Friday, October 28, 2005

Don't Blame The Dog

Next time you see someone getting arrested for their dog biting someone, realize that even the police have these same types of problems…

Note the following:

a.) The dog was off leash, on a search for a criminal, so was in a defensive state.
b.) The dog didn’t bite the handler.
c.) The dog had bitten the other police officer during the search. This kind of incident has happened before. When you deploy a dog, you have the other officers BEHIND the dog, not in front of it.
d.) The female police officer kept struggling with the dog, so it wouldn’t release the bite… a police dog, or any dog, in a fight, isn’t going to willingly let go if you keep fighting the dog.
e.) The dog had troubles letting go in a previous apprehension. This is a training and deployment problem. It is a shame the dog had to die.

Mistakes happen. Bad training and deployment happens. This wasn’t the dog’s fault.

Top trainers know how to solve situations like this. Maybe this police department needs to bring in a training expert to review their program.

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