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.
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.
What follows in this article teaches us what causes odor and scent to remain after the source has left or has been removed. It is chemical in nature, and therefore just knowing what happens is likely all you need. I included the whole article as there some other interesting facts. The reason for this article was a recent court case where the judge wanted to know how a narcotic odor could remain after the product was removed.
Advances in the use of odor as forensic evidence through optimizing and standardizing instruments and canines
I often hear handlers say their dog is bored when displaying less than enthusiastic interest when searching. One problem humans have when training dogs are, they may not understand what a dog is doing or misinterpreted the body language. Ask yourself, is a dog bored when they do not show interest or are they bored because of many deployments without receiving any stimulus or reward? An example of a dog that is disinterested while searching a vehicle might show a dog not searching the productive areas, just walking straight ahead. The only odor they will detect is what comes across their noses. We know that available odor depends on the packaging, vapor pressure, and air movement. It is possible for a dog that is not actively searching to have a high probability of a miss.
Likewise, we know that dogs will include the environment in which they work and train. This includes understanding patterns and places where they have had success and where they never find anything. An extraordinary example of this is an area where I observed dogs that searched hundreds of vehicles a day. Once during a dog's shift, a vehicle, the same type of vehicle and the same color each time, came through the search area or parked nearby. This vehicle contained an odor, and the dog was rewarded with a successful indication. This same pattern was presented every day to the dogs. The dogs soon realized that the only vehicle that they could receive their reward was that vehicle. They showed boredom or disinterest in every other vehicle. Additionally, every vehicle that came by that was the same type as the target one often produced an indication of odor. The dogs would give a final response where there was no odor.
Interprets
The word or variation of the word interprets is most often used by canine handlers in reports, training records, and testimony. They describe how they interpreted behavior changes or a final response given by the dog upon sniffing a trained odor.
Does Your Dog Refuse to Release the Toy Reward?
Many handlers have issues with this. While it might drive you crazy, this is also what makes the dog work harder when detecting substances. To the dog, this reward is a high-value item, and to get it, they must find what they have been trained to locate. Once they get the reward, they want to possess it and not give it back. They have worked hard and want to satisfy themselves with it.