Police K-9 Magazine

Question - Do you have any good ideas to get a dog to range out during an area search? I have had a 3-year-old Dutch Shepherd for two years. We had a lot of trouble getting him through our initial school, as he would not recall or release with consistency. We had to use mostly compulsion to train him. Now when I send him out off-lead on a search, he gets frantic and will not go more than about 5 feet away from me. It is as though he is expecting to be corrected.

Answer - Ron Gunton replies: It sounds like you’ve hit the nail on the head, and that he is expecting to be corrected. What you will need to do is teach him that there are times he is allowed to work out away from you.

It is likely that his reluctance to venture out is a result of all the compulsion training. What happened is that now the dog associates going out, or down range, with the hard corrections he was receiving, so he’s choosing to avoid altogether the behavior that leads to correction.

Go back to basics. Remember when you first did an area search? You may have had your decoy agitate the dog and then disappear into some woods or an overgrown field. The dog was released or taken on a patrol route perpendicular to the wind and, upon hitting the scent cone, the dog was allowed to go and engage the decoy. Move from that to giving your warning announcement and having your decoy give an audio cue (such as a yell) from within the search area to stimulate the dog. That will motivate the dog to go out and search for the decoy he just heard. Then move to doing this scenario using no stimulation at all. Try to do these exercises in succession with short breaks in between, moving to the next stage after the dog succeeds. What you want to do is teach the dog to associate drive satisfaction (engaging the decoy) with working out away from you.

Unfortunately, sometimes to address one problem, we have to create another. What we want to avoid, if possible, is a lot of compulsion to get him off the bite at the end of the search. We want to keep this as positive as possible. You may consider having your decoy slip the sleeve initially until the dog gets the idea. If your dog will search in muzzle, you may want to consider that as well; that way you won’t have the release issue to deal with. Eventually you will need to reinstitute the control that you’ve been struggling to achieve and maintain. Numerous approaches that involve positive reinforcement can be used to work on the recall/release issues as well. I’m not clear on exactly what kind of compulsion training was used on your dog (or to what extent), but you may want to find someone who is well versed and knowledgeable with an e-collar to help you with the recall/release. Remember to reward the dog with major praise when he shows improvement, no matter how small a step it may be. It is important to get the dog comfortable and controlled while working out away from you. If he’s getting a major correction every time he does, he’s not going to do it.

Remember to always end your training session on a positive note. Better to put your dog up for the day after a success than to try to regain lost ground from pushing too hard or fast. Keeping training fun and positive for the dog will make for a better and more interested student.

Steve Dean replies: This does not seem to be an issue with the dog’s ability to range out during a search; therefore, I don’t believe that telling you how I would train a dog to search at distance will rectify your problem. I suspect that your reasoning that the dog is expecting to be corrected probably is right. Without knowing the details of how you have trained the “out” and “recall,” it is difficult to be specific about a remedy; however, the description that the dog gets frantic seems to imply that the dog is in conflict. That being the case, the issue is to try to resolve the conflict, which I suspect is between the dog wanting to carry out the task that you have set for him (to go away and search) and his belief that by doing so, he is going to be subjected to correction (pain). Only when you have accomplished that will the issue regarding training techniques to improve his ranging out be relevant.

If that is the case, then the first thing that needs to be done is to go right back to basics. For me, that would entail having the dog on a long line and leather collar. Have the decoy bait the dog to get the dog fired up, then have the decoy run a short distance and hide (depending on the dog’s ability, either open to the dog or concealed). The minute the decoy is out of sight, command the dog to search and, with the dog still on the line, run with the dog to where the decoy was hiding, allowing the dog to respond in whatever manner you use (bark or bite). If it’s a bark, I would escort the decoy away from the point where he was concealed and, at some stage during the escort, reward the dog in whatever fashion you use (a topic in itself). If reward includes a bite, then the dog has already gained part of the reward. The other part — your praise and encouragement while the dog is biting — should be given while the dog is engaging the decoy. I would then allow the dog to win the sleeve and, with the dog on the line in possession of the sleeve, I would escort the decoy away from the hide.

Without knowing how far you have come with training the “out” or “release,” it’s hard to say what would be best at this point. However, my choice would be to get the dog to release the sleeve by elevating his front feet off the ground a few inches (hand under the leather collar and lift) and then wait for the dog to release the sleeve — which may take anywhere from seconds to a long time, depending on the dog’s resolve to hold on to the sleeve. Eventually, the dog will release the sleeve, at which point the “release” command must be given instantly together with praise, and the decoy must give the dog a reward bite. If the “release” is the cause of the conflict (pain inflicted to compel the release), the object is to remove the cause of the conflict. Although having to wait for the dog to release by elevating him can be a time-consuming process, it’s worth the wait, as no conflict is caused because the dog releases of his own volition.

If that process is repeated often enough, the dog will come to anticipate releasing the sleeve with praise and reward (second bite). If it is done in conjunction with basic search exercises, the dog’s frantic behavior should diminish and his ability to search should improve because the cause of the conflict has been removed. Obviously, with regard to the dog releasing the sleeve in anticipation of the reward bite, this will have to be progressed gradually to the point where the dog releases, is placed in a controlled position, and rewarded. It’s clear that even in the early stages there must come a point where the dog releases the sleeve but doesn’t get a second bite (or it would be a never-ending scenario). The point is that the dog gets the reward bite more often than not and anticipates that a second bite will result from releasing the sleeve. Anticipation is the key to the release and to removing the conflict that is causing the search problem.

If, however, your dog is not trained on the bite reward and is, in fact, a bark-and-hold, then there are a host of other possible conflict issues. I don’t believe that we can go into them all so I will simply pose a few theories.

• Your dog has an issue with the decoy – possibly has been caused pain (fear). This may be an issue concerning the dog’s courage, hunt drive, pain threshold, or the quality of decoys used. No simple solution exists, as each requires a different remedy. If you have any of those issues, please contact me by e-mail.
• The dog does not understand the exercise – primarily due to having failed to respond to whatever training method has been used. Consider starting from basics using a different training method.
• Your dog has anxiety due to leaving the security of your presence, which is causing the conflict displayed by the frantic behavior and reluctance to go away and search on his own. As with a decoy issue, the cause can be any one of a number of concerns: a bad experience while searching, slippery floors, etc.

Whatever the cause of the conflict, I suspect that once you have identified it and worked it through (if possible), progressing the dog’s ability to search at a distance shouldn’t be a problem. The big if is whether the conflict can be resolved or whether it is so deeply rooted that the dog is incapable of being cured.

The answers I’ve given are purely generic. Without knowing the dog and handler, it is impossible to be specific. Neither is any slight intended toward any decoy, trainer, or handler. The responses given explore possible problems and solutions based on the limited knowledge obtained from the question.

Brad Smith replies: You hit the nail on the head when you said, “It is like he is expecting to be corrected.” That’s exactly what the dog is expecting. Your dog has learned, “When I’m away from my handler, I get corrected and it hurts. But when I’m close to my handler I don’t get corrected.”

Without seeing you and your dog working together, it’s hard to pinpoint why you have issues with your release and recall. But an educated guess would be that the dog doesn’t see you as the alpha/pack leader. Hopefully, in the past two years that has changed, and he no longer has a recall or release issue.

To get your dog to range out in front of you during an area search, I would go back to basics. Put your dog in a surveillance position, give your K-9 announcement, have the decoy visually stimulate your dog from a good distance away, and release the dog. As your dog is running toward the decoy, have the decoy disappear and hide. You stay where you release the dog and let him search by himself until he finds the decoy.

Once the dog has found the decoy, do not recall the dog to your position. I would have the handler find the dog and praise him. If the dog is biting the suspect, I would take the dog off the bite strongly instead of using compulsion to have him release.

Within a short period of time you should be able to give your K-9 announcement using only verbal stimulation and release the dog to find the suspect hiding deep in the search area. Eventually, you should be able to give your K-9 announcement without any stimulation, and your dog should search the area and find the suspect.

One thing that might help you with your recalls and verbal “outs” is rewarding your dog with a toy when he returns to you. Remember, dogs don’t work for free. I realize you’re going from prey drive to play drive, but this technique works very well. The dog is conditioned and learns that coming to the handler or releasing his bite is a good thing. And by obeying the handler’s command, he is rewarded with his toy instead of being corrected.

Ron Cloward replies: I am wondering what you are observing when you say your dog is “frantic.” I can only assume that the dog shows signs of stress when you try to place any distance between you and him. If that is the case, this is a classic example of what happens when we put too much compulsion training into a dog. He now has a lot of anxiety about going away from you for fear of correction. As trainers, we sometimes fix one problem only to create another. In this case, that is exactly what happened.

I would suggest you back way up with your training and focus on just one problem at a time. In this case, you are working on the distance in the search. I would try to do a lot of reward-based training and avoid any compulsion. You can accomplish this in many ways. I would suggest you have a decoy do some long flight-of-sight searches.

I would have the decoy hold a large tug in his hands and gain the dog’s attention while you hold the dog on a line. The decoy should now run off with the dog watching. I would hope the dog would be highly motivated at this point to run after the decoy. It is important that the decoy run a long distance and is concealed so the dog cannot get to him. The handler now makes his announcement as he would in a real search, thus conditioning the dog for the search. The handler then releases the dog and, once the dog finds the decoy and barks, delivers the toy. The handler should give the dog lots of praise. The more you play and praise, the more the dog will want to do it again.

I recommend that you not include any bites in this training to start. The last thing you want to do is create some conflict now that you’ve gotten him to go out and search. Remember, you are addressing one problem at a time. The toy can be used as an opportunity to build the dog’s drive to search. I would not “out” the dog off the toy. I would lift the dog’s front feet off the ground until he drops the toy. Then kick it away from the dog toward the decoy and have him repeat the same scenario. After you have done several of these exercises, give the dog a break. In training, short periods are better, and all you are really trying to accomplish is for the dog to remember.

After some time passes, bring the dog back and see what he remembers. This problem will not be fixed in one training session. The dog may perform great when you bring him back, but the next training session he may revert back to the original problem. The next session should start with the same flight of sight and move on when the dog performs properly.

The problem should thus be corrected, but remember when you return to your bite work that too much compulsion training may create the same problem again. Try incorporating more reward-based training to accomplish the “out” and the “recall.”
Remember that practice does not make perfect, but perfect practice does. Good luck!