When you think of police dogs, a breed such as German Shepherd comes to mind right? These highly trained dogs are usually looking professional and focused on the job.

But Japanese Twitter user @AKILA1113 spotted this somewhat distracted looking dog accompanying a police officer on his beat. He uploaded these photos and wrote the caption, ‘the police force are bringing in freaking cute police dogs...’

Many commenters agreed that they’d never seen such a cute police dog before. But is it true? Are Japanese police starting to use the canine symbols of Japan and professional meme artists, Shiba inu dogs, as new recruits?

Sadly, probably not.

Looking at the way this dog was playfully sneaking between the police officer’s legs, he gives the impression that he isn't a highly trained police dog, but probably just a lost dog that the officer was taking care of while looking for the owner.

Famously stubborn and difficult to train, shiba dogs probably don’t make the best pups for the job. But still, looking at these photos it was nice to imagine for a while that we were about to see a legion of new Officer Doge’s protecting the mean streets of Japan.