Don’t Mess With Police Dogs!
Canines are a vital part of police work. Their training is extremely intensive and the animals are very loyal to their handlers. They’ll stop at nothing, other than their handler’s commands, to achieve their objective.
Police dogs are trained to achieve several goals, such as patrol, tracking, and finding narcotics. Their sense of smell is 50 times more sensitive than humans. Dogs can also smell several different items at once, which makes it nearly impossible to mask the scent of narcotics. Where humans smell a pot of soup cooking on the stove, a dog detects the individual ingredients. A kilo of cocaine placed in the bottom of a cooler covered with dead fish will smell like plastic, cocaine, and dead fish to a police dog.
Police dogs are fearless. Once given the command to take down a criminal suspect, the canines go into a tunnel-vision-like state, focusing on nothing but the bad guy.
The videos below speak for themselves. Amazing!
And then there’s this dog…
More to come on police dogs…
Edna – I’m glad we were able to help out. We’re all a team on this site. I normally write the main blog post , but I learn something new on here nearly every day. I do hope you’ll stick around.
Sarah, Elena, Lee, thanks you for the information. It does help me, and I do appreciate it. Thanks, Edna
I had two police canines and went to a different academy for each. Neither school taught to reward the dogs with food. When they performed their tasks well we gave them lots of praise, love, and a ton of fun time with their toy. The toys offered after performing tasks are actually part of the training and are normally specific to the dog’s specific purpose – patrol, narcotics, etc. The toys serve a purpose other than play, but I’ll delve into that in the next post about dogs.
Now, for just good old everyday, non-work-related play, anything goes – tennis balls, etc.
Edna, the dogs are too excited to focus enough to safely eat a treat. They need something large enough to let them calm down slowly. That’s why you frequently see tennis balls, and Kongs. Besides the possibility of their choking, a treat is too impersonal. The known favorite toy keeps the dog safe from strangers. That is also the idea behind using a foreign language for K-9 commands.
You had at me at the word “dog.” As a dog owner I just love the species to pieces. However, I’m in total awe of working dogs, especially police dogs. The relationship between a handler and their dog is amazing. I’m always so touched at what dogs are willing to do for us humans. I look forward to your next post on the subject.
Lee,
Police Dogs are terrific and I support the use of them 100%. I have been fortunate enough to have been with Dog Handlers/Dogs quite a few times over the years when they have tracked criminals and found them hiding in all sorts of places. On the night shifts when it quiet I would from time to time hide up for the dog to find me. I have also ‘run’ for the dogs wearing the heavy leather sleeve. I actually applied for the Dog Section but I was turned down because I had too many animals including a dog.
Paul in England
“I see dead people”
Or maybe it’s just very cold in the first video. Hmmm.
Great videos. The first one looks like it’s training video. The ‘bad guy’ appears to have the padding on, but still very cool! Love the last one. LOL
Edna- I watch a show on Animal Planet called K9 Cops. They reward the dog with praise and they’re favorite toy/game. Some of the dogs get a Kong or a ball and some get a short game of tug. I haven’t seen any of them rewarded with treats.
Very cool stuff. Thanks for posting the clips. Our dogs have always been the, “lick ’em and show them where the good silver is” variety. Although the Doberman-Lab mix was definitely scary looking enough.
Great intro, thanks Lee.
I’m really looking forward to more, especially about training and life at home. I can’t picture the dogs I knew kicking back with a brew to watch the game – well maybe the game 🙂
I’m writing a children’s book and need to know does the dog handler give a patrol dog a treat as a reward along with praising the dog? Thanks Edna
Yes, he was shooting at the police.
Alrighty, fear of large dogs has now been intensified !
In the first video, the third dog going after guy in white car, was he shooting at the police ?
Dogs are so smart. I worked with the blind for ten years. Met my share of guide dogs.