[QUOTE=rugbygirl;8906250]
Do you have a resource that can explain to me what “bite work” is? Because everything I’ve ever seen has a human or human shaped dummy wearing protection, and a dog that runs up, opens their mouths and clamps down on the human. This is done by some sort of command, sometimes audible, sometimes not. The dog is not leashed for this, but when I’ve seen it, it’s been going on in an enclosure of some kind.
I’m really not sure how you can spin that into anything else. It shows a real disconnect that you don’t understand why that would make someone fearful. Most of us companion dog owners train our dogs that biting any human is NOT OK. We start when they are puppies.
And sure, the dogs biting the meter reader might not be from your IPO club, but in one memorable incident, it was a retired K9. So, there’s that. Ever try and get animal control involved with an active police officer? Yeah, that doesn’t go well. We shared yard codes with the meter readers. There was a “dog” code.[/QUOTE]
There is a fundamental difference between an IPO dog who does this for sport and a working K9.
There are two main drives that are used to train “biting dogs”, prey and defense. In SchH/IPO, which is a sport and performance test for some sheperd dog breeding programs, almost 100% of the training is done in prey drive. In IPO every dog is required to start out with a solid obedience foundation, that’s what the first test, the BH is all about. It has no bitework.
In a stable dog, especially one as willing to please their handler as sheperd types, prey drive is controllable. The drive and the the willingness for obedience match each other. You can “ramp the dog up” and take him back down.
The training director of a good club can and will exclude dogs from bite work at any time when s/he feels they are not ready, have an unsuitable temperament, or the owners are just interested in the biting without the other components. The focus lies on maintaining control and precision in high drive scenarios.
Working K9s do not work in prey drive only, but also in defense drive. Defense makes a more serious dog - think about it, defense means that the dog feels threatened (for himself or his handler), that’s not just fun anymore for the dog. The dog needs to chose “fight” over “flight” reliably, the training teaches him how to fight efficiently.
A dog that is worked purely in prey is self-rewarding, but it also means that most dogs will quit when you put enough pressure on them, i.e. when the unpleasant/stress becomes higher than the reward. In a real-life scenario, however, you CANNOT have a dog that folds under pressure, it would be really dangerous for the handler and the dog. That’s why the defense drive is needed in working K9s. In simple words - dog that chases down a person with a sleeve running away: mostly prey; dog that bites a criminal who tries to kick him head-on: defense drive.
So while it looks similar, the dogs are biting out of very different motivations in a sport/IPO and real life / working K9 setting.
I don’t actually think it’s a very smart thing for civilians/sports clubs to work with a lot of defense drive, or to adopt out retired police dogs to anything but very experienced homes that have a good understanding of these dogs and know how to recognize drives.
Unfortunately Cascade is right that police dogs are not always the most stable and best trained. That article about the cop dog is Calgary gives a few indicators for that. For one, it sounds like these dogs are sourced from a breeder in Europe, then get trained in the US, then get sold through a broker. That means that there are already three parties involved with an economic interest: the breeder, the trainer and the broker. As Cascade mentioned, pair that with the limited budget of most municipalities and chances are the police will not buy the best of the best. On top of that, it sounds like the handler is not involved with either the socialization or the basic training of the dog, which imo would be really important to understand how the dog works.
Another sentence that stood out was the experienced dog handler saying he wasn’t sure whether “they do call-offs anymore”. That means once the dog is deployed, there is no way to get him back.
In the end, it all depends on what you want. It’s not that hard to get a dog with a suitable temperament to bite HARD in defense. If you want a dog that lives in a kennel, is taken out muzzled and on a short tether, and the moment the muzzle comes off the dog goes after anything that moves, that is achievable. Seems to be the goal in some militaries.
But in a police dog that works more complex scenarios - e.g. crowd control - you need more balanced drives.
Then there are the dogs that make their own decisions on what is a threat and what isn’t, livestock guardian breeds come to mind. They are not particularly suited to working very closely with their handler and doing disciplined and precise obedience, cause they live with the herd and make their own decisions. If I had to name a group of dog breeds that makes me feel uneasy, it would be LSGs. I see the utility of these dogs, but I dread it every time I have a run in with them. Doesn’t mean I think they should be banned, they are useful to many farmers here, but they most certainly have the potential to kill any dog that comes too close to their herd (and will).
