K-9 Unit In-Training

First Week Down

March 5, 2010

I apologize to everyone that has visited the blog and has not seen any posts from me, I havent had any internet access until I got home tonight.  WOW!! First week down, how many are left!?!?!

The people who told me it wouldn’t be easy didn’t lie. Like anything else in life, we’ve had our good days and our bad days. Sometimes we even have a good morning and a bad afternoon or vis versa. But this hasn’t deterred me from wanting to be a K9 handler.

Every day begins like this: arrive at the dog kennels around 745am. I get Don out of the kennel and complete the 7 daily healthy check on him. I check his eyes, nose, ears, mouth, butt, sex organs, and paws. Its important to make sure the dogs stay healthy.  Because dogs can’t communicate like humans, we have to check them over really good every day to make sure nothing is wrong. If something is wrong, like maybe a bleeding pad on the paw, then we notify the instructor and or a vet to determine if the dog should sit out of training for a day. So far Don is healthy. After a good health check, I brush Don. Unless you’ve lived with him and been in the car with him  you wouldn’t know he’s a handsome hairy beast.  Brushing Don every morning helps clean him and get his undercoat out.  Don really enjoys being brushed. Once he’s brushed I put him the squad car to sit until our first exercise.

As a team, we clean out any feces and or urine, we spray down all the kennels with water, spray them with disinfectant, scrub the kennel, and then rinse it one more time. All of  this is important to help keep the dogs healthy.  We usually finish all of this around 830am and then meet in the classroom.

My class is made up of 16 officers/deputies/state troopers all from around the state. Some handlers have previously handled police dogs and some are new like me.  I have one main instructor and then each week different instructors from around the state will come and help.  The instructors are really great; always willing to help when a handler is struggling in a specific area. Even the handlers who have previously had dogs, they often help new handlers whenever they can.  

During this first week Don has been working on sitting, laying down, stopping, and bite work. Like you and me, Don has his weaknesses and his strengths. Don is really good at jumping over walls; he might be little but he can jump.  Even though sometimes I get frustrated, its very rewarding to watch him succeed at something new; the reward always out weighs the frustration. I’ve also worked Don on some drug exercises; Don did awesome at these exercises!!! Its important Don and I work as a team. If we both just do our own thing then nothing gets accomplished. Every time we wrap up an exercise we always end on a good note. For example, if I’m working with Don on his sit position and he does it really well, then I reward him with his tennis ball, alot of praise, and we run back to the car.  Dogs get frustrated too, sometimes they don’t understand what we want from them. So its important we end on a good note because we are putting them in the kennel and we want them happy and if they sense we are happy with them then they are happy too.  

I’m not going lie, Don is probably the most handsome dog there, but don’t worry I’m keeping him on the straight and narrow   Don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions.  Hopefully when I go back to Springfield on Monday, I’ll be able to access the internet and put posts up daily.

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