Dogs are perhaps the most common pets in the world over. However, it is not always that dogs are kept as pets. Dogs are on several occasions exclusively reared for their strength intelligence, temperament and ability to perform assorted tasks. It is the attributes of a particular dog that warrants its categorization as a working dog to perform a specific task. This paper is aimed at describing some of the most common police working dogs while also highlighting the factors influence their training as well as what the trainers look for while selecting these dogs.
Types type of working dogs
Rescue dogs
Trained to detect human scent, rescue dogs are peculiarly trained dogs that help humans in rescuing operations. The dogs receive training on trailing and tracking human beings. This assertion underscores that human being are by all means in capable of controlling disasters that incessantly struck. Such dogs help in rescuing people stuck in debris, submerged in water as well as avalanche. The selection of a rescue is most commonly based on a dog’s ability to detect human scent. With in mind that there two types of scent detecting dogs, scent discriminative and non-scent discriminating dogs, most trainers opt for non-scent discriminating dogs over scent discriminative on the grounds that the scent discriminative dogs only detect a specific human after being given a sample scent.
Cadaver Dogs
Cadaver dogs are almost related to rescue dogs except that cadaver dogs are utilitarian detecting dead human bodies. The qualities of cadaver dogs and rescue dogs are always similar; cadaver dogs should be able to detect scent. The singular variation that these dogs have from rescue dogs is that they are specially trained to detect the smell of a decomposing human body. This warrants that a dog suitable for this purpose to should have very discriminative nose. The English Springer, Labrador retrievers, spaniels, Rhodesian ridgebacks and border collies are some of the breeds of dogs that have known to make exemplary cadaver dogs.
Police Canines
Police dogs are working dogs that help the police in law enforcement. Conventionally known as K9 dogs, the dogs have special abilities to detect criminals making them one of the integral components of the police department globally. In some cases, the dogs double up as search and rescue dogs. The dogs, as a requirement, should have overly discriminative noses, run fast as well as the ability to display intimidating characters such as growling and barking. The German shepherd has always been on the limelight because of its ability to intimidate people and emblematic sense detection abilities.
Seeing Eye Dogs
Visually impaired people experience a lot of difficulties when it comes to navigating through the streets, in the room or around obstacles. In most cases, such people require assistance with regards mobility. Seeing Eye Dogs, conventionally called guide dogs, are trained dogs that assist people with visual impairment to navigate around obstacles. Assertively, any dog can be trained to become an efficacious Seeing Eye Dog since the training of such dogs basically involves positive reinforcement and not any specific dog abilities.
Bomb sniffing dogs
Bomb sniffing dogs are carefully trained dogs that help in the detection of bombs. The dogs, according to trainers, are carefully trained to detect explosive materials that are commonly used to make bombs. Because their work overly involves sniffing, symbolical whiffing ability is the most important attribute of consideration while selecting bomb sniffing dogs. This perhaps explains why Belgian Malinois and German shepherds are always the preferred candidates for bomb sniffing purposes.
Concisely, dogs find wide usage as works dogs. As seen above, police working dogs are valiantly used in law enforcement to perform various tasks such as bomb sniffing, detection and arrest of criminals and detection of cadavers, among other functions. Other working dogs that have not been discussed above include hunting dogs, sled dogs, guard dogs and herding dogs.
