Dennea Fitzner from The Pas, Manitoba was chose as one of 13 National Winners in this year’s RCMP Name the Puppy contest. Dennea’s winning entry was the name Luke.

“Thank you to all the children who sent in their suggestions,” said Staff Sergeant Gary Creed, acting Officer in Charge of the RCMP Police Dog Service Training Centre (PDSTC). “We couldn’t be more proud of our pups and these new names will serve them well.”

The names of the first 13 puppies to be born at the PDSTC in Innisfail, Alberta, were suggested by children representing every province and territory in Canada. Staff at the Centre chose the names from nearly 15,000 entries.

All names had to start with the letter L. For multiple entries of the same name, a draw determined the winning entry.

The winning entries are:

  • Lance : Kayla Absi (Ottawa, Ontario)
  • Lazer : Seth Reynolds (Saint John, New Brunswick)
  • Lenyx : Jaxson Duke (Whitehorse, Yukon)
  • Lexi : Rayanna Etheridge (Conception Bay South, Newfoundland and Labrador)
  • Lilly : Kaitlyn Szulc ( Langley, British Columbia)
  • Link : Jake Saunders (Yellowknife, Northwest Territories)
  • Logan : Austyn Harper (Carseland, Alberta)
  • Loki : Jackson McQuade Thomson (Iqaluit, Nunavut)
  • Lola : Alex Bernard (Kensington, Prince Edward Island)
  • Lucy : Saydee Hlagy (Outlook, Saskatchewan)
  • Luke : Dennea Fitzner (The Pas, Manitoba)
  • Luna : Fergus Porter (Antigonish, Nova Scotia)
  • Lux : Arielle Provencher (Montreal, Quebec)

The 13 winners will each receive a laminated 8×10-inch laminated photo of the puppy they named, a plush dog called Justice and an official RCMP baseball cap.

RCMP police service dog teams are an important part of front line policing. They search for missing or lost people, track and apprehend criminals, remove illicit drugs from the streets, detect explosives and search for evidence used in crimes.

The RCMP Police Dog Service Training Centre is the training centre for all RCMP police dog teams in Canada.

Ninety-four percent (94%) of the German shepherds working today as RCMP service dogs were born at the PDSTC as part of the RCMP Police Dog Breeding Program.