Training A Working Dog (Police Dogs And Assistance Animals) (Part 1)

In today’s world, working dogs are a fact of life. These dogs selflessly provide a service to their masters and their communities and are rewarded with adoration and praise. Police dogs provide such an important service that, in some areas, the killing of a police animal is just as serious an offense as murdering an officer of the law. That in itself is quite a tribute to the work these animals perform.

But what goes into the training of one of these fine animals? Have you ever taken the time to think about how many hours are put into sorting the working animals from the common pets? How much effort is placed on teaching these animals how to do their job in protecting and serving their masters either in official police form or as an assistance dog, such as Seeing Eye or Hearing Ear dogs?

The training of Police dogs alone accounts for many hundreds of man-hours spent for just one animal. Trainers spend many hours researching, locating and acquiring suitable breeds for service dogs and then the dogs must fall within the correct age bracket being neither too young nor too old for service with most dogs ranging between ten months on the young side and two and a half years on the older side. The dogs are then given complete physicals including blood work and X-ray pictures to be certain that they can withstand the stresses and situations the job throws at them. The dogs are required to do pre-tests to determine eligibility for the program as well as aptitude and the pre-tests include such things as whether the dog is approachable by strangers without extreme shifts in behavior, retrieval behavior and foreign object acceptance, such as horses, umbrellas and objects not encountered daily. These tests are used to match the dog to its specific line of work as in patrol, cadaver, narcotics or explosive training. There is much rigorous testing of the animals before any true training ever begins and matching the animal’s temperament and personality to the correct trainer is one of the biggest criteria to effective training. If the two personalities clash then the whole training process can be disrupted or, worse, destroyed beyond repair. Dogs are matched to trainers and allowed to bond with their trainers before the earnest training ever begins, thus establishing a trust relationship between the man and the animal that will be crucial in the field later.

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