Detection Dogs ... the need exceeds supply - Page 4

One source noted a trainer needed 5 years experience as a prerequisite! I can't find it now, but that needs to be shortened. And then the certification was only good for one year. That is a bit out of whack, IMHO.

 

Most dog trainers for service dogs are in reality dog finishers. Most police and other service dogs including "Seeing Eye" and other mobility assistance and medical service dogs are started and brought up to a point in their training and age ( about 10 months to 1 year ) such that it can be determined the dog has the proper tools and personality for the intended service and then handed off to someone else to finish the training. KNPV follows exactly the same play book. KNPV dogs are in a training program that prepares them for police, law enforcement, scent work, and protection work. KNPV titled dogs often go into police service work and are much more successful than IPO dogs in police work. Many of the Mals, Dutch Shepherds, and cross breeds of Mal, Dutchie, and GSD seen in police and service work in the USA are from KNPV breeding programs and training programs. A scent work based organization for preparing dogs would be the same as KNPV .. non breed specific nor involved in breed politics, giving dogs a background and a high school education in scent work, and then graduating the dogs to specialize in the many fields of scent work open to all dog breeds ... the equivalent of an undergraduate or graduate college degree.

Ah yes...should've seen the anti-IPO, anti-GSD, anti-breed organization post coming.

Still waiting for a business plan/proposal from you bubba, or was the whole point of the original post so that eventually you can post what you just did without any intent to actually discuss the problem you brought up?

Also, please provide the data/statistics where the majority of the mals/dutchies/mixes in K9 roles in the United States are from KNPV breeding programs. Would love to see where you got that information. Also, please provide where you found the data that KNPV dogs are more successful than IPO dogs at police work. The research I've done is that about 500-600 dogs are titled at the PH1 level each year. No where near enough to supply the world's demands for police K9 and service dogs. So what exactly fills the gap of the thousands of other dogs that are needed?

Cross bred dogs are quite common in KNPV .. how many are seen at IPO events?? I'll help ... none!! How many Dutch Shepherds at IPO events ?? Very, very few .. there may have been one or two at the FCI IPO World Championships. There are more Schnauzers and Pit Bulls at IPO events than KNPV type crosses of GSD, Mal, and Dutch Shepherds. Detection dogs and medical assistance dogs do not need to be biting dogs. Beagles, Labs, Spaniels, Hounds, Pointers and Sitters all have fine noses as do Australian Shepherds and Border Collies. The need is for dogs that can do medical assistance and various detection work which is an area that more dogs are needed for. The supply of biting sport dogs exceeds the demand and far exceeds those capable of handling such dogs wisely. Detection dogs do not need to be purebred but they all need to be raised and properly prepared for their future career as a medical assistance dog or detection dog. Not all dogs in the "Seeing Eye" or dogs for the sight impaired go into the program and graduate but all of the dogs benefit from a program preparing them for service even if they eventually are companion or other service dogs. That was where this thread started .. a means to provide more service dogs that gave all dogs an equivalent scent work based start toward the medical assistance and various detection services including medical and many other uses.

Medical assistance and therapy dogs are the fastest growing scam in dogdom closely followed by general scent and detection dogs.

Nobody has yet defined what these terms mean, what standards and criteria apply or even exactly what the dogs do in most cases.

 

I feel anxiety and depression and my brat dog makes me feel better so its a medical assistance dog and if you try stop me taking it on a bus, restaurant, plane or even ask me what my medical condition is my lawyer will sue yr ass into oblivion.

The use of dogs for detecting everything from bed bugs to cancer has been proven and is already happening. What is not in place is a framework for developing dogs for final training as specialist detectors and any meaningful certification process. Medical assistance dogs are also proven as service dogs but there needs to be a better system for developing dogs and some level of certification. Many police K9's are police dogs because the PD says they are and the training is all over the place .. a police dog trained for a rural county in California would not do well in a inner city PD and vice versa. Liability lawsuits and better rules for using dogs as evidence have made many PD's tighten up there training and certifications. A lot of cars have been searched due to dogs indicating drugs that were not there. The service dog industry is no different than the police in that they see what they want to see and don't see what they don't want to see. That's the reason there should be better oversight and certification of service dogs regardless of the type of service.

The original post mentions nothing of service dogs, just detection dogs. Real service dogs are extremely expensive. Someone said my one million dollar figure earlier was high...not even close if you're talking service dogs. I looked up the financial statement for Canine Companions for Independence...20 million in revenue and 20 million in assets. It's one of the largest programs in the country and does have a fairly long waiting list. There are a few non-profits that compare in size and success. For those that wonder what it takes, that’s what it takes…an organization of that size.

Government certification costs money and as many people with disabilities will tell you might also be a huge road block for many who are on a fixed income and might be training their own dogs. From my point of view, “fake” service dogs aren’t a huge issue and even if someone lies about one and brings it into a public place where a pet isn’t allowed, as long as the dog doesn’t disturb anyone or harm the premises in some way, no one is hurt. End of the day, not a big enough problem to be throwing millions of tax payer dollars at.

Medical dogs/service dogs are more likely to get donations from the public and therefore the system currently in place does have merit and works. Just needs to be bigger, so like I stated earlier, feel free to donate a million or two in order to start a proper program. And no, mutts don’t always work. KNPV BREEDS mutts from proven dogs. A service dog program can’t just be pulling dogs from shelters and hoping they’ll work out. A month or two into training…that’s thousands of dollars invested in a dog and you can’t just be washing them. Which is why the successful organizations have their own breeding programs.

Detection dogs…after the current discussion I believe the biggest problem is having handlers on the payroll. Many of these departments are already stretched thin and can’t afford a bunch of handlers to be roaming the streets with dogs. The cost of the actual dog is nothing compared to the cost of 7-8 years of handling that dog. So again, the issue is money…and in this case its tax payer money. If you feel your police department is lacking, you might be able to donate the money necessary to hire more police officers and have them trained to handle dogs…it’s probably about $60,000-$80,000 per year per person.

Sorry...the last place you should be taking facts from is a yahoo article...start breaking it down and thinking for yourself, it's not that easy of a problem to solve unless you have the cash to throw at it.

Dogs will indicate on a vehicle if the substance they are looking for has ever been present.

My husband's bomb dog alerted on a school locker while doing training exercises. NOT where his training aids had been hidden. There was a jacket that had been used while hunting MONTHS prior to the incident.

There are plenty of dogs out there, both pb and mixes, even in shelters, who are more than capable of single purpose detection. Departments want pb dogs for the most part, who they know the history of.

We raise all of our litters knowing that many will be working down the line. We keep back with the intention of selling or donating to small PDs. There is no money in raising working dogs if you do it right. The time and cost involved is huge, if nothing goes wrong (medical bills, emergency surgery, etc etc, or the dog won't work) That is why so many are imported ready to be imprinted.

We have the capability to imprint narc and explosives here. Departments don't want that. They want very green dogs that they can finish themselves.

Melissa

That's the issue with using shelter dogs, no idea what their nerves are like. Can't spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours training a dog just to figure out it can't handle a certain type of floor or some sort of environment. Sure, you save money on the front end by not having to buy a pure bred, but then you're going to wash out more than the average number of dogs and still end up behind.

It's extremely expensive to run the right type of program. Trainers, kennel workers, management, fundraisers, ect. Sure...you can start small, but when you start small you're not going to be taking that big of a chunk out of the demand. I looked into a small service dog training operation a few months ago. They had about $300,000 in revenue (donations) and had a staff of 3. Two trainers and one manager. I have no idea how many dogs they're able to train, how much of the trainer's time is spent taking care of dogs/cleaning kennels instead of training? How do the dogs live? How is a dog taught to be a house dog with so few resources? Sure...you can train/teach all the tasks you want, but at some point the dog will need to learn to be a house dog and how to bond with a human. That's extremely time consuming and costly.

Detection dogs are not limited to police and explosives training. My OP was that the need and opportunity exists for many and all breeds of dogs to train and work in detection and medical assistance roles. Purebred or mixed breed but there are certainly enough breeds of Pure Bred Dogs to cover the waterfront. What is needed is a credible undergraduate program to teach the basics of "sniffing" for various scents be they truffles, mushrooms, bed bugs, cancer, seizures, or diabetes. There are a thousand uses for a dog's nose and intelligence in discriminating and searching for diseases, useful plants, pests or medical issues. The problem is not whether the dogs can discriminate these scents, the problem is can humans devise an interface between the human and the dog that allows the dog to communicate what the dog knows and senses. It would be most useful if an organized method of discriminating and understanding this dog to human and human to dog interface for detection was made a goal of the AKC or another all breed dog organization. Forget tracking, forget S&R, forget police, and forget explosives .. concentrate instead on the rest of what is a universe of poorly documented and understood methods for detecting lets say a disease like Lyme which is reported in 30,000 people in the USA each year, is likely affecting 300,000 people, and for which no real test exists. It seems many so called "working dog" organizations are more interested in dock diving and fake barn hunts than anything really useful for the future of the term "working dog".