A large number of the imported dogs which end up in police service these days received their basic training from sport trainers who sold them to vendors. Since our working partners are strongly influenced by sport trainers, a quick look at our different philosophies and needs seems appropriate.

To begin with, sport trainers have a freedom which makes them quite valuable to police trainers. They have greater freedom to experiment with new training techniques and many methods utilized by police trainers were originally developed and championed by civilians. Mistakes and weaknesses in police dogs often translate immediately into serious injury or death for the handler which tends to make police trainers stick with tried and true methods and makes them understandably less likely to embrace new, unproven techniques.

Positive influences having been acknowledged let us now look at the differences in the final product needed by sport trainers as opposed to police trainers. In sport you need a dog that will score the maximum number of points since one or two points often means the difference between a championship and placing fifth. Many people feel that the best way to do this is to first create the maximum amount of aggression so the dog hits and bites as hard as possible and then use whatever force is necessary to get control of it. This type of dog may work well on the competition field where the conditions are relatively simple and controlled, but it is poorly prepared to work on the street.

At least in the United States working in the real world involves almost constant contact with idiots that do foolish things around dogs and our dogs must tolerate this. Such a high level of tolerance is best accomplished early in training but for the reasons mentioned above this is not often done when introducing a sport dog to aggression. Unfortunately many dogs started for sport purposes get sold to vendors and end up in police departments. In police work we need a dog that engages and controls our adversary well but it does not need to score the maximum number of points for aggression like a sport dog in order to do its job well. What is far more important is that in addition to decent aggression levels the dog be able to think well enough to solve problems and have reliable control under stress and in situations that are unpredictable and changing rapidly. Such a dog is not often produced by the standard approach to sport competition which does not emphasize clear thinking or control.

Since the end goal of our training is to produce different products it makes no sense at all to be using the exact same methods and progressions as sport trainers. It is time for us to re-examine our training and procurement methods with the final product in mind and stop letting sport trainers tell us what is good for working in the real world and what is not. We should accept and utilize their inventive talents (which are considerable) but select and utilize only techniques which lead directly to things like tolerance, clear thinking and control which we know are needed to work well in the real world. That way we can stop producing dogs like the one in the photograph and all work together to create a better future for our dogs and their handlers. Til next time.
S. Mackenzie

Today the Dutch judgingcommittee arrived on Amsterdam airport after a very succesfull trainingweek with the St. Martin PD K9-unit wich ended with certifying twopatroldogs according to the strickt Dutch law enforcement K9-standards.  Check the link for more information.

http://www.smn-news.com/st-maarten-st-martin-news/4427-police-dog-handlers-receive-advanced-training.html

The K9-unit of the Netherlands' National Police Agency in Nunspeet purchases (young) adult dogs for training but also uses puppy's. One instructor/trainer is working with puppy's full-time and by the time they are one year old, the dogs are ready for certification and streetwork. A gigantic saving of time and a longer periode of operational availability for policework.
Sometimes I hear people say that its impossible to train puppy's for policework. This is not true! As long as the trainer is patient and consistent and the training itself is positive, it is possible to train puppy's. Food- and toyrewarding is essential in the beginning but in the same time something you have to change later in training because you don't wanna be depending on these things. With the right ideas and attitude you can train your puppy to become your streetworthy PSD.

It’s becoming a ritual. Every time a seminar offers tactical training (which is most times these days) you can gather around the tactical instructors at meal time and hear the same complaints. They expected to be teaching tactical maneuvers but they ended up teaching basic skills since few of the teams were ready for what the instructors wanted to cover. Many handlers do not seem to understand that without good basic skills, tactics suffer. It is difficult for a dog to hold a long down under tactical distractions when it can’t already hold a long down when it is all alone with no distractions; yet time and again people bring dogs to tactical obedience classes when they are not yet proficient at regular obedience. Elsewhere, it is difficult to use scenario based training to teach tactical tracking when the dog is not already a good tracker and consequently misses simple turns, leading the back-up team into areas where there are no scenarios set up for them. Don’t laugh too much, this has actually happened. In buildings, it is difficult to search in a tactically sound manner when the dog keeps making mistakes because it is not really very good at searching buildings yet. The list can go on, but the point is clear; our basic skills need to be good if we are to achieve tactical soundness.

The quest for better tactics must continue, but not at the expense of basic skills. Both are important and deserve our constant attention. Wherever we go to achieve tactical soundness, we should bring good basic skills with us.  S. Mackenzie

During my visit of Arizona, last April, we did some good scenariotraining. Among these scenario's there was also a "call" of a burglary at a public swimmingpool and the handlers had to deal with that. First all teams had to do a search for the suspects and during this search we could see that dogs and handlers do not expect suspects inside the pool. All teams searched the poolarea and dressingsrooms and at the end they all walked around the pool, with the suspects hiding in it. With just their head above the water, the supects were very hard to see.
After the find the teams had to arrest the supects and the dogs were send into the water to attack. These attacks were repeated a few times and all dogs were jumping into the pool with a lot of confidence.

The reason doing this scenario is that we want the handlers to realize how vulnerable the dogs are in water where they cannot stand on their feet. Therefor we always tell them only to send their dogs into a situation where they (the handlers) also can go to help the dogs; its not the dog on itself, its a K9-team!
Because of the fact that water (pools, rivers, creeks, etc, etc) is everywhere, its always possible that a suspect will hide or run into the water. To train this "context" will make your dog stronger.
And last but not least its also fun to train these scenario's with the right type of guys; devoted K9-handlers.

Thanks for a great time GPD and MPD K9-units!

There is a lot more discussion these days about the benefit of reward based training vs compulsion based based training and that's a good thing.  Now lets take it to another level and consider what is it about a physical reward, a tug, ball or kong that motivates a dog to work so enthusiastically?  Does a dog truly desire the inanimate object or is there something more? 

In my training regimen I stress that the tug, ball, kong or whatever is only the medium used to join the dog and handler.  With this philosophy, the true reward becomes the interaction between human and canine.  It is imperative the handler injects an approriate level of enthusiasm into the interaction each and everytime the dog is to be rewarded for a job well done.  The praise and play between dog and handler must be the most significant thing to happen to the dog during the training episode. 

Once this is acheived the toy becomes less important and the release and subsequent interaction is what the dog truly desires.  This is evident when handlers trained this way can present areas to be detailed by their detection dog with their reward as the pointer and the dog disregards it, searching willingly.   Just something to think about...