actually prevent any form of physical confrontations to the police officer, saving lives.  If it does arise, the dog is faster at responding then a human is, able to apprehend a fleeing criminal quicker and with more force than the human officer.

Referred to as the K9 dog, similar to the term "canine", today the police dog has reached such a high status in the United States that the intentional killing or injury of a police dog is considered a felony, with harsher penalties than in local animal cruelty laws. Also, a police dog that is killed in a line of duty is given a funeral as if it were a human officer. Most officers who have been with their K9 police dogs feel this is a member of their family and develop strong ties to them, and in many cases the dogs have saved their officer's life again and again in the line of duty along with victims they are searching for.

Today, private citizens are beginning to use the drug dogs if they suspect their teens may be abusing drugs without first bringing in the police.  A company in New Jersey rents out drug sniffing dogs to parents who wish to check out the teen's room or premises. Unfortunately, many teens fake drug tests which show the teen is not taking drugs, when in actuality they are. But many psychologists feel home surveillance and using drug dogs on the family teenagers are extremely damaging to parent-child relations with major repercussions. An alternative may be for the parents to open their eyes to the signs of drug use of opiates, marijuana, cocaine, or methamphetamine as an alternative to renting drug dogs unless in extreme cases. The police dogs are involved in several lines of work: tracking dogs (bloodhounds), drug dogs (Beagles), public enforcement dogs (German Shepherds, Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers, American Pit Bull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers, and Belgian Malinoises), and cadaver or human remains dogs (assorted breeds).