Talk:Police dog/Archive 1

Shepherds
most police dogs are german sheperds, dutch sheperd, and a few others2601:800:4001:3270:B906:D895:88B8:2096 (talk) 18:15, 16 October 2019 (UTC) Are police allowed to (or more importantly, do they typically) search you if a drug sniffer dog acts like it smells something suspicious, in a situation where you otherwise were not previously suspected of carrying drugs and which the police officer was not previously looking for any?
 * I'm not totally sure about the "allowed" part, but yes, they will search a person, vehicle etc if their drug-dog just happens to alert, if they want to. Someone I know got busted like that. Lachatdelarue [[User talk:Lachatdelarue|(talk)]] 14:08, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)fhFjsgfhJdgs

Depends on where you are, but in the United States, YES. They are allowed per the US Supreme Court in Illinios v. Caballes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.190.38.84 (talk) 20:06, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Rescue dogs and Arabs
Is it true that rescue dogs walking on house ruins are frowned upon in Arab (or Islamic) countries because they think of dogs as an unholy beast? Or something like that. --Error 00:34, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Response: I don't know where you got that, but K9 dogs ARE USED in many places, for instance Saudi Arabia (that is the most Islamic and most Arab country in the world). Specifically in sensitive places such as Dhahran and oil plants (there are permanent K9's in front of gates searching for possible bombs in entering cars). However, other places may not use dogs not because they think they are "unholy beasts," but because they 1- can not afford it (or don't want to) and 2- they don't even have decent rescue teams, who's supposed to operate such dogs? Eagle 17:15, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)


 * Response: Dogs are indeed used, but have a negative symbolism in certain contexts. One of the many ways Western soldiers have ruffled feathers in Iraq has been to search houses with the help of dogs; to take a dog into someone's house is tantamount to urinating on their floor.  --Vorpalbla 6/5/05

Dog training
Does anyone know if all police dogs receive the same training? Are bomb-sniffers and drug-sniffers the same dog?


 * There are lots of different activities for "police dogs" and they all require different training. Your basic police dog--intimidate, attack, hold, alert, whatever, is one type of training.  Drug sniffing, explosive sniffing, 'cadaver' sniffing, search & rescue...all require different approaches and different smells and require that the dog's handler keep up a regimen of practice of all the smells in the range of their training (e.g., different types of drugs, different types of explosives...).  It's possible that someone could train their dog to do all types, but it would be a lot of training work and a lot of ongoing practice and so most dogs are used for one thing, not multiple.  In addition, one usually wants drug-sniffing or explosive-sniffing dogs who don't intimidate the general public and who have excellent noses--so beagles are often used--but for search and rescue you might want a bigger dog who's more interested in working with people, for example. I don't know what percentage are cross-trained, if any.  Elf | Talk 8 July 2005 06:10 (UTC)


 * Is it true that they go for the nads?--D-Boy 19:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Work to be done
This page needs some work. I think it would begood to devide the page based on nation or region (North America, EU, Australia, etc) as the application and laws vary a lot I think. Robert Brockway 21:44, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Could we try to minimize the extent of regionalizing information? This article is, after all, about police dogs in general, not individual jurisdictions. If someone wants to write about individual jurisdictions they would be best of starting separate articles for those topics.
 * Peter Isotalo 14:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree 100% with Peter - articles are much better without regional sections, and any particularly interesting information included in the main body of the text. Owain.davies 06:34, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Arpad Vass
New research being conducted on a Decomposition odor analysis or DOA for Cadaver dogs by Arpad Vass.SriMesh | talk  03:00, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Disputed
It says that on 9/11/01 the TSA only had a certain amount of dogs. How can this be since the TSA did not exist on 9/11/01 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.190.38.84 (talk) 20:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Googling for citation of people being charged for killing police dogs, I was unable to find any. Adding tag to assertion. Gerardw (talk) 17:15, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Sniffing out food
Some of the popular breeds mentioned in the article have "sniffing out food" as one of their attributes. Is there some reason why the police would specifically need a dog to sniff out food, or is some joker suggesting those breeds are particularly prone to going 'off-mission' should they come across food smells? Astronaut (talk) 04:19, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * In plenty of countries it is illegal to import some/all foods. On my last visits to both NZ and Australia in 2005 and 2010 we were sniffed by dogs looking for food. The NZ dog actually detected that our rucksack had been used for a picnic some days previously - pretty impressive. So yes, I think it's real. Best wishes DBaK (talk) 22:25, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Many problems with this essay article
There are flavors of several problems with this article that might be summarized as its being more of an essay than a formal, factual encyclopedic article. I've added a tag, and removed a couple of the many examples.

Among the problems is the hint of bias on the part of the editors that people have been slow recognizing how important police dogs are. The same could be said of a thousand things. It's not an encyclopedia's purpose to make uncited social commentary. Unreferenced phrases such as "a growing number of law-enforcement organizations", "The traditional image of a police dog is one used to enforce public order", "most commonly used because of their availability", etc. are not couched in formal language, are OR, and have no place in an encyclopedia.

The article is overly long for the amount of encyclopedic content. Example: Readers do not need to know much (if any) of this information: "the 1934 committee set up an experimental Home Office dog training school in Washwater, near Newbury, adjoining Lord Carnarvon's Highclere Estate". What possible difference does it make that Washwater is near Newbury or adjoining ... anything? The editors here have been carried away with their enthusiasm for the subject, and in the process created a hugely long article, ignoring a number of Wiki MOS conventions, that a very small percent of readers are liable to read from start to finish. 98.210.208.107 (talk) 11:36, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Bodyguard dog with sniffer?!?
The police dog entry includes this sentence "For some sniffer dogs in environments where it is perceived that a criminal may attempt to kill the dog to prevent detection, a bodyguard dog is assigned with the sniffer to intimidate and, if necessary, attack anyone who would attack the sniffer." This is intriguing but I have been unable to verify this use through an extensive net search. I called Sergeant Paul Dunnom of the St. Paul (MN) Police Department's K-9 Unit (named #1 department team in the U.S. in 1989-1991, 1995 and 1997--they know police dogs). Dunnom said he had never heard of deploying two dogs with one to search and one to protect the detection dog. I think this sentence should be cited, expanded or removed. It's a nice IDEA, but it doesn't seem to be used at all.

[ ManicParroT 03:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Response: I agree. I have spoken to several ex-Customs and Excise officers who have never heard of this idea either. It seems counter-intuitive; it's not as though a sniffer dog is likely to be away from its owner for any length of time. spetswalshe 01/12/2006
 * There seemed to be consensus, so I went ahead and dropped the sentence.]


 * I've come across this in a couple cases of fiction, but I've never heard of it used in the real world. For example, in Max Brooks' book World War Z, K9 teams were occasionally equipped with 3 dogs per handler, 1 being the mission dependant (for example, recon) which was usually a smaller dog, and 2 guard dogs. These guard dogs would protect the mission dependant from wild dogs, feral cats, etc. While this book was released a just a couple of months ago, I have certainly seen it before in other works of fiction. So perhaps this is where the idea stems from.

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the reason for confusion is probibly the fact they deploy two or more hounds to search for a missing person or fugitive because hounds completely lack any obediance, so if a hound doesn't want to fallow the trail anymore there is nothing the handiler can do but use the second one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.157.222.10 (talk) 15:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I attended a presentation in Alabama (US) where a police canine handler deployed three dogs, all of them off leash, at once. One was a bloodhound who did the scent work of tracking a fleeing criminal.  The other two dogs, both German Shepherds, were there to protect him because he was a good distance away from the handler and was not trained (did not have the correct temperament) to protect himself.  They also made the apprehension if the criminal tried to flee once he was found.  They detained him until the handler could arrive and make the arrest. It's quite rare but at least one agency uses this technique  Beanyandcecil (talk) 12:31, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

The lead section does not summarize the article
The lead section of this article does not summarize the contents as it is supposed to. See WP:LEAD. JoshuSasori (talk) 04:31, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

"commonly referred to as a "K-9 dog""
The intro states this as though it were a settled fact. In the US, maybe. Not in Britain (despite the Doctor Who character) - we just say "police dog". 86.136.249.150 (talk) 02:45, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I would say it is common enough in the UK, and its use in North America is enough for it to be mentioned anyway. OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 04:49, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I've never heard it used in the UK.31.52.113.216 (talk) 21:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * This is one of very many problems with the lead section, which needs a complete rewrite. JoshuSasori (talk) 04:32, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

United Kingdom British Transport Commission
The statement that `the British Transport Commission took over in 1910' is wrong as the BTC was not established until Jan 1st 1949. Presumably either another organisation is meant, or another date. Barney Bruchstein (talk) 18:44, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

420 trained dogs - no citation
"For example, as of February 2007, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration currently uses 420 trained dogs to patrol 75 airports and 13 major transit systems."

420 seems like an unlikely number of drug dogs. No citation given on this. Looks like a subtle - and funny - joke but oughtn't stand. 70.58.207.86 (talk) 21:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * TSA isn't interested in drugs, they are looking for bombs. "Transportation Security Administration passenger screening canine teams work to deter and detect explosives within airports and other transportation systems across the nation. Currently, there are more than 900 teams deployed in support of security and screening operations."  https://www.tsa.gov/news/passenger-screening-canine-teams-work-to-detect-explosives   Beanyandcecil (talk) 23:22, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

"K-9" is not a homophone of "canine"
In the introduction it says that "K-9" is a homophone of "canine". But that’s not what a homophone is. A homophone requires different meaning and different spelling while still being pronounced the same way. The last two points are correct (different spelling and same pronountiation), but especially in this context "K-9" and "canine" have the same meaning.

Correct examples of a homophone would be the words "two", "too" and "to". A different example would be "site" and "sight". Those have completely different meanings. MikelG (talk) 03:04, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Personhood of Police Dogs
Has there been any research on how treating police dogs as police officers is tantamount to granting them personhood? Some jurisdictions seem to have laws which protect police dogs as officers, so I think it should be more notable in the article that this is a form of animal suffrage, as long as someone else notable has made that connection. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 19:48, 21 November 2019 (UTC)