ButchCappel
3rd October 2004, 16:50
The goal of a PP/Patrol dog certification system is to present an applicable system for teams to assess their proficiency. This system must, above all else, be practical and relevant to everyday situations in order to judge the K9 teams.
Your Finals are designed to show the variety that may be encountered in everyday life, while presenting very real, and practical situations for your partners’ training program to
judged on. One ever possible distraction….. Food!
In the years in my security dog company, training dogs to refuse “incidental” food was one of the biggest concerns. One of my most effective patrol dogs a Rott, while leaving a construction site at shifts end, snatched something from the ground before being crated for transport back to the kennel. D.O.A. at the kennel I discovered a small bone from a round steak lodged in his windpipe. “Incidental” food became one of my greatest fears.
It is the most potentially harmful distraction a PP/Patrol dog may face. The chance of running across a morsel of food exists everywhere (except for a very few of the third world countries I worked in, where the humans world beat a GSD off, for a scrap on the ground)
To reflect real life at your finals, food may be encountered anywhere (remember last years civil agitation?). But as in real life food distractions will be “incidental” vs. “presented”, seldom have I heard of a crook offering some ones dog a chicken fried steak before pulling a gun and robbing the owner. If you saw last years “Civil Agitation” the decoy never “presented” food to the dog, it was there, but as in real life never “presented” or used unfairly by the decoy to entice the dog.
So remember your Finals and your certification, should you earn one, will reflect real life application for you and your dog. In real life you could be walking through a parched desert with no food or water, or walking through a park where Bill Gates has just held a thank you picnic for a hundred executives.
Listen Well, Bite Hard
Your Finals are designed to show the variety that may be encountered in everyday life, while presenting very real, and practical situations for your partners’ training program to
judged on. One ever possible distraction….. Food!
In the years in my security dog company, training dogs to refuse “incidental” food was one of the biggest concerns. One of my most effective patrol dogs a Rott, while leaving a construction site at shifts end, snatched something from the ground before being crated for transport back to the kennel. D.O.A. at the kennel I discovered a small bone from a round steak lodged in his windpipe. “Incidental” food became one of my greatest fears.
It is the most potentially harmful distraction a PP/Patrol dog may face. The chance of running across a morsel of food exists everywhere (except for a very few of the third world countries I worked in, where the humans world beat a GSD off, for a scrap on the ground)
To reflect real life at your finals, food may be encountered anywhere (remember last years civil agitation?). But as in real life food distractions will be “incidental” vs. “presented”, seldom have I heard of a crook offering some ones dog a chicken fried steak before pulling a gun and robbing the owner. If you saw last years “Civil Agitation” the decoy never “presented” food to the dog, it was there, but as in real life never “presented” or used unfairly by the decoy to entice the dog.
So remember your Finals and your certification, should you earn one, will reflect real life application for you and your dog. In real life you could be walking through a parched desert with no food or water, or walking through a park where Bill Gates has just held a thank you picnic for a hundred executives.
Listen Well, Bite Hard