I am curious to know what the protocol is for raising these dogs from 8 weeks - 1 year.
We have an RCMP officer who comes to the clinic where I work, and although he is not a handler, he raises potential K9's until 12 months old when they get their final assessment.
As far as I know, his first dog didn't make the cut, as she is now with another client. I didn't see her being raised, so I can't comment to her behaviour. He now has another dog, that I have seen at various stages. As far as I can tell, the dog has zero OB. It is now 8 months old, extremely excitable and friendly, urinates when greeted, and acts like an out of control pup.
When the dog was younger, he said they didn't teach him OB (when he ate a banana peel out of the garbage and peed on the floor), because they didn't want to ruin his confidence.
I asked if they are doing any bite work with the dog, and he said yes, with a kong and bite bar. There are 3 officers in the area raising pups, and only 1 handler.
Is all this standard protocol, or specific to RCMP (I know they have unique ways in some regards), or specific to this officer?

Perhaps a new job for Phaedra could be raising good dogs for service. I bet Pharoh doesn't do any submissive peeing....

The first question I'd ask your client would be, 'what are you training the dog to or hope to?'.
There's many facets to police work a dog can help with, they're not all street dogs or dual purpose even.

My familiarity with this area is vague at best, so take what I say worth a grain of salt.

My understanding is that the US Military has a similar program in place for MWDs. The puppies are raised for the first portion of their lives in family homes, with minimal obedience, and a focus towards socialization and normalcy. This allows the military to evaluate the dogs when they're old enough, based on dogs that have been raised in a normal home environment.

Aside from the urinating, I would almost expect the pup to be somewhat out of control in that sort of setting.

My anecdotal understanding is that one of the reasons the military takes the approach they do, is because of the way they train. Their methods are highly compulsion based, and thus, cannot be used on a young dog. So, the dogs remain largely untrained until they're old enough to be trained through compulsion.

I do NOT want to imply that the RCMP is training that way, but it is one possible explanation.


Now, my honest opinion?

This guy is basically a BS artist.
He takes pups and likes to think that he's raising them for the RCMP, and that may be his *intent*, but that's not quite the same as being a sanctioned puppy raiser for the department.

I cannot imagine that, if the dog was a reported submissive pee'er, it would remain in the program. I would expect that it would be adopted out to a family home immediately, and a new pup would be started.

Unless otherwise proven, I don't know that I would attribute anything you're witnessing to the RCMP. I'd just assume this guy has high hopes for the dogs he raises, but he isn't actually doing this under the direction of the RCMP.

He is actually an RCMP officer. I've tried to ask him some questions, but he's not very forthcoming or friendly - very... feet at shoulder width, arms crossed "why do you ask"'. All I know is that he does limited bite work with the dog with bite bars, with 2 other officers in the same situation.
I don't think he has any idea what the end job for the dog might be. I do know that his goal is to be a handler, but there are very limited spaces, especially in this area.
The RCMP is VERY picky about who can handle their dogs, and as far as I know, you have to be an officer just to work at the kennel or do training in any capacity.
The vet commented on how "friendly" the dog was, and the guy said that's what they want, and that he could sense "real" danger if needed later on. So, yeah obviously not a K9 handler yet. I guess it's possible he gets the puppies and just raises them with the hope they will be accepted. When I asked him about the bite work he said that he'd been doing it all along, but not very much of it - that it wasn't necessary for their purposes to have a decoy, or anything beyond a pillow.
I understand if it's possible the dog might just go to a home, they don't want it trained in bit work, but I did think the peeing still at 8 months was a bit off.