General Anyone here train or handle a working K9?
- Thread starter SC MMA MD
- Start date
When I was living out in the country,our next door neighbor was an Oakland police officer and had a police dog.Members from the police department would come to his house to train the dogs.I would be mowing the lawn & I could look over the fence in the back yard and see the training going on.They had obstacles & places for the bad guy to hide in the padded suit & even the bad guy by himself in the padded suit.They did not give commands in English.
Sorry if I got your hopes up.
Sorry if I got your hopes up.
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I know one, his trained dog bit me on my wrist when he left the door opened
He then looked and barked right at my balls
He was so worried I would ask to have the dog put down but I just brushed it off as that’s what the dog was taught to do and he didn’t break the skin
He then looked and barked right at my balls
He was so worried I would ask to have the dog put down but I just brushed it off as that’s what the dog was taught to do and he didn’t break the skin
I used to work at a kennel where they train all the police K-9s for a decent radius
Some tasteful voyeurism.
I think you may be the forum’s most interesting person.
Could you start wearing a go pro? Start a video blog?
If Freddy makes it to the point that he is doing the practice searches for an actual person or scent target, I will try to get some video.
Right now he is just starting to transition from obedience training to searching fairly small areas of brush and tall grass for his tug or a family member. Training days with the SAR organization are just me for now, hiding to be found, or flanking a certified handler and K9 to help navigate etc.
His first official assessment last week was acceptable, but not great. Hopefully just because he was getting sick (another vet trip the day after), because when he is with me his drive seems really good. He is my fourth German Shepherd, and although the others were also from working lines, Freddy is the first that had strong enough drive that I thought he might be able to make it through certification. He is so active he is just barely tolerable for my family to live with.
If he washes out, he will become a full time pet and the training facility we use will divert a Shepherd, Mal, or Dutchie out of their LEO or MWD program and Freddy will get a brother or sister.
Our PD used to put on a k9 show every year at their training academy to raise money. And I had a friend/deputy with a K9. They are amazing to watch.
What scent work have you done so far?
Very basics only. Unclear if he is going to move towards human remains detection, live find, or both.
He starts a formal scent training class in May.
We have done foundational work in detection by rewarding interacting with a scent (herbal tea bag) and then moved on to placing the scent under one of a few upside down clay flowerpots and rewarding interacting with the correct one.
On the live find side, he has gotten good at searching for his tug by scent (it is a 10” piece of sandblasting hose so it has a fairly strong odor) both indoors and outside in tall grass and bramble. Just starting to transition to looking for a person (who has his tug).
He is good about using his nose instead of his eyes, but has not even started working on active alerts or find/re-find.
Fix your laces before you trip
Lol. The laces on these boots are comically long, but they don’t quite reach the ground
I worry about you.
Freddy is doing well with his article and room searches, and he has his first nighttime area search training Saturday night.
I built him an odor detection wall last weekend and working with that has really improved his focus with his final response to odor.
I built him an odor detection wall last weekend and working with that has really improved his focus with his final response to odor.
I knew a dog that looked just like that one growing up
It was a police trained dog as well and it would do the show my teeth and mean mug thing sometimes, scared the piss out of me and my friend...then the owner would give a command and she would become friendly
To be fair we were always smelling like weed
Looks like a good dog you got there Doc
Freddy had his first official training session with the Search and Rescue team tonight. He got to do some run-aways before the certified dogs did their searches, and then got to do a few more at midnight before we packed up and left.
I always learn a ton about K9 handling and search strategies at these training sessions.
It is fascinating to see these dogs work, and amazing how quickly they find the “victim” who is hidden in a 30+ acre search area.
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/3QvCfAa5hIE?feature=share
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/8hyzoc3Xv2E?feature=share
View: https://youtu.be/6A0JSkGJLeM
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/Y1_yto7Ny8M?feature=share
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/OY6MPh1kDQ0?feature=share
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/DV8OfbzMBSw?feature=share
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/_YWVt7h5XIU?feature=share
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/sM0cmM6RHOE?feature=share
He’s just all business when the game is on!
The scent tubes give the dog a number of discrete places to search for target odor, and let you move the target odor easily, reward for staying focused on the odor (so the dog thinks the odor is rewarding him as opposed to looking to the handler for the reward), and allows placing multiple odors to test that the dog is alerting to target odor only, not just a strong scent, gloves, cotton balls, the toy scent etc.
the wall is toilet flanges with a 45 degree elbow attached to it. The dog can put their nose into the flanges.
The “empty” flanges have a cap on the end of the elbow so they don’t get any scents blowing through the flange.
The target odors are loaded into the wye, and then you remove a cap off the desired flange/elbow and put the wye in its place. The leg of the wye without odor in it lets you reward the dog with a toy or treat through the same opening they are smelling odor. You can also run a rope through the wye and pull a toy from the ground into the hole to lure a dog to smell inside the flange. New dogs don’t always understand that they should be sniffing the flanges.
The goal is for the dog to be able to on command search the flanges and then alert and stay focused on the target flange until his reward comes.
Eventually you can place multiple wye’s with distractions as well as target odor, and also have a blank wall with no target odor at all to ensure the dog won’t alert just to trick the handler into giving them a reward.
Great thread.
I had a dog that my Wife and I had trained from an early age to be a pet therapy dog.
That was a lot of work so I can only imagine the intense and demanding training SAR etc would be.
I had a dog that my Wife and I had trained from an early age to be a pet therapy dog.
That was a lot of work so I can only imagine the intense and demanding training SAR etc would be.