Sport to LE? Who's done this? - Page 11

Koots, Trusting your dog’s nose is one of, if not the number one rule of working your dog in scent work.  Handler’s should be taught this very early in their endeavor of working the police dog.  Some just had to learn the hard way.  That would be me, especially early in my career.  I had pulled my dog off the track or out of the scent picture on more than one occasion.  Four times stick out more readily.  Twice the dog was within 10 yards of the suspects (one time there were two perps still together).  Both times involved another police officer being close to where they were hiding, and I felt the officer was who the dog was interested in.  Both times I came back and was able to find the suspects.  Another time. I am on a good track when the aviation unit tells me they have a target and to just keep coming, I’m heading in the right direction.  Then as we keep tracking my dog starts veering away from their target, and they let me know Im starting to go the wrong way.  Its ok, the suspect may have taken the route that we are tracking to get to where he is. 

Perps often get lost, especially in the woods (I’ve been lost a few times myself) and wander aimlessly trying to find their way about.  That’s why every good k-9 trainer also has tracks laid by someone whose instructions are go get lost.  Back to the aviation target.  So the more Cisco tracks, the farther we move away and the more the aviation unit announces over the radio that Im heading in the wrong direction.  Stop dog (against his own advice, he kept wanting to pull in the opposite direction) and head to the target.  So they direct me to the target, which is up in a tree.  I am just below the tree and the dog shows nothing.  Aviation tells me, just look up, he’ hugging the tree.  I cant see crap in the tree but limbs, and they aint human.  Finally I make out some big fury thing bear hugging the tree about 40 feet up; It’s a raccoon or something. WTH?  So I make sure every officer on that channel knows that there’s an animal in the tree.  That backfires.  Instead of everyone joking around about the helicopter misidentifying an animal for a person, the jokes are I’m now working a Coon Dog!lol 

Two things to add; the pilots asked me to come to hanger so they could play the tape and I could see what they were seeing.  Interesting to hear the cockpit conversation, because they become a little unsure of themselves as I start to track away from their target.  You can see them trying to position to see the heat signature as they keep getting a glimpse of something that shows white on thermal imagining.  Sure enough, when they get into this certain position, it looks like a person up in a tree.  The other thing is, I would try to get back to the area where I lost the track.  In my hurry I was pushing the dog to move quickly and as we were climbing over a bunch old logs, he falls backwards, wedging his leg in a crevice and dangles, struggling to upright himself while I try to lift him up enough to pull his leg loose.  He missed months of work and was never the bullet he once was. 

I recall a time where we were looking for a guy who took off from a traffic stop.  We track about ten minutes in this subdivision with dogs running up barking, people walking around, and Im not so sure the dogs bumping off somebody else’s scent.  I stop and we go back to the cars.  Next shift, officers pick the guy up at his house.  I asked the arresting officer, who was also the back up officer, did the guy say where he went, only to find out he was just inside a woodline about 50 yards from where we stopped.  He saw us stop and go away.  The dog was headed right for him.  He waited 30 minutes and then walked to a friend’s house before calling mom to come get him.  Not a good day.

I do have some good calls where trusting my dog, despite of everyone thinking Im crazy, provided great rewards.  Including tracking down a bank robber, where some other guy was in the wrong place, wrong time, wearing the wrong clothes, giving the wrong information, and being erroneously identified by the teller and customer, then being arrested for committing the bank robbery.  I was called to locate the money and the gun the suspect did not have one when he was seen coming out the woods. That would be a good story to tell.  Its one of those calls where no one gets bit, but it’s what working a police dog and trusting his nose is all about. 

Next time I post I will get back on topic about experience with sport dog to LE.  I have a few stories where the sport dog bites the decoy for real, instead of the suit or the sleeve they were wearing.  Just want to make sure that I am not speaking for all dogs from sport to LE.  I have tested and selected these dogs for the work I need, and they are not so easy to find.  But when you find one, biting for control work can be a big game for them with no repercussions from the equipment.  But they are no toy, you slip up, let your guard down playing the game, and the decoy can pay dearly.

Apple I   agree with you except I would like to add something. You have also said this which I also agree with but only with an addendum: "The value of prey drive is using it to teach a dog the fundamentals when he is in a state of mind to learn rather than being stressed. Once he has learned the fundamentals, pressure can be added and the dog is taught how to turn the pressure off and then it progressively increases." 

While this is true this is also one of the reasons why dogs trained through pray fundamentals fail ( if they fail)  on the 1st real assignment. While they are worked to deal with pressure in prey they are not trained to deal with pressure in defense. To teach the dogs fundamental in prey drive only is OK as long as it is not related to linear training of protection and developed into protection. If the dog is linearly developed from toy to sleeve to suit and then through channeling to man, then the dog invariably tends to develop a serious problem of undesirable equipment orientation as a default which the dog will carry with him for rest of it's life. Before you say that dogs can be trained that way and work, I'll ask you to keep in mind that such dog then when 1st real assignment on the street if he works, works despite of such training because of his genetics and not because of such training. 

 

I would say the majority of police dogs are trained on a tug/wedge and then possibly to a suit, bypassing a sleeve, without developing any deficits in man orientation. If they do have trouble with man orientation, it can be due genetics and/or training. The only way I know to teach a dog to be more man oriented while actually biting is to bite equipment. They can't be trained by biting an unprotected person. Agitation without equipment can help with man orientation, but to a lesser degree because the association is incomplete because there is no actual biting and the dog is simply displaying aggression rather than being violent toward a person by biting them. So I believe genetics/traits override training. All you have to do is look at the GSD show lines compared to the working lines. They essentially are a separate breed.

It does not matter if they bypass the sleeve and go directly to suit. The suit is just an equipment like a sleeve. This point is no-issue. The bitework on suit does not make dog civil!!! Suit needs to be used only as a proofing tool and not a teaching tool.

You say - "The only way I know to teach a dog to be more man oriented while actually biting is to bite equipment :...and that is your problem,...with all due respect.
You are thinking that because you are stuck in your thinking mode. Do you really think that I am so stupid that I do not have a method of how to do this and am just puking on a keyboard? What is depressing is that people are making excuses for their method and do not ask how I would do it. And when I repeatedly explain how it is done they gloss over it as if I would say nothing.
I assure you that there are other EFFECTIVE methods in which you do not need to use equipment and you do not need to get decoy bloody, yet they teach the dog to be civil and do so without the undesirable baggage.

I am simply saying that if a dog has "baggage" because he was introduced to equipment first rather that being agitated by a decoy without equipment first, the temperament is less than ideal for me. There are many dogs trained the way you refer to as "sportism" that will fight a man for real and that don't have any baggage. If they do, temperament is lacking.

Gustav, I am sorry to violate your sensitivities. But I do not feel that this is a matter of dialectic materialism where 2 disagreeing parties meet in the middle or agree to disagree. To me, this is more than that. To me, it is maddening to see how easy this could be fixed yet only very few get up from a chair and does it. That to me it is unconscionable that people in your position who can actually do something about are just making same old vworn out excuses for such failures invoking the cost of the training and not basing it EXCLUSIVELY on human lives cost. Also, I would like to say that to train dogs correctly is not more expensive then the way dogs are trained in sports today most of the time. I know that I am making no friends by saying this but to me this is really important. I will never get over viewing the failure of the dog in Albuquerque ( posted here on an earlier post) which IMO heavily contributed the death of John Boyd.  I would actually say that such training, in the long run, would be cheaper. Here is for good measure just another example of Sportism trained dog: Fortunately this is not as the others do not have serious consequences.All these dogs are certified police dogs!!!!!!!! Here the dog is totally confused :
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9VdIdmuCCU




here is another sportism confused dog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvqd3yVTkDE



Here is another one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2_voB8pXFo




Look I can spend all day looking for these videos but I have other things to do and I am hoping you got the picturs. And these are the failures on YouTube I would venture to say that for each of these failures there are hundreds of them which are not on the videos. You talk about "serious briefings to protect POTUS" . Well, I am not interested in briefings. I am interested in tools ( K9s) and training which the LE officers are subjecting their dogs to.  LE officers are generally not trainers. They are handlers. This is not their fault. The fault is squarely on the heads of the trainers. Their training approach is vastly inferior to other options. JMO

Apple I totally disagree with your genetic only theory. No temperament is not necessarily lacking in dogs who failed sportism system of training.
The genetics to me are an obvious necessity.No need to go any further on the necessity of good genetic with me. But I am not talking about genetics. I am talking about training methods. I am saying over and over and over again that dogs who do NOT fail during 1st real encounter after the sportism training did so due to their genetics DESPITE their training.
On the other hand, many dogs who failed on their first real bite become eventually excellent LE dogs. So their genetics are just fine. It is inadequate training system. Shit in Shit out. Why for Pete's sake would you do not want to train the dog in a way that he would have a minuscule probability of failure in the first real street encounter and would not have to self-train himself to do things which he has never trained before?
I have had a dog who was shipped directly from Europe without any retraining to be civil.The local LE trainers trained the dog in sportism in hope that he will be civil. The dog failed to bite on his first street bite. Then the dog after my additional NON-sportism training, had reportedly over 200 apprehensions. This was the most successful LE dog I have ever sold and helped to train. The best LE dog you can imagine with incredible tracking skills and apprehension record. Are you telling me that this dog had inferior genetics for police work!? I think you are mistaken.

Valk, thanks for your feedback and sharing your knowledge.

it's just IMO. way too many dogs of that temperament are produced today.
Siegie, last my dog, even being less hyper, did still enough hyper to dissatisfy my requirements.
but as i said it's just private thoughts based on personal preferences. people are different and so their perceptions and opinions.
as for decoy, it's just sad to see that LE do not preparing their dogs for all possible variations in confrontation, putting them in sort of kamikaze role. some good dogs was die before their time, because of this.
past year here in news was about stabbed police dog. person who did it wasn't hard criminal but just average teen. that would be preventable, if dog had been taught not to hang on the perpetrator but control movements and impose own rules in the fight.

Civil simply means a dog will bite a person not wearing equipment.

any dog of any breed will bite person in certain circumstances. following your logic - all dogs are civil, right? then what for the term "civil dog" was introduced and so many discussion in regard of this topic?

So civil and aggressive do not necessarily have to go hand in hand.

that's why earlier i said - i don't see civility as a standalone trait. it must be backed by another traits like willingness to be involved and stubbornness to stay in fight, threshold,  level and form of reaction and response, boldness, pain tolerance, time to switch from stressed condition to calm. the prey drive can't compensate absence of these characteristics but dog with these traits bundled up will be perfectly successful, even if absolutely lacking the prey.

The value of prey drive is using it to teach a dog the fundamentals when he is in a state of mind to learn rather than being stressed.

i'm not sure what exactly you're talking about. is that about overall training process or about protection only?

way back in the 70's, I encountered my first LE GSD. I was fascinated and that started an obsession that still burns today.

The dog would probably be considered very dangerous today, and certainly I did not touch him.

In conversation with the County Officer, I asked him where dogs like this come from. He said they got them from Germany and they were Sch. trained. It was many years later before I knew what that meant.

maybe there are some here who knew what a SCH. title meant back then and how in the world did any dog succeed in LE work without the knowledge we are gaining here today.

as always,
curious

Rik

Prager: " I have had a dog who was shipped directly from Europe without any retraining to be civil.The local LE trainers trained the dog in sportism in hope that he will be civil. The dog failed to bite on his first street bite. Then the dog after my additional NON-sportism training, had reportedly over 200 apprehensions. This was the most successful LE dog I have ever sold and helped to train. The best LE dog you can imagine with incredible tracking skills and apprehension record. Are you telling me that this dog had inferior genetics for police work!? I think you are mistaken."

Now you are contradicting yourself...

"Sportism trained" dog without further training sold by you (!) to a department, in this department the dog not trained for real work, but sent on duty...
A long line of wrong decisions...

Afterwards the dog trained for civil work, and voila', the same dog is able to work...

Why?
Good genetics...

Why didn't the dog fail under pressure?
Good genetics...

Did your so called "sportism foundation" influence the career of said dog later on?
No.

But why?
It doesn't matter in case the genetics are okay.

What do we learn out of your example?
It's about genetics, and it''s about training according to your goals.

Has the foundational prey training been detrimental?
Not at all due to your words.