How are army and/or police dogs trained?

What methods do they use?

Do they use and physical training aids/punishment?

Just out of curiosity!!!!!!

I think they mostly use positive methods now .... I know the dogs used in prisons and sniffer dogs for the Western Australian goverment, use only positive methods. As a good friend of mine's father had a lab that was used in the prison as a sniffer dog, he also handled a GSD that was used as a guarding animal, that remained at the prison but the labs were allowed to go the handlers homes. It was through seeing how their dogs were trained (with loads of games and praise, I'll never forget the site of 4 middle aged 6ft men in prison uniforms on the ground playing tug of war with their dogs !! They looked hilarious !) that made me wake up to positive methods.

I would like to think all positive but who knows?

I'll never forget a few years ago the report on one police force that had been beating and abusing there dogs when they misbehaved.

One dog was strung up by it's lead and nearly died, who's to say that still doesn't go on in some places?

Actually I remember now a story told to me by a friend about a police dog that died as a result of a kicking it got from the handler, the handlers trainer told the handler to kick it, handler didnt want to do it, but did it anyway and the poor dog died as a result, but I think it was a few years ago now...

I'm the same as rip ... I'd like to *think* it's positive, but how can you tell ?

I would think that the police force and the military forces as a whole use positive methods but there will always be some individuals belonging to the forces that will use negative methods just for the sake of it.

Police dog are trained through play. The dog must be able to retrieve & play raggy with a good grip. This is then re-inforced through the big gloves etc.
They are then put through a number of test to check to see how brave the dogs are. A police man puts on a scary cloak. The dog is then tested to see if he will stand up to him with out running away.
Then they are trained with the scent. I know of a very good police dog who very nearly failed because of this. So they used sausages. It worked & he is one the best Warwickshire police dogs they have.

I would like to hope they train with kind methods these days too ..I once worked in a kennels with an ex police dog trainer , he was very cruel beating the dogs with a piece of hosepipe (this doesn't leave bruises) and dragging the poor dogs around on choke chains he didn't last very long in the job I am pleased to say.

That was Cambridgeshire Police Rip-my area and the officer involved was sacked.

I saw a series many years ago now about Police & Army dogs and it showed them going about their training.Nothing was cruel in what was shown and the dogs activly enjoyed their work.Police and Army dogs though have different training methods because of what is expected of them in active service and in one episode-a Rottweiler was being trained for Army duties in Ireland because they tended to lunge for the throat and not arms.

Sadly though-it did say that when the dogs have done their 6 weeks inital training,but failed overall-they cannot be given to families as pets because they have had attack training.They do try to find them handlers within the security sector like private firms,but if that fails-they are put to sleep.

I've been out with the police & the dogs. I am joining the police force at the end of the year if i pass my lung capacity test.
I'm sure their is a percentage of cruelty. Its everywhere unfortunately.
I've watched the police train the dogs. Its very interesting.

Sadly the dogs are trained using positive methods but the handlers aren't always very good. In that series there was a GSD called Fred trained using play who went to Bosnia, when he pulled on the lead with his new handler(handler was a novice)his sargeant got hold of the lead & yanked him(on a choker)off his feet several times to stop him ! The handler then used the same method to stop him pulling

I work with GSD rescue & none of our dogs go to the police, forces or security unless it is via one of our personal contacts & they sign to agree to return the dog to us if it fails

Totally incorrectly the forces teach the dogs protection work before the control(it was shown on the same series). Done correctly total control comes first & then the protection work. I've owned several protection trained GSDs(trained by me)& none were a danger to anyone, in fact they were safer than 99% of other dogs