i am currently a police officer with a 16 month old gsd that loves doing the work. i have competed in sch and would like to compete for DPO titles with my current gsd. can anyone tell me where i can find the rules on DPO and the exercises that must be completed to obtain the titles.

try these links:
http://users.sisna.com/wendellnope/perf-pat.htm

http://leerburg.com/dpo.htm

Originally posted by Dennis Trzcinski:
i am currently a police officer with a 16 month old gsd that loves doing the work. i have competed in sch and would like to compete for DPO titles with my current gsd. can anyone tell me where i can find the rules on DPO and the exercises that must be completed to obtain the titles. If you are interested in doing a DPO under the auspices of a SchH organization like USA you'll have to find out where one of the USA SchH/DPO judges is going to be and see if they will add that title to their trial.
USA uses a version of DPOI as their initial title and WPO is their DPOII. Kinda weird really. DPO, DPOII, DP, PH, PSP, ZHI & II are all titles confered by the respective agencies judges in Germany and w/ analogous programs floating around in numerous other countries. None administered by sport clubs although the SV recognizes all the police titles confered by official government police dog judges and they will count towards your breed survey as well if you are intending on heading that direction.
For COMPETITION the rules are called WPO...Wettkampsprufungsordnung. The others are essentially German official police certifications for deployment. The rules for all the trials other than WPO are quite variable throughout the various schools in Germany and abroad. That's why WPO fist came into existance in about 1954, so all the police and customs and military in Germany could compete and know the rules. This is the trial that was commonly held in conjunction with the Bundesseigerprufung each year until after the 1999 Bundesseiger in Augsberg where Alfred Machievsky (spelling?) gave a scathing speach at the 100th anniversary of the SV and basically bid them farewell. Alfred was the Police administrator in charge of all the police dogs in Germany (a bit of an over simplification of his duties but it'll suffice) he is now retired.
The long and the short of this post is...what do you want to do? Certify in a german type methodology or compete in a German Police sport? If it is the first then e-mail me privatly and maybe I can help. If it is the second....well, I wish I could say that there would be WPO in the future but without the great big carrot out there...the IDM held in conjunction with the Bundesseiger hell I think WPO is dead. So do many German police and they just compete in schutzhund.