A Police K-9 Bit Its Handler 6 Times. What to do?

By Ed Frawley

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Cindy and I get questions on dog training every day. We answer them all. I have a soft spot in my heart for police K-9 handler. Probably because I was one for 10 years.

This question came from a new dog handler who had been bit by his new police dog 6 times. I'll list the question then offer comments on a possible solution.

I have a 3-year-old German, Dutch Shepherd mixed with Malinois (Jake).

I was wanting to know if the Pack Structure would work.

I've been having issues with his obedience and also his out commands.

He has bitten me at least six times, 3 when I've used an e-collar and other times while doing training scenarios.

Do you have any suggestions that could help with my issues?

We have done several vehicle searches, 2 arrest warrants, 1 apprehension, a few tracks, 1 article search.

Our trainer wants to “break the dog down” by using punishment to correct behavior.

This trainer has been dealing in dogs for over 25 years but has old school mentality.

I received the dog after another handler had him for about 2 months.

During that time, we focused on training the fundamentals of tracking, apprehension, narcotic searches. We have not done a lot of obedience training.

I have been feeding the dog by hand to see if that will help the bond between us.

This is a complicated question, and the answer varies from dog to dog.

To begin with we need to determine if handler aggression is a result of using strict avoidance training on the wrong dog or is it an issue of trying to work with a genetically RANK dog. I. will talk about the issue of rank dogs first.

Rank Dogs

A Rank dog is one that will not accept any position in a pack other than first place. Rank drive is a genetic issue. It cannot be trained into or out of a dog. In fact rank drive gets stronger with age..

A dog with rank drive can be managed but it will never accept a permanent leader. They are always stressed because they feel they should be at the top of the pecking order and t hey are not there - yet. Thats why they can never really relax. They also don’t like obedience training because they resent being told what to do. They can be forced to learn obedience commands, but they always look for a weakness in the leader and when they can, they are willing to fight for leadership. This is when handlers get dog bit,often badly.

Unless a person has been around a truly rank dog, they will have a difficult time determining if a dog is truly rank. Once a person has seen a rank dog it becomes much easier to recognize it.

Inexperienced people often confuse reactive dogs with rank dogs. These are two totally different types of dogs and the solution to train or manage them are also different. The same goes for dogs that have been allowed to exhibit bad behavior, meaning the have learned that growling at the owner, or snapping at the owner gets them what they want, so they learn to display this behavior which results in owners thinking the dog is rank or dominant and it's trying to be the pack leader. This behavior is not that difficult to deal with. It takes force, how much force and what kind of force depends on the age of the dog, how long it has been allowed to act like this. But once they learn there are serious ramification to stupid behavior t hey stop acting like they have. A rank dog will never stop looking for a way to control the situation.

The best way to determine if a dog is truly rank is to have a very experienced police K-9 instructor (not a k-9 handler) run the dog through a police service dog selection test. The problem with this is there are very few people who actually have the experience to do this correctly.

It must be said that most a police K9 handlers are not qualified to run selection testing. They are dog handlers that can maintain training on the dogs they were assigned to, they seldom are part of the process of testing those dogs.

We used to think a dog that was biting someone would make a good police dog. We learned that this was seldom the case. Rank dogs simply do not make good police dogs. Experienced police dog instructors, like my friend Kevin Sheldahl who is one of the best police dog instructors in the country will not accept rank dogs from his European dog vendors.

There are people who will claim they have a rank dominant dog, when the fact is that is not the case, rather they have a reactive dog. Many reactive dogs can be rehabilitated.

Harsh Avoidance Training

Avoidance training is the opposite of reward-based training. In this style of training the dog is taught obedience through the application punishment. We would teach a dog to avoid punishment by complying with obedience commands.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, that is how I first learned to train dogs. There was no reward-based training back then. Today, I call it Yank-and-Crank training.

The problem with this style of training is that it’s a terrible way to teach behaviors. In the beginning, the dog has no idea what you are asking it to do when you give it a leash correction.

Heeling was a perfect example. We would take a new dog, walk down the field, say “Heel” as we took a right turn and corrected the dog at the same time. The dogs quickly learned they could avoid the correction by paying attention and turning quickly as we made the turn thereby avoiding the correction.

Problems arose when we tried this with a mature adult dog that had a strong temperament. Giving these dogs a hard correction for something they don’t understand can often result in the dog aggressing into the handler.

So rather than going through a stage of “learned helplessness”, those dogs resort to handler aggression.

If this handler’s dog is not rank, there is a good possibility that this is the reason the dog bit him six times. I say this because 3 of those 6 bites happened when he was using a remote collar.

Remote collars should never be used to teach behaviors. Doing so almost always confuses the dog and with some dogs, the stimulation from the collar can trigger handler aggression.

The way we teach behaviors today is through reward-based training. This means the handler needs to know what markers are. He or she need to understand how important timing of markers are. He needs to know how to determine what his dog’s high-value rewards are. Lastly, he needs to know how to vary which reward is used in training and then how to deliver the rewards.

Finally, handlers need to learn how to build motivation for his training sessions so he can use those sessions to build or rebuild his relationship with this dog.

I get the feeling that this dog handler has never been taught any of these things. So in the next section, I will pose questions to ask that may help build a path to rehabbing this dog (if it can be rehabbed).

Questions

1. What is the training history of this dog? Has it been trained with yank-and-crank methods of reward-based training?

   Based on what the officer said I would tend to believe that this is the case.
   

2. I would like to know a little of the skill level of the officer’s training. Based on his email and the fact that he is reaching out for help, my guess is he doesn’t have a lot of dog training experience.

   This is not his fault. It is the fault of his department.
   

3. What were the circumstances of these 6 dog bites? Did the dog bite the previous handler and what were the circumstances of those bite?
   

4. What type of temperament does this dog have? Is it a highly motivated dog for rewards? Or does it lack drive for the work? Do you have to force the dog in simple obedience?

   The more motivated a dog is for rewards, the easier it’s going to be to work on repairing the relationship with the handler using reward-based training methods.

   The less motivated the dog is the more difficult this will be to fix.

   With dogs that lack motivation, trainers often applying corrections sooner than what they should because they are not seeing results quick enough. Unfortunately, that’s the wrong thing those dogs need.

Highly Motivated Dogs

Dogs that are highly motivated for rewards, be it food or a toy, learn quicker. These types of dogs want to learn what they have to do to get those rewards they love. So if this is what the temperament of this dog is like, then the first training goal needs to be to build the dog’s motivation. Find games the dog enjoys, learn marker training and use REALLY HIGH value food rewards—not Walmart treats but rather pieces of meat or cheese.

So, the first approach with a motivated dog should always be to be to teach the dog what it needs to do to get its rewards, hence “reward-based training.”

Keep in mind that reward-based training is nonconfrontational. There is zero pressure on the dog, so that eliminates any handler aggression.

For example, the handler has struggled with the OUT–he may have to learn the “lift-off” and just accept the fact that this is how he will handle all OUTS in the future.

Some things can be made better but never fully fixed. In some of those situations, the only solution is to change the way you manage the dog.

One of the hardest things any dog trainer, either professional or a normal trainer, will learn is they can’t fix every dog problem.

Don’t Listen to OLD SCHOOL TRAINERS

The guy with 25 years of experience who wants to break the dog down with a remote collar is not qualified to have any part of rehabbing this dog. He has already failed in his job and should be retired.

SHORT REVIEW

1. He needs to learn marker training with the emphasis on perfect timing and reward delivery.

2. His short-term focus should be on fair management and not worrying about enforcing perfect obedience.

   Fine tuning obedience comes later and it takes time.

3. If this were my dog, I would probably start from scratch and rename all of the obedience commands.

   For example, rather than use the word DOWN, I may use the German word PLATZ.

4. I would stop using a remote collar for a long time. I would wait until the dog knows the meaning of the new commands before pairing the leash and remote collar with low level stimulation.

   We have 2 excellent on-line courses on the subject.

5. Once the marker training was going well with learning new obedience commands I would start training tug work with the dog.

   We cover this in detail in our course title THE POWER OF PLAYING TUG WITH YOUR DOG.

   This could be a slippery slope, it means the dog must learn the “rules of play”.

   They are:

   • All toys are my toys
   • The dog must play when I ask him to play
   • He must go get the toy and bring it back when I toss the toy
   • He must Out the toy when I ask

You must be willing to admit defeat

One of the hardest part in being a dog trainer, either as a civilian or as a professional trainer, is to admit that we cannot fix every problem.

All we can do is try these things and they still may not work or it could take months, and in fact it may have gone on so long that it may not be fixable.

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About Author

Ed Frawley

Ed Frawley is the founder of Leerburg. He has been training dogs since the 1950s. For 30 years, Ed bred working bloodline German Shepherds and has produced over 350 litters. During this time, Ed began recording dog training videos and soon grew an interest in police service dogs. His narcotic dogs have been involved in over 1,000 narcotics searches resulting in hundreds of arrests in the state of Wisconsin. Ed now solely focuses on producing dog training courses with renowned dog trainers nationwide. If you want to learn more about Ed, read about his history here.

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