Canine duo sniff out counterfeit discs

WITH ruthless criminals barking mad and wanting to take their predecessors for a long walk off a short pier, two Irish labrador retrievers have been drafted in by the Malaysian government to sniff out pirate DVDs.

Manny and Paddy have been drafted in to track the pirates who are flooding the Malaysian market with fake discs.

They will have a hard act to follow as their predecessors, Lucky and Flo, have cult status, not just for their cute looks but their clever noses.

The dogs, who began sniffing out DVD shipments at Malaysia’s main airport on March 13, won acclaim when they travelled south to the country’s Johor state, helping officials uncover one million pirated DVDs, CDs and computer game discs worth €2.1m in an office complex on March 19.

Within a few weeks they had tracked another €330,000 worth of dodgy discs in two video shops.

The dynamic duo who made the criminals sick as a dog during their brief stay were only on loan.

However, the Malaysia’s Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shafie Apdal has managed to secure Paddy and Manny permanently.

“Paddy and Manny will undergo familiarisation training at Pulapol in Kuala Lumpur,” he told the Malaysian press.

Malaysia is among the world’s main producers and exporters of pirated discs and the country has been forced to establish a canine unit dedicated solely to tracking the movement of the illegal material. According to the Malaysian government, five million discs were seized in more than 2,000 nationwide raids last year.