April 29, 2011
How do we cause our K9 to alert with more intense excitement on drugs?
Full Question:
My question is how do we cause our k9 to alert with more intense excitement on drugs, he alerts but with a ho-hum attitude. I would like to see him fired up! During his find. I don't mind if he scratches a vehicle, It is ours by then anyway. Sonny, our K9 is very sharp but I would like to see him with more drive on alert. Thank you in advance.Rick
Asst. Chief
Ed's Answer:
A hard question without knowing the dog. There are a lot of possibilities:
- The dog may have poor drive and should not have been selected as a candidate for this work. Nothing you do is going to make a low drive dog into a high drive dog.
- The indication is built in the basics – not on the street. You need to take a look at the maintenance training to see what the training records indicate (if they are honest and well kept – if they don’t reflect a problem then you have an issue with the handler and his reports).
- The foundation of a detector dog is based on scratch boxes. If a dog cannot make a good indication in training on a scratch box he will never do a good indication on the street. If your training does not include scratch boxes then your maintenance training is flawed.
- If the dog does well in training on the box – then have the handler take a box with him on every vehicle search. I had a good friend that I trained with when I was a handler who dropped a box on the side of the road and let the dog hit it before EVERY search. He had a hell of a drug dog.
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