I have a 3 month old GSD from good working/Schutzhand lines. I am a Conservation Enforcement Officer and will be raising and training this pup as a service dog. Her main purposes will be wildlife detector, article/evidence recovery, SAR tracking and I will use her to track hunters to treestands and things of this nature.

Along with this, however, I also want to train her in handler protection. Since all of our violations are misdemeanors I'm inclined not to train her to search out and bite suspects. I'm not going to send her after a guy who is running because he is hunting without a permit. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I've had her about a week and she has really come out of her shell and has started getting really mouthy. Her prey drive is coming out. She is really going after toys in the house, but I can't get her to chase toys outside yet. She has been living in the house because I wanted her to be housebroken if I needed to take her into a building in the course of our duties. Of course this means she is starting to carry the wife's shoes around the house as well.

Should I move her outside? Do you think that would create a division between rest time and work time? How about toys in the kennel?

I'm fairly new to this, although I've trained retrievers and bird dogs before. I realize it's a different type of training but that's why I'm here looking for advice. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Chris

I'm not terribly experienced in this area but I'm pretty sure that police service dogs should not be house pets as well. I would suppose this also pertains to what you are going to use this dog for. Their life is their work. Again hopefully someone more knowlegable that myself will weigh in on this.

Chuck et al.--

There has already been a long discussion thread on this topic. See
http://www.leerburg.com/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=8&t=000007

I wasn't aware of the long discussion thread, as I'm new to the board. Will check it out and thanks.

Chris

Rabbit - if you go to the catagory on Police Service and click on the main heading you will see all of the old threads - one of them was service dogs in homes. You will find two pages of comments on this topic. I will close this thread and hope you find your information there.