Thoughts of a Yorkshire lad in London

lindseyap:

Photos from a police dog display I went to a few months ago. 

I don’t know too much about the police dog assessments they do, except it looked pretty similar to some shutzhund videos I’ve seen. Obedience, and protection, and so on. They would do lots of heel, sending away and long distance downs, recall, going over the barrier, barking at the stooge person (intimidation work?) and bite work, and then calmly walking through calm crowds, and intimidating rowdy ones yelling and throwing things.

One of the beautiful puppies they had; german shepherd x belgian malinois.

Long distance work.

Just before sending him off. I can’t remember if long distance work, or whether to chase after someone. Riling him up perhaps, getting focus? Not sure.

Fitness.

Bite work.

Intimidation.

General photos:

What I did note: it was kind of sad because the dogs were giving off a lot of calming signals, and showing stressed expressions. You can see a couple in the photos but I didn’t want to include (or photograph) too much. I could see some negative reinforcement & positive punishment too - jerking, vocal corrections, choke chains, and with one trainer, hitting. Interestingly, they were the trainers whose dogs didn’t do as well at the trials. Go figure, “trainers”!

I’m super excited, because next week I’m doing work experience with the Surrey Police dog trainers. I’ve heard that they do a lot of toy work for building drive with positive reinforcement only, so I’ll be interested to see the details and if they do any of the above or not. The trials were a mixture of trainers from all over the country.

We had a police dog come into work once with a poorly foot (it chased someone over a wall with a big drop on the other side). It was nice and obedient but gave us a look of ‘one wrong move and you won’t have your arm for long’. But they’re so handsome and finely tuned and fantastic :).

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(Source: theshiningwizard, via halftimelordhalfwizard221b)

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