{"id":512500,"date":"2026-07-06T14:27:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T14:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/512500\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T14:27:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T14:27:19","slug":"noah-the-former-stray-thriving-as-sniffer-dog-at-christchurch-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/512500\/","title":{"rendered":"Noah the former stray thriving as sniffer dog at Christchurch Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A stray dog has gone from rags to riches, securing a job at Christchurch Airport after he was found living on the street.<\/p>\n<p>Noah the German Shorthaired Pointer was picked up by Christchurch animal management in September last year.<\/p>\n<p>Support officer Lionel Bridger said nobody came forward to collect him, until Biosecurity saw his potential.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We tried to locate his owners, didn&#8217;t hear anything from anyone,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Then we got a call from MPI, they had seen him and wanted to come in and undertake an assessment to see how suitable he would be in their working environment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It went really well, they then asked if they could take him to the airport to see how he goes in public, and it went fantastic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bridger said Noah&#8217;s breed, a relatively rare sight in Christchurch, was a perfect fit for Biosecurity.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a German Shorthaired Pointer. They smell everything, they love sniffing around, and that&#8217;s what makes them so suitable for the role within MPI. They get trained to sniff out food products and I think it&#8217;s 18 or 19 different products he can sniff out at this stage,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Noah aced Biosecurity&#8217;s tests and was soon taken to Auckland for a six-month training course.<\/p>\n<p>Now Bridger said Noah had returned to Christchurch with a finely tuned nose and was excelling at his new job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A stray dog has gone from rags to riches, securing a job at Christchurch Airport after he was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-512500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}