May 19, 2011
Can a dog be trained in S&R and Personal Protection?
Full Question:
I have a 6 month old German Shepherd. I've got your puppy tape 8 weeks to 8 months. It's great. I have a couple questions. Can I train him to be a personal protection dog and a search and rescue dog? If so, or, if not, what is the next video I should get?Darren,
Hilliard, OH
Ed's Answer:
If your dog has the temperament and drive he can be trained
You would begin with The First Steps of Bite Training.
Your dog can begin tracking right now. When I have young dogs I start them on foot step tracking for food and make it a big game. Then at a year I switch them over to tracking through drive. You can read about these different kinds of tracking from my web site articles.
This would begin with Training a Competition Tracking Dog and then Training a Police - S&R Tracking Dog plus Track Laying for a Police Tracking Dog.
The problem with young dogs is that they can not deal with a lot of stress and they do not retain the work well enough to actually be deployed to work in S&R until they are 12 to 14 months old. But you can do the foundation work at a young age it kind of imprints the nose work on them.
The important thing (very important thing) is not to do area searches where you run off and let the dog run around and find you - this teaches the dog to search the wind current with a high nose - once they learn that they will never put their nose on the ground to track. So area search is taught after a dog certifies on level one tracking at 12 to 14 months.
You would begin with The First Steps of Bite Training.
Your dog can begin tracking right now. When I have young dogs I start them on foot step tracking for food and make it a big game. Then at a year I switch them over to tracking through drive. You can read about these different kinds of tracking from my web site articles.
This would begin with Training a Competition Tracking Dog and then Training a Police - S&R Tracking Dog plus Track Laying for a Police Tracking Dog.
The problem with young dogs is that they can not deal with a lot of stress and they do not retain the work well enough to actually be deployed to work in S&R until they are 12 to 14 months old. But you can do the foundation work at a young age it kind of imprints the nose work on them.
The important thing (very important thing) is not to do area searches where you run off and let the dog run around and find you - this teaches the dog to search the wind current with a high nose - once they learn that they will never put their nose on the ground to track. So area search is taught after a dog certifies on level one tracking at 12 to 14 months.
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