EDD... - Page 1

you've mentioned that youre involved w/ military dogs. I have no ideas what they do. can you tell me a little about thier jobs and what exactly do you look for in dogs? Do they purchase young dogs, if so from where? are they looking for natural aggresion, clear heads or is it everything goes. just wondering

Hope they don't have to learn to use a gun, because my dog is terrible at it!

Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX handles procurement. There is a training syllabus the dog should have been trained under to the military's specifications. The dog should have been train specifically under a drug detection or bomb detection syllabus(they do not take dogs trained under both disciplines) and both detections(drug and bomb) must have bite work done on them. After those requirements are met, the dogs are taken to Lackland AFB for evaluation, where they make the grade to become military working dogs or they wash out(Little Rock Police Department has a bomb detector that they got from Lackland AFB, that washed out of the program). To become a vendor there is a process and a waiting list to become elegible. Last I heard(9 months ago) they had the requrired number of vendors and were not accepting any new ones.

im not interested in selling im justnot familar w/ military dogs. although i did see a program on the discover channel about them and i have to say most were not that impressive. There was one dog that would barely bite the decoy when it showed up, and after several weeks of training it still didnt bite. Im not sure wht base they were at but have to pose the question" if a Gary Hanrahann or Roland Seibal can look at a dog and after 5 min say, its shit get rid of it" Why didnt this particluar military program. from what little i saw of this particular dog it just didnt have it. Ive been of the opinion that 95% of the time the best will stay in the private sector, whether we are talking about employee's, man power, or brain power. the private sector pays better. Do you know what kinda money they are paying for dogs? I ive spoken to several people who import dogs and they've said that the majority of time if they get a dog that is realy great they can sell it for more money to an individaul for sport, PP, or and expensive house dog.

SGBH - can you be more informative as to how they evaluated the dogs ?? i am curiuos -- and wscott00 i also saw that program --i agree with your assesment -- also IMO there were new handlers there that made many mistkes with their green dogs too - not sure if that was fair to the dog --

many k9 handlers prefer younger dogs, starting with 10 months, which is too young still for most handlers that are into serious sport. At that age prices are also not that much different for sport dogs compared to K9 prospects. A top dog will always demand top price though. But that is not the average situation. Top dogs are rare in every discipline. People tend to forget that there is only one or a few spots up there. Many good dogs will go on to do K9 work because sports enthusiasts will not take them if they have faults that will exclude them from a future breeding career (ears, teeth, testicles, size, colour, etc). None of the these faults have any affect on working ability. The objective is the work performed, not breed worthiness. So its not really true that the K9 is what the sport folks have left over. The love for the sport does not seem to go that far with most people into the sport... they want at least that option of seeing a possible return of their efforts by studding out the dog later or instead of spaying a bitch as would happen for K9, have some pups later. So breed worthiness is important in the sport, the moment a good dog looses that he often becomes available to the K9 sector. A lot of K9s don't have any papers or are mixes that have been bred specifically in hope for them to mature into a K9 prospect. Breeding has never really been a consideration when choosing a K9 prospect. Every K9 outfit has their own requirements. Some like strong aggression, while others want the dogs more settled to also do PR work and have to be able to function in public as well as going after a target. Some are worried about liability and use of excessive force during an arrest etc. A few years ago some military buyers refused a dog that despite sedation during additional x-rays they wanted would still try to bite the vet tech. Some outfits would have said we need one just like that. You never know. Some do not need to do bite work at all. EDD will probably be able to confirm that most explosives dogs are single purpose. At least in the private sector. Most government agencies also have trial periods. Lackland has a pretty high return rate. As it was said above, many of these "washouts" end up working somewhere else and it does not mean they are doing a bad job. Once the dogs get older and have more training and are available to different markets like sport and home protection and showing and breeding, then the governments/K9 outfits have lost their buying power. Not an issue really, since they prefer to buy the younger dogs anyways.

D.H., i see your point but these days puppies and young prospects 10-13 months are being sold for as much as $3000. It seems to me that if i had 10 month old dog that is deiserd by sport folks or the private sector, then that is where it would go. based on you comment above, do you feel that schutzhund, k9 and military dogs are all the same dog? its just a matter of who buys them and trains them? Im of the opinion that if you take the excellent green dog that is sold to a sport person (due to them having more money) you will be able to do what you will w/ that dog. I think that dog will excell in police, schtuzhund etc... Lastly i think there are more dogs capable of competing at a high level in schutzhund than trainers. Id be willing to say at least 50 dogs a year are imported or born that can win. But the same .5% of trainers keep winning. When its all said and done it comes down to the training just my 2 cents

Hi DH- You are definetly correct that most bomb dogs are single purpose in private sector and alot in the goverment sector. Homeland security grants to lawenforcement only allow the dog to be single purpose explosives. In Iraq the military dogs I was around where dual purpose patrol/Bomb.The company I worked for's contarct with the army only specified 10% of the dogs had to be dual purpose the rest single purpose. So we only had to have 13 dogs that where dual purpose. Lackland does have a high washout rate, US Customs also has a high washout rate as well but alot of those dogs do just fine else where with a different training approach. wscott00- Your quite right that there are alot of capable dogs out there that we will never hear about because they either ended up in a pet home or never had the opurtunity to get the proper traiing to get to the top. I think the numbers are probably alot higher.