The Police Dogs 2027 Calendar has a distinctly operational edge.

“This year, the judges really were spoilt for choice, which is a fortunate position to be in when you want to produce another great calendar,” says Inspector Todd Southall, the Police dogs national co-ordinator and chair of the Police Dog Trust.

“We’re incredibly grateful to all our photographers for taking the time to showcase our incredible patrol dogs, specialist dogs and young pups in such creative and engaging ways. Every year we see the standard of entries getting better and better.”

The images for the 2027 edition were selected from more than 500 entries from seven Police forensic photographers. 

The winning shot was taken by Senior Constable Alex Stammers, an Auckland-based forensic photographer covering Tāmaki Makaurau. Alex’s winning image shows a section training exercise with patrol dog Uki and handler Constable Ciarahn Matoe in the foreground and canine colleagues Elco, Ragner and Pyrox lined up behind. 

Alex also won the top prize in 2024 and 2026.

Sergeant Jane Dunn (Wellington) and Senior Constable Deb Potter (Eastern) took this year’s highly commended photos. Jane’s photo shows patrol dog Kroc focused on the job at hand while Deb’s colourful photo of patrol dog Hanzu shows a moment of downtime in Hawke’s Bay.

In addition to the feature images in the 13-month calendar, there are 26 smaller photos and an A3 double-sided pullout poster. This year, for the first time, the public used emoji votes on Facebook to decide which two dog photos would feature on the poster.

The calendars, which cost $20 plus shipping, are available through the Cop Shop, thecopshop.nz. Proceeds aid the work of the New Zealand Police Dog Trust, which supports Police dog breeding, research and development programmes over and above NZ Police's investment.