She’s only two years old but she’s already been a working professional for four months and is a rising star among the ranks of the Halton Regional Police Service (HRPS).K9 Cache, a yellow Labrador retriever, is the newest member of the force’s investigative team and serves as an Electronic Storage Detection (ESD) dog. She’s only one of nine ESD dogs in Canada and the first of her kind to work with HRPS.ESD K9s are trained to detect electronics like mobile phones, hard drives, USB sticks and GPS monitoring devices. More specifically, they’re trained to sniff out the chemical present in all of those devices — triphenylphosphine oxide.“It’s a digital world. Digital evidence is kind of the future of policing. We see everything with AI, and it’s all just expanding,” explained Deputy Chief Jeff Hill.While these devices are used in a wide range of crimes, they are particularly common in child pornography, sexual exploitation and sex trafficking cases. Cache has already lent a helping paw to the HRPS in a number of such investigations.“She’s been deployed her 15 times already, and she’s already found 60 devices so far that we probably wouldn’t have found without her,” said Hill, adding that many of those devices contained incriminating evidence.“She’s helped us recover evidence already, and I know speaking to my investigators, they’ve commented on the fact that they wouldn’t have found it if it wasn’t for Cache and that keen nose of hers.”Cache was donated to HRPS through Our Rescue – a nonprofit dedicated to combating child sexual exploitation and human trafficking across the world. She underwent five months of intensive training before joining the force last winter.Halton police investigate about 400 cases of sexual exploitation every year – which can take a heavy toll on the mental health of the officers working those cases. Unlike other K9s who are trained with different temperaments – Cache is able to offer emotional support to team members as well.“The subject matter of what we deal with is very serious, and coming to the office day in and out and dealing with that can sometimes be hard,” said Cache’s partner Det. Const. Stefan Verreault. “Having a dog in the office makes all of the difference – it’s a therapeutic presence for the officers.”Officers hope she’ll be able to remain on the team for at least six to eight years before retirement.