Upload videos of your training
Mobile-friendly learning site
Class live chats
Class discussion boards
Earn Certificates of Completion
For 40+ years we've helped over 300,000 dog trainers just like you!
Learn more about Leerburg$6.99 Flat Rate Shipping
Learn moreUpload videos of your training
Mobile-friendly learning site
Class live chats
Class discussion boards
Earn Certificates of Completion
Get access to great lessons on how to manage a multi-dog home, participate in discussions, and earn a certificate of completion RISK FREE.
Leerburg video on demand and online courses both have instant access that never expire. Video on demand has a "notes" feature that allows viewers to pause the video at any point and create a personal note. Whenever they come back to the video they can see their list of notes, and then can click on any note and the video will start from the point that note was created. Viewers can create an unlimited number of notes.
One of the most dangerous tasks that any K9 handler faces is a felony building search. Training a police service dog to search buildings is also one of the most difficult jobs that every K9 handler faces.
This police k9 training DVD was done with the help of Kevin Sheldahl. Kevin is an International Police Dog Judge for WPO, DPO and PSP. He is also a full time K9 handler and head of K9 training for a large Sheriff’s Department in the South West.
The goal of our video is to show new police K9 trainers how to approach the task of training the building search. We will show handlers how to teach their dogs that the primary tool a dog must learn to use during a building search is his nose.
When dogs develop bad habits and miss suspects they expose their handlers to unnecessary dangers. Our video hopes to show handlers how to improve their training and reduce their personal risk during a building search. This tape is not intended to teach handlers the personal tactical skills that they must learn to do a safe building search. I have two training videos that teach handlers how to safely search a building.
New trainers often underestimate the complexities involved in training their dog to do building searches. They tend to skip training steps because they assume that their dogs already have the necessary skills to do the work. Too often they are wrong.
Here is a list of skills a dog must learn to do a successful building search:
To most service dog trainers these seem like pretty basic exercises. But let me play the devils advocate and talk about some of the issues new dogs have when facing building search training for the first time.
If dogs are anything, they are creatures of habit. By the time they reach the point in their training where they are ready to start learning to do a building search, they have developed certain routines or habits which will need to be expanded and/or changed to allow them to become comfortable working in a building at night.
Topics Covered
Many dogs that are sold as police dogs have come from Europe where they have lived their entire life as a kennel dog. They have seldom gone into buildings. Some of these dogs will become distracted when first taken into an unfamiliar building. This shouldn’t happen but it often does.
Most new service dogs have never done bite work in a building. The only bite work they have ever been exposed to has been on a training field. Whether it’s a Schutzhund field or a KNPV field, it’s always been outside. Many dogs need to learn that it’s OK to bite in a building.
Most dogs have only done bite work during daylight hours. Now they must learn to work in the dark.
Up to this point in training, the dogs have always been able to see the helper that they have indicated on. Visual contact has become an important issue to the dog. Now they must learn to indicate on a suspect they cannot see. They must learn to indicate on the odor of a suspect. This is an important concept that is often missed. While it may seem pretty obvious when I talk about it right now, new handlers often underestimate how difficult it is to retrain a dog to indicate on odor and not vision.
During early bite development, when dogs were called back to their handlers they learned that the apprehension work was probably ending or at least delayed after being called back, so they went down in drive. This must change in building search training. The dog must remain in drive after being called back from searching one part of a building and he must remain in drive after he has found a suspect and that suspect has been taken into custody and out of the building.
Up to this point in training the dog has been under direct supervision of his handler. There will be times during a building search when a dog will have to work on his own, independent of the handler. This is something that needs to be taken into account when designing a training program. We must set up scenarios where the dog is forced to make decisions.
The steps to teach dogs how to do a building search are:
Outline
Prerequisites
Every aspect of dog training is built on a foundation of previously learned skills. Teaching the building search is no different, it can only begin after the dog has learned a foundation of other skills. If this foundation is not in place before the training starts, the handler is setting himself up for problems.
There is an old saying that it takes 30 repetitions to teach a dog a new skill and 60 repetitions to fix a problem in a poorly trained skill. So the moral of the story is to take your time, build on a strong foundation and do the training steps.
The foundational skills that a dog must know before he starts building search training are:
These are the previously learned skills that you must bring to the table if you expect your dog to start to learn how to search buildings. If your dog is not proficient in all of these skills then you are premature in expecting him to learn to do a building search.
If you think you can start this training when your dog is not proficient in one or more of these skills, you will develop problems that will only take more time to correct down the road.
It’s not the goal of this tape to teach you how to build these foundational training steps. There is too much to building search training to go into detail on bite development. These skills are covered in my other training videos.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following Police K9 Handlers for their assistance in producing this dvd: