The week before Jeff Meyer arrived in Holland our K9-unit welcomed three new GSD puppies for our "puppyproject". With eight weeks they left the litter and the same day training started, completely foodrewarded. The puppies only eat during training and this training goes on the whole day but at least three times a day.
The thursday that Jeff visited our unit the puppies were nine weeks old and fully in training. Hopefully they will reach the end and get certified as a trackingdog.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TVLK9#p/u/0/wY8T_9aOsGk

Friday september 3rd and saterday september 4th the KNPV national championships 2010 were held in the soccerstadium of the footbalclub Eindhoven. Together with Jeff Meyer of Police K9-Magazine I visited the most important trials of Holland and I must say, after a few years with average dogs, this year there were some very spectacular and special dogs present. Overall the level of all the dogs was very high but I'm sure that the decoys will  have nightmare's of some of them. On friday the nr. 4 in the PH1-programm (Watch the pics of "de stok" on the link below!) was the hard hitter who knocked down the decoy with the stickattack like a freighttrain and on saterday the nr. 1 in the PH1-programm (pics will be available on same link asap) did the same. Talking about the decoys, it was a pleasure to see those three guys doing their job with great skills and courage! The amount of visitors from overseas was high as always, the Dutch Nationals still are very popular with dogsportlovers and K9-law enformentmembers from all over the world.  
 
http://www.patrickdv.com/nk_knpv_vrijdag/

Last night I was involved in the search and rescue of a female that escaped from a closed mental hospital. She managed to escape the clinic around three PM and we (Netherlands' National Police Agency, K9-unit) were called around nine PM, so quite some time passed before we started the search. With two SAR-dogs, one from the city of The Hague and one from the town of Nunspeet, we searched around the clinic. This was an area with large public parcs, sportingfacilities en urban neighbourhoods, so we had to deal with diffirent circumstances and both hard and soft surfaces. After searching for almost an hour and a half in the pouring rain K9 "James" suddenly made an alert from close bushes in one of the public parcs. As soon as we reached him we saw him standing, loud barking, above  a female that was laying on the ground. The woman was taking care of by paramedics and brought back to the mental hospital.
After all these years in K9 the thrill, the exitement, the adrenaline, the "kick" of finding something or someone with you dog is still a great feeling. A feeling that I Love!

Yesterdayevening a Dutch policedog got stabbed by a suspect police was trying to arrest for an armed robbery on a supermarket in the town of Nijmegen. In reaction to the stabbing the handler and a fellow officer opened fire on the suspect that got shot multiple times and died on the scene. The policedog was brought to a vet for surgery and is going to make it.

This is not the first time a policedog got stabbed in Holland and for sure you also faced this in the US or in every other country in the world. What can we do about it? Can we decide not using our dogs on a armed suspect? Can we develope tactics for these deployments, like the "shieldprocedure" that we have in Holland? Perhaps we have to use the harnesses more?

All kinds of questions and I know for sure that every handler and trainer/instructor has its own ideas about this. Maybe the truth is a combination of all the answers to all the questions? Most important thing for me is to make clear that the handler always is the one that is responsable for his dog and is the one that makes the decision if he will deploy his dog or not. That is something we all have to except and respect!

Time flies when you're having fun! I know for sure the handler of the Cuerpo Policial Aruba agrees with me on this, thinking about his internship at our K9-unit. Although we only had two weeks , I think we managed to present him a complete and effective schedule/programm and both hander and dog will go back to the caribbean better prepared for their work. During the training of the handler and his narc-dog we foucussed on the "start" of the searches, the "working out" of the scent, "scentrecognition" and the "alert". Also we trained in very small amounts (paperclips and keys with dopescent) and in large amounts (multiple kg's), searches in both people and objects and we made the transition from the American way of searching to the Dutch way of searching. Besides working his own dopedog with the KLPD and the Dutch Department of Corrections, the handler also trained and had a ride along with patroldogs of the South-Holland-South K9-unit and visited several units like the KLPD air support unit and a biketeam of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond PD and also a KNPV-club, De Doorbijters at the town of Zevenaar.
With an overload of new experiences, knowledge and equipment he returns back home.

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In my first blog I introduced myself.

In this second one I want to tell something more about my country : Belgium in the heart of Europe.

I live in Ghent, that is a city with a middle aged centre and 250.000 inhabitants.

It is 50 km from Brussels and 300 km from Paris and 300 km from Amsterdam.

And even London is easy to visit with boat or train.

Belgium is the home of dogsport. It was in Belgium that the FCI ( Fédération Cynologique Internationale ) was born.

Belgium is the home of the Belgian shepherd :

-          the Groenendaeler

-          the Terveuren Sheperd

-           the Laekenois

-          and off course the formula 1 of policedogs , the one and only Malinois

And many other Belgian breeds, such as the Saint Hubert Hound ( bloodhound ), Belgian Mastiff, the Bouvier, the Schipperke, …

Belgium has an unique history in protection work as we have one of the oldest programs = Belgian ringsport .

Belgium has a very strong reputation in training dogs. As a very small country with only 10.000.000 residents we have many worldchampions in different dogsport with the biggest names as :

-          Mario Verslijpe ( http://www.mario-verslype.be/ = three times FCI worldchampion !!  )  

-           Ronny Van den Berghe ( http://www.ronnyvandenberghe.be/nl/home )  ( 3 times worldchampion Schutzhund WUSV ( only for GSD’s ) .

-          And Ismael Devos, Geert Verlinden, Julien Steenbeke, Roger Snollaerts and many more !

Dogtrainers travel from countries all over the world to learn from Belgian trainers.

Some examples : Haruo Masuda ( also former worldchampion WUSV , several times Asian champion, etc ), Ivan Balabanov ( also former Worldchampion ), Felix Ho and again many more.

Belgian people seem to have something special in breeding and training animals.

Belgium is famous for their pigeons , horses and dogs.

It was also in Belgium that mondioring (http://www.mondioring.org/index.htm)  started.

And … Not to forget ! It was in Belgium that dogs were first used for patrolling in a policeforce.

This experiment started in my city, Ghent, and was very succesfull.

But more about this history later !

Axel

www.belgiank9friends.com

axel.vdb@telenet.be