Police dog training, or abuse?

**Haas** · November 09, 2009, 01:58 PM

I'll just leave this here...

**Helm** · November 09, 2009, 02:04 PM

Probably a bit of both, but I'm not sure what it is they're training it to do I'd have to know more about it.

**Copperknickers II** · November 09, 2009, 02:05 PM

Abuse? Humans get a lot worse than that in the army, or in high school. Plus police dogs have a very tough job, they need this kind of training or they would be no use in the field.

**★Bandiera Rossa☭** · November 09, 2009, 02:07 PM

Well it is Baltimore... at least they treat their dogs better than their minority suspects..

**cupoftea** · November 09, 2009, 02:53 PM

Was the dog really hurt? I don't think he is, maybe a bit pissed off, but they need this kind of training for when things start to get dangerous and when the enemy starts attacking the dog.

**Visna** · November 09, 2009, 02:57 PM

Counter productive "training" at best, abuse at worst.

**Taiji** · November 09, 2009, 03:23 PM

I don't know what the dog did so I can't really judge if the punishment is fair...

(Dogs can be pretty annoying...)

**Armatus** · November 09, 2009, 05:12 PM

Anyone that knows anything about dog training can see this is ignorance on the cops part. They are trying to break the dog. It's well beyond what most of us would consider negative reinforcement. The dog clearly does not understand. It's probably a stray which has never been taught any discipline, sadly these police don't seem to care much as it's about results apparently and how quick we can get to submission, not respect for the animal.

Honestly for this incident I'm sure you could find so many other law enforcement professional who train dogs with positive reinforcement.

**Copperknickers II** · November 10, 2009, 02:43 PM

Originally Posted by Armatus

Anyone that knows anything about dog training can see this is ignorance on the cops part. They are trying to break the dog. It's well beyond what most of us would consider negative reinforcement. The dog clearly does not understand. It's probably a stray which has never been taught any discipline, sadly these police don't seem to care much as it's about results apparently and how quick we can get to submission, not respect for the animal.

Honestly for this incident I'm sure you could find so many other law enforcement professional who train dogs with positive reinforcement.

If this was punishment, i would agree with you. But it isn't.

This video is conditioning, not punishment. It is not submission, it is getting the dog used to the kind of treatment it can expect at the hands of desperate criminals.

"Dogs don't learn how to handle extreme situations by actually putting them in such situations"

How exactly do you propose they learn, then? Show them an educational video? Give them Goju Ryu courses? Maybe we should put them on a fighter jet simulator class and give them a nice rabbit-flavour biscuit every time they shoot down an Su-37?

Most normal dogs would run away or submit under violent treatment. By exposing them to stressful situations (though not, as you may have noticed, putting the dog under any threat of injury or torture) they can be acclimatised to it when they meet it.

Humans have been training dogs and other animals for war and other extreme situations for 3000 years, we know how to do it. How do you think they got medieval English warhorses to charge groups of growling Scotsmen and Muslims? By conditioning them.

**Armatus** · November 10, 2009, 04:05 PM

Originally Posted by Copperknickers

If this was punishment, i would agree with you. But it isn't.

This video is conditioning, not punishment. It is not submission, it is getting the dog used to the kind of treatment it can expect at the hands of desperate criminals.

"Dogs don't learn how to handle extreme situations by actually putting them in such situations"

How exactly do you propose they learn, then? Show them an educational video? Give them Goju Ryu courses? Maybe we should put them on a fighter jet simulator class and give them a nice rabbit-flavour biscuit every time they shoot down an Su-37?

Most normal dogs would run away or submit under violent treatment. By exposing them to stressful situations (though not, as you may have noticed, putting the dog under any threat of injury or torture) they can be acclimatised to it when they meet it.

Humans have been training dogs and other animals for war and other extreme situations for 3000 years, we know how to do it. How do you think they got medieval English warhorses to charge groups of growling Scotsmen and Muslims? By conditioning them.

I was being pretty diplomatic about the whole thing, but since you put it that way I'll have to tell you how I really feel. And that is, that it IS clearly abuse. No animal should be be forced through such conditioning by severe physical manipulation, to the extent that not only intellectuals must question the ethics of it, but that it may cause bodily injury.

And please don't tell me "we" as a society require this from dogs. My person requires it not, it has nothing to do with saving human lives there are simply ethical lines I do not believe we should cross. Just as some folks do not believe in violence all together where others do or do under certain conditions.

The medieval reference really says nothing about this video.

**Taiji** · November 09, 2009, 05:19 PM

I actually think the one who was really being trained in this video was the handler, he's probably never trained a dog before. If you do all that stuff much more gently, I'm sure it wouldn't look so bad. At least I hope so...

**Prodigal** · November 09, 2009, 11:00 PM

That's not abuse. Those dogs need to be trained to deal with extreme stress situations anyway.

**Manco** · November 09, 2009, 11:14 PM

If the goal was to have a dog that will eventually bite a kid's face off, then they're doing a good job.

Btw dogs don't learn how to handle extreme situations by actually putting them in such situations, all you're doing is educating a dog that's how it's supposed and he'll grow more agressive and unreliable.

**Banana Jelly** · November 10, 2009, 04:23 PM

Abuse. If not training. But I doubt police train them this tough.

**Taiji** · November 10, 2009, 04:25 PM

I have to agree with Armatus, the fact that it is cruelty for a moral reason does not make it seem any less cruel to me.

I'm still not convinced that we are watching a competant police dog trainer though. From the voice in the background I'm guessing he is being trained.

Also from the sounds of things, he's shouting 'STAY' at the dog, but the dog keeps bouncing about ... and nipping the handler

The incompitant handler seems to have connected "STAY" with "LET'S PLAY" for the dog, poor dog.

Then at the end the handler's trainer is saying "I don't like to do this but you can see this dog...<cut>". This gives me a distinct impression of the editor not wanting the viewer to hear the action being justified, however that may have worked out.

**Aetius** · November 10, 2009, 05:31 PM

Looks like a bad trainer, or at least an ineffective one.

This isn't really abuse guys, with big dogs this is almost play for them except this is pretty extreme. Picking up the dog and throwing it to the ground is not really necessary, I don't even understand what he's trying to make it learn.

Police dogs are either; "attack dogs" who are released to detain an individual or "detection/search and rescue dog". This one looks like an attack dog training but they usually just train them to utilize their natural hunting techniques, grab the arm of someone and bring them down.

This is stupid.

**Helm** · November 11, 2009, 04:37 AM

The idea is probably to establish just who the "top dog" in the pack really is. In the wild the dominant male wolf will regularly rough up subordinates just to make sure the know the score. Notice at the beginning of the video the dog was biting the trainers arm, the kind of thing they can't be putting up with, so they will keep doing that until it stops biting I should think.