April 29, 2011
Our department's 3 year old Malinois will stop a search if he finds a plastic bottle. Do you have any thoughts?
Full Question:
My department has a 3 year old malinois who has a problem with plastic bottles. He indicates very well on narcotics until he sees a bottle. When we go to do outside training with other departments we purposely place bottles in the training area. He has no problems with the bottles during these trainings, but when at work if he finds a bottle the search is over?Any help thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Scott
Ed's Answer:
Your handler is not training enough.
It takes 30 times to teach an exercise and over 100 sessions (or more) to fix a problem.
If it were my dog I would use low level stimulation with a remote trainer in a narcotic training scenario to desensitize the dog to the bottle. I would do it in all environments until the dog ignores the bottle.
With this said here is how your handler will screw this up:
He should also be doing “DRIVE WORK” throughout the time of remote collar training (but I would not do it during the actual collar sessions). The DVD is called Building Drive and Focus.
There are plenty of pitfalls in this process. Most K9 handlers are HANDLERS and not TRAINERS. No insult meant here but it’s a simple fact.
It takes 30 times to teach an exercise and over 100 sessions (or more) to fix a problem.
If it were my dog I would use low level stimulation with a remote trainer in a narcotic training scenario to desensitize the dog to the bottle. I would do it in all environments until the dog ignores the bottle.
With this said here is how your handler will screw this up:
- Not condition the dog to the collar correctly
- Not select the correct level of stimulation and go to high
- Do the remote collar training during narcotic training and send the dog into avoidance and end his narcotic career.
- Back the narcotic training up to scratch boxes after the remote collar training.
He should also be doing “DRIVE WORK” throughout the time of remote collar training (but I would not do it during the actual collar sessions). The DVD is called Building Drive and Focus.
There are plenty of pitfalls in this process. Most K9 handlers are HANDLERS and not TRAINERS. No insult meant here but it’s a simple fact.
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