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The Chinese National Immigration Administration (NIA) recently rated 15 police dogs as the first batch of meritorious dogs and awarded the police officers who handle the dogs with third-class merit, winning netizens' respect and attracting wide attention.

Among these meritorious dogs, some played an important role in the process of searching and tracking criminal suspects, some assisted in the seizure of a large number of drugs, dangerous explosives, and smuggled goods, and some participated in large-scale duties many times with outstanding performance, which is an important force to assist the immigration management police in maintaining the stability of the border. 

According to the NIA, over the past five years, the immigration administration has sent dogs on 142,500 duty trips, used dogs to help solve 780 cases, arrested more than 2,600 criminal suspects, helped seize more than 340 kilograms of drugs, and seized smuggled goods worth more than 33 million yuan ($4,894,474).

Among them, "Yingkong" is a Belgian Malinois, and was assigned to the Mangyan border checkpoint of the Baoshan border management detachment of Southwest China's Yunnan Province with the handler in February 2020.

After training and doing extensive investigation, "Yingkong" began to make a name for himself on the battlefield. In a scent search professional subject examination in July 2022, under the continuous interference of the trainer, "Yingkong" took less than 15 seconds to find something suspicious in nearly 200 square meters of space, setting a record in this subject. Up to now, "Yingkong" has assisted the police in seizing four drug cases and surrendered 73.86 kilograms of drugs, becoming a meritorious dog.

"They are soldiers' 'silent comrade-in-arms,' close partners of the immigration control police, and they deserve people's protection and respect," a netizen said. "Hopefully, more police dogs could be named meritorious dogs," another noted.