I wanted to take just a minute to cover some typical dog training mistakes that occur when dealing with working dogs. We often see failure or poor performance from working dog teams because of a failure to properly train. It is usually pretty simple to correct these mistakes by simply thinking about what it is exactly that we are conditioning the dog to do.

For example, all too often I see police patrol dog teams training for building searches incorrectly. They set up scenarios to mimic a building search of a house or other structure by hiding a “suspect” inside of the building. The dog goes into the building, finds the suspect, gets the apprehension and the dog is placed back in the patrol car. End of training session. As many of you know, in this day and age, burglaries and break-ins are rarely committed alone. Generally, there are multiple suspects to be dealt with when searching buildings that have been broken in to. The problem arises when we have two or more criminals hiding inside a building and we are attempting to search it with a dog that is trained in the manner described above. Typically this dog team can successfully locate and apprehend the first suspect, but the handler will often have a very difficult time redirecting the dog back into the building to search for any other criminals that are hiding. That’s because the dog has been conditioned through training to locate a suspect, apprehend them and the exercise is then complete. In order to correct this we should constantly vary the number of “suspect” that we have hiding in buildings during training. This will keep the patrol dog proficient and will have them wanting to continue to search even more during actual deployments.

There are many mistakes that can be encountered when dealing with detection dogs. Some of the most common are failure to proof, handling error and generalizing. By failure to proof, I mean the failure to proof the dog from indicating or alerting on common odors, such as human odor, food and other distractions. Not enough handlers put distracting odors into their detection problems. Handler error comes in all forms but the most common culprit in this area is cueing. K-9 handlers have a difficult time allowing a dog to pass up odor in training when they know where the hide is located. When this happens they will often “cue” the dog by tapping, stopping or performing some act to prompt the dog to indicate. Generalizing occurs when handlers take their detection dogs to train in the same locations or training areas too often. It can also occur when dog handlers place aids in the same place too often, behind the grill of a car, for example.

The common mistakes that I see with handlers that are working tracking or trailing dogs is a lack of importance or disregard for training variables. Some (but not all) of the training variables that should be considered any time that we are training a tracking, trailing or search and rescue dog are:

Age of trail
Length of track
Difficulty of track (number of turns, etc)
Contamination (other cross tracks)
Distractions
Variable surfaces / terrain
Weather
Tracklayer

Without understanding why each of these variables is important and how they affect human odor or our trail, it is difficult for us to establish a training program that will make our dog both proficient and well-rounded. For example, if the dog is always trained to track in grassy fields, it will have difficulty working on asphalt and other surfaces. If a dog is trained on trails that have only been laid for fifteen minutes to an hour, this dog will likely have difficulty navigating a trail that is eighteen hours old.

Whether you are training a dog for narcotics detection, explosives detection, police patrol, tracking or search and rescue, keep in mind what it is, exactly that you are conditioning the dog to do. Think about what the expected result of your training is and what type of performance you will expect during an actual deployment. Then, think about how your dog will perceive the exercise and what they will be likely to do, given a set of circumstances. If what it is that you are conditioning the dog to do and what task you expect the dog to successfully perform are not the same, then you should reconsider your training routines.