i like the concept! but posts are not weekly or even monthly; there are gaps, some enormous.

this looks like the first month - July 2009 -
2009 July « Positive Police Dogs

i tried to find the author's page or bio, but no such luck - Can anyone else find it?

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terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
*wolves R wolves, dogs R dogs, + primates R us.*
tmp, sept-2007

Why??? ?

Police Dogs UK (With Footage)

There has been only one series of programs in recent years UK on police dogs, it was called 'Send in the dogs'. It was a series of (I think) 4 or 5 programs over a period of 4 weeks, maybe 5. It has been broadcast on 2 years that I know of, Aug 2008 & Feb 2010, someone make that more accurate if its not accurate.

I don't watch these dog programs normally but in late Aug (possibly first week of Sept) 08 I saw one of them. It was hard to believe the training levels were so ineffective, low standard & outright all round dangerous.

In that program a Yorks PD unit was one feature, the film crew were out on night patrol with a dog unit, a suspect was at large & one PD handler, name of PC Loreless, sent his dog off lead on waste ground on a real life search & detain command.

The dog ran off and then refused several recalls, PC Loreless was speaking to the film crew about his dogs refusal to recall, he said it sometimes happens, he's probably gone after an animal and 'they' cannot be recalled if that happens, the cop was quite matter of fact about it as if it was perfectly normal thing for a PD to sometimes do. So, you have a working detention GSD unable to carry out it's working role, out of control & making the cop unable to go to another emergency if required because he had to wait for his dog to come back of its own accord.

The only other partial 'Send in the dogs' program I saw was Feb 2010, I think somewhere around 27th Feb 2010.

In that one there was female handler with a black search spaniel, there was some outdoor footage taken near parked cars. It was as unbelievable as the PC Loreless incident, as soon as the dog found its search object the ball reinforcer was thrown to the dog, it ran under a parked car and again refused recall or to come away from under the car when the handler was trying to recall it from only a metre or so away, >again< she started telling the film crew that as soon as he got his reinforcer ball (reward) after the find he would get away from her & stay out of reach until he chose otherwise.

I think it was in 2009 that one of the news programs gave some part of the figs for the number of dogs that had successfully passed the PD training test after 2 years training. Out of 200 stated only 1 dog had passed as fit for deployment, it did not state what actually happens to failed dogs but I doubt they would sell any protection trained dogs so that’s probably an unknown number of those dogs PTS.

The deployment policy of any PD units, if not all, is that their Malinois are sent to a detention situation muzzled, to 'butt' the suspect as they say. Effectively you have 38kg dead weight, increased by the running and launch speed, of a muzzled dog hitting a dense object & all that pressure and force is taken in the vertebrate. The reason they have to be muzzled is because is because the police training methods cannot train a reliable release.

Footage:

CCTV - UK trained PD deployed to apprehend suspect - live footage
YouTube - &#x202a;Worst police dog in the world&#x202c;&rlm;

Two videos of civilian training dog, with an e-collar as one of the training aids, covering the same excercises as the 2 TV programms described, including night recall from suspect chase & a ball reinforcer (reward) drop & leave exercise.

Leave Ball reinforcement exercise
YouTube - &#x202a;"Leave" Training Reinforcement Exercise & Use In A Real Life Emergency, E-Collar Trained Dog.&#x202c;&rlm;

YouTube - &#x202a;E-Collar Trained Dog. Multiple Game Chase Recalls, Emergency Recall, Aggressive Incident Recall etc&#x202c;&rlm;

.

The programme Wonder Dogs covered NYPD's training methods in 2nd or 3rd episode of series shown on Sky Satellite TV NYPD Hounds Video, Wonder Dogs - National Geographic Channel - UK

Dogs were shown being rewarded (eg) tennis balls), being set up to succeed, able to fulfill multiple roles ie Patrol & SAR & Household dog, as well as ignoring aversive stimuli like live bullet shots.

The NYPD handlers appeared far ahead of the Border Patrol training shown in following episode of same series.

The programmes consistently showed rewards based training and did not feature, techniques that I strongly object to (apart from rough handling tendencies of Border Patrol). There were many quotable statements in the series including "99.99% of time when a dog doesn't do it, it's down to handler error" (might have been 5 9's but who cares?)
Others were "in the dog's mind he must always have succeeded, he must not have his confidence knocked".

The series was genuinely inspiring and featured positive methods being employed in working dog situations. One could nit pick, about researchers "corrupting" clicker training by using the mark as a "That'll do!" on job completion, rather than preserve it for teaching new behaviour.

Whatever skeletons there are in Police Dog Training cupboards, the public face shown in opening their Dog Training programmes was a positive one. Where patrol dogs for example were unsocialised, the reasoning was clearly explained; they wanted the dogs to intimidate members of the public in order to help maintain "order". Other dogs like sniffer dogs OTOH were socialised Labs, and handled differently for specialised purpose because they had to interact with the public.

That is an elegant rationale that uncannily chimes with my points made in another recent police dog thread, discussing a US Police Dog biting a TV reporter in face - My Remarks on Police Dog Bite Attack on Reporter in thread "EXCITING - training-manual for military, police, paramilitary & security k9s!".

I like the fact that this Police Dog blog-er believes in facing up to issues properly and accountability.

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For eager & reliable recall, be fun for the dog to come back to! Then often send them off right away to do what they wanted!
DT&B - Glossary of acronyms & jargon terms.
Encouraging good behaviours, whilst consistently avoiding practise of bad alternatives leads to extinction of the bad. So if dog sits 6/10 times it doesn't sit 4/10 times, encouraging with the right rewards (positively-reinforcing) enough for 9/10 times means it now fails to sit only 1/10 times, sit 10/10 means...

Hi all, I am the author of the Positive Police Dogs site. Thank you for your positive comments. Firstly, I know it is a wordpress site but it was never intended to be a regular blog just a collection of articles and videos.
I am restricted by lack of technical know how!

I have just started to upload actual training articles rather than theory articles so any feedback would be welcomed. The first one is on the basics of recall training.

My motivation for starting the site in the first place is that the Home office style of training, although changing, is somewhat behind the times and I wanted a resource to help those who wish to speed the process of change.

I am hoping to become a bit more proactive now my little ones are sleeping through the night.

I got my GSD from the police. I originally took her on as a foster as she was on their breeding programme. She had failed the training to work when she was younger, so was to be used for breeding, as was her sisters. I think he brothers passed their tests to work. After having her for nearly a year they decided to stop the breeding programme. The dogs were then sold onto the fosterers (if they want them) if not i think they would have been sold on, but i believe the majority of the fosterers kept their dogs. When i got her she had no recall what so ever this puzzled me as surely having a top recall was a must for training dogs. and i have sent the last few years working on it with a trainer. I would say its now at 95% there but once shes seen something shes gone her chase drive kicks in and theres no stopping her so i rarely have her off lead(apart from the garden etc).

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The comments were well earnt.

We've been trying to put together some resources to on the forum, like Glossary stuff or threads on topics like Activities, as well as things like calming signals resources.

__________________
For eager & reliable recall, be fun for the dog to come back to! Then often send them off right away to do what they wanted!
DT&B - Glossary of acronyms & jargon terms.
Encouraging good behaviours, whilst consistently avoiding practise of bad alternatives leads to extinction of the bad. So if dog sits 6/10 times it doesn't sit 4/10 times, encouraging with the right rewards (positively-reinforcing) enough for 9/10 times means it now fails to sit only 1/10 times, sit 10/10 means...

You probably have seen this before but this is article tend to show for such cases - How do I stop my dog chasing? – David Ryan CCAB

Fulfilling chase instincts with alternatives and using the game as reward for recall is working well for me, though obviously we've reared him from puppyhood. For me the key is being able to gain the dogs attention and him learning a "Stop!" during play, helps break a predatory chase sequence, in order then to issue the recall command.

__________________
For eager & reliable recall, be fun for the dog to come back to! Then often send them off right away to do what they wanted!
DT&B - Glossary of acronyms & jargon terms.
Encouraging good behaviours, whilst consistently avoiding practise of bad alternatives leads to extinction of the bad. So if dog sits 6/10 times it doesn't sit 4/10 times, encouraging with the right rewards (positively-reinforcing) enough for 9/10 times means it now fails to sit only 1/10 times, sit 10/10 means...

hey, Guy!

here's one for ya -
ScienceShot: Police Dogs Can Distinguish Identical Twins - ScienceNOW

they tested 10 dogs & 10 handlers [police teams].
12 trials per dog, 10 dogs, 7 samples per lineup, [1 the twin's] - ZERO errors.

That's 120 trials - pretty doggone good, & the twins eat the same diet, live in the same home, etc.
obviously the dogs find a difference - what is it? Enzyme-levels? has to be something epigenetic...

blessedly, it is really hard to train scent-work with punishers.

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terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
*wolves R wolves, dogs R dogs, + primates R us.*
tmp, sept-2007