Proper maintenance training requires planning, preparation, and execution

Planning is deciding what your dog needs, along with training that will develop the desired result. In real Law Enforcement canine deployments, teams never know what challenges their next call for service will contain.. Every deployment will include different combinations of time of day, weather, landscape, tactical issues, actions by suspects and civilians, legal issues, distractions, packaging (Detector Dogs), and the number of things to search. Learning is a process where scenarios are deliberately presented to the team producing obstacles or distractions for the handler to solve and the dog to overcome. Progress depends on the canine team’s ability to complete the exercise.

The majority of Law Enforcement work involves the use of canines in some scent-driven tasks. Tracking, Building Search, Area Search, Evidence Recovery, Narcotics, Explosives, Arson, and Game detection are some of the ways we use the super-sensitive noses of our canine partners. Proficiency in all areas is necessary for operational readiness. Accuracy determines how fast the canine should work. Training doesn’t stop when the team becomes certified; that’s just the beginning. Functional training is the next level of achievement and is based on possible scenarios you could see at work.

Have you ever said or heard “but he does it at the training area” when your dog fails to respond correctly in an environment that is new to him? You have just acknowledged that your dog has not yet generalized the behavior to all contexts and lacks Fluency. Fluency is when your dog knows how to search for odor or human scent, knows how to track, knows obedience, and agility, and will do that anywhere, anytime, and under any circumstances.

Residual Odor

Several court cases I have been involved with centered around residual odor prompted me to explain what it is and how you define it. Canine handlers have used residual odor for years to identify an odor plume followed by a K9 to a source, where nothing was found. The judge wanted to know how a canine could smell something not present in one case. In the second case, an expert from the other side was testifying that it is a dead odor, and we should be training our canines to a threshold so the dog would ignore odors that are no longer there.

 

We are excited to announce that Erica C. Boling, PhD of Northeast K9 Conditioning is once again offering her highly popular, online workshop, 7 Ways to Enhance Performance for Detection and Patrol Dogs

Police dog handling requires more ongoing mindfulness than any other law enforcement discipline.

With the exception of horses, all other police tools are inanimate objects. As the only law enforcement tool that continually interacts with the environment, police dogs’ behavior changes over time.  As a result, the dog’s training is never “done.” Since a canine handler and the police dog spend most of their waking hours together, the canine handler is the person solely responsible for that dog’s performance.  That is not just a matter of policy, it is a pure behavioral fact. Even in units large enough to have dedicated trainers, their span of control and administrative load mean they cannot begin to approach the degree of influence over the dog the individual handler has.

Best Practices in K9 Policing "What every K-9 Supervisor needs to know

The United States Police Canine Association, Inc. (USPCA) and the American Kennel Club (AKC) have agreed to form an alliance. One of the benefits of this alliance is AKC Reunite, Adopt a K-9 Cop matching grant. Our association with AKC allows us to sponsor USPCA members for grants to purchase canines. For more information on how you can take advantage of this benefit check here or contact Executive Director Don Slavik

Discover how to enhance search effectiveness, increase tracking stamina, and create more powerful patrol work! Dr. Erica Boling from Northeast K9 Conditioning is offering another free online workshop June 29th. Reserve your spot today!

https://northeastk9conditioning.lpages.co/enhance/  

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The day a K9 officer meets his or her partner is a day a lifelong bond is formed. It isn’t hard to under­stand why—though they’ve got a badge and a set of crucial skills, at the end of the day, K9 officers are waggly-tailed, lovable companions that just so happen to be pretty big badasses, too. It’s for all of these reasons that K9s are growing in demand in police departments in the United States and throughout the world.

 Police dogs have a long history in law en­forcement, used since the Middle Ages. To­day, these brave officers are trained in vari­ous high-stakes police jobs, from protecting their handlers to sniffing out drugs, to identi­fying explosives. Of course, these dogs are also vital in searching for missing people, with German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois are among the most common breeds employed for human search applications.

Do your plans include looking for a new dog, K9 Training, K9 Equipment, or the latest electronics for your training records or police vehicle? How about the latest in nutrition? We have the answers for you! Check out these sources for all your needs.

When selecting a school for initial canine training, make sure they offer everything you need for your agency. There are several options available for schools. They are, the handler goes through a course and is involved with all the training. Or you get a trained dog and attend several weeks working with the dog. It used to be all about the quality of the dog, and that is still important. Over time we have realized that handler knowledge is essential to a successful canine team. It is especially vital when your needs involve a patrol dog. The school curriculum must have enough time allotted to understand the training the dog has or will receive. Practical deployment training is also critical for the handler to see how their canine works in different contexts.

If you have questions, please contact me: [email protected]

Two Podcasts from K9s Talking Scents

Both have information that can help in your Training

Go Here

In February of 2013 the Supreme Court of The United States decided a landmark case specifically dealing with Police Service Dogs. The implications of that decision are far reaching enough that we may not have seen the full effects and may not for years. The initial case and decision dealt with narcotics detection, the training records of the K9 team, and the subsequent certifications of those teams.

In the Harris decision one question that was addressed was; what is required to establish that [a] dog is well trained? While this was specifically a detection case, it did issue a blueprint on a way to test every individual deployment of a canine, whether that be on a detection deployment to detect the odor of contraband or to track and finally apprehend a person suspected of committing a serious crime. The court did not rule out questioning the reliability where specific grounds exist. They took great care to determine what “well trained” meant. One Justice took aim directly at both training and testing standards. Justice Kagen went as far as to say;

 

How Your Dog's Nose Knows So Much