Tonight I watched the series premier and second episode of National Geographic's "Alpha Dog". Before reading any further, be aware that this post is being written on the same day that I conducted my first Puppy Preschool class in MONTHS. I worked with a precious, doe-eyed Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that was the ripe old age of twelve weeks. I do love, and always have loved, working with puppies and their owners to ensure that the first home is the dog's home for life. But ultimately, in my mind, there is no training like K9 training. It is the gauntlet, the CrossFit, the Iron Man if you will, of dog training. The only other thing that comes close is Service Dog training, but the handlers of Service Dogs are way easier to work with than K9 handlers.
So why is it that a bunch of overweight, out-of-shape, greasy dudes have their own television show and I do not? Maybe the same reason that a high-heeled boot, mini-skirt wearing "dog behaviorist" with an English accent made it in TV land. Puh-leez. I am well aware that I am not the only dog trainer that feels this way.
I have devoted the last five years of my life to my son. All-in, one hundred percent. I have done only a minimal amount of dog training in the last five years, certainly not any K9 training. The last K9 I trained was delivered to her handler when I was eight months pregnant. That was fun (and very off-balance). I have video... Am I proud of every K9 I have trained and put on the street? Unfortunately, no. But I do feel as though I provided a much better foundation for my handlers to work from than I saw in the television show I just watched. I at least made sure the officers knew when to keep their hands off the dog!
These guys were training dogs to be special forces operatives and police K9 teams. I have never trained a dog for the military, but it seems to me that the logical progression would be pet--sport dog--working dog--military dog--special forces dog. Some of the dogs they were working with for the special forces team were "special" all right! I get the need to have a dog with high drive, but seriously people, obedience is the foundation for everything. Those dogs had NONE, and they were six and half weeks into their training program, about to graduate! A dog that is noisy and bouncing around and focused on everything except the task at hand is an extreme liability in ANY working situation. The trainers said they were worried about a particular team's performance and that they had some work to do. "Some" was an understatement by my summation. But hey, the helicopter was cool. I wish I had a helicopter to train with.
Then there was the police K9 handler wannabe that got nailed by his dog. Badly bitten. Why? The handler went to "pet" his dog, presumably to calm him down because he was so keyed up by the gunfire and activity going on around him. One of the dog trainers that I admire most in this world, George Cockrell, puts it simply: What you pet, you get. You do not pet a dog that is displaying inappropriate behavior. To do so is to positively reinforce that behavior in the dog's mind...or get yourself bitten. The trainers ended up pairing the dog with an experienced K9 handler by the end of the show. No acknowledgement was given--at least on camera--that there might have been something else going on. Like a lack of handler instruction. Or a lack of dog training.
One of the trainers commented that "these dogs come from Europe" when explaining the reasoning behind the decoys wearing head scarves in their training scenarios (which is one of the few things I saw that made perfect sense). Indeed a lot of dogs are imported from Europe to enter into various forms of service here in the United States. How do people blindly go along believing that these large overseas kennel operations send the cream of the crop over here? That makes zero sense. The best dogs from Europe stay in Europe until they are no longer of high value for whatever reason. Those dogs are then sometimes purchased by Americans, but do you think dog training facilities that specialize in quick turnaround are the ones that choose to afford them? That would be a negative. Breeders, people. Breeders are the ones who choose to afford those dogs because they will get their money back plus some. Why not develop relationships with these American breeders and use dogs that are from the United States? We used to do that. I may not be overjoyed with every dog I trained for work, but the dogs I am most impressed with, and the K9s that have historically performed the best on the street, are the dogs that we chose and purchased from American breeders as puppies and raised and trained for the work, then trained the handlers to handle them on the street. Oh, wait, I get it. That would require actual TRAINING of the dog and the handler.
Some departments used to be amazed that our handler training program was two weeks long. How did we accomplish this when everyone else required K9 handlers to be off the streets and away from their families and their homes for six weeks or more? Simple. The dog was already trained. We didn't pick up a pack of dogs from the airport the week before a class was going to start and hope that they fit the bill. We didn't keep our fingers crossed that the group of people we were going to be working with were natural dog trainers. We had already been training the dog for months. Sometimes this did not work out advantageously for us. There were a few dogs that we invested a lot of time and money in that didn't perform as we had hoped and went on to live life as well behaved pets. There were just as many dogs that were brought to us by law enforcement for training that disappointed us. We often simply had to make it work to the best of our abilities with those dogs. People want to help their local law enforcement and they "donate" dogs for K9 work. Local law enforcement is appreciative and tries to make a go of it. Sometimes it works, most of the time it isn't ideal.
Bottom line: I am feeling a newly reignited spark in my chest. My baby boy is growing up, he'll start kindergarten in the fall. Other really cool changes are afoot here in High Point. More on those later. Maybe, just maybe, I can do some good doing something I love. Anybody have a helicopter?
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