Career Requirements for K-9 Cops
The term K-9 is a short form abbreviation of the word canine, and informally refers to any dog as well as to dogs serving in police organizations. The term K-9 cop can refer to either the police dogs themselves or their handlers. Police dogs are themselves considered police officers by many of the forces in which they serve, due to the nature of their risky line of work and close ties to their handlers.
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Career Training Requirements for K-9 Handlers
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K-9 police dog handlers typically come from a law enforcement background of at least two years prior to qualifying for training as a canine specialist officer, according to the City of Tempe, Arizona's police force recruitment website. In addition to having experience in law enforcement, K-9 handlers require an above-average level of physical fitness in order to keep up with the pace set by the agile dogs. An understanding of the dog's natural instincts and the ability to guide them towards a positive application are pillars of successful police K-9 handling. Basic training in canine handling for police officers takes four weeks and covers topics such as basic obedience training and narcotics search and identification, according to JobMonkey's interview with K-9 officer Mike Bagnell. Bagnell goes on to describe yearly refresher courses, which K-9 handlers are required to pass to renew their certification.
K-9 Breed and Behavior Requirements
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According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a nationwide Canadian police service, the best breeds for police dog service are Belgian shepherds and purebred German shepherds; of those breeds, only those in perfect physical condition are chosen for police duty. The dogs chosen as K-9 officers also need to have an aptitude for learning to closely obey the vocal and body language signals of their handlers. The day-to-day duties of a trained K-9 unit may involve searching for contraband, such as narcotics or explosives, or assisting in tracking and taking down suspects. A behavioral capacity to stop an activity on command is needed to prevent unnecessary harm to suspects and to limit the dog's exposure to potentially harmful narcotics. The standards for police K-9s is extremely high; the RCMP states that only 17 percent of the dogs initiated into the training program graduate into full police service.
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Police Dog Training
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Police dog training starts while the dog is still quite young. The average age of a police dog recruit is 12 to 18 months old, according to the RCMP Police Dogs Service Training Center. The basic training program for police dog runs 17 weeks long; upon successful completion of the basic training program, a police dog keeps up a rigorous training regimen to maintain its physical and mental health. The actual training focuses on two main disciplinary aspects. The first aspect is suspect apprehension, related to the hallmark padded dog training suit routinely shown in K-9 unit demonstration videos. The padded suits the trainers use to teach the dogs how to engage suspects are important because they encourage bites to the arms rather than the face or neck, putting an emphasis on nonlethal tactics that are integral to successful service in a police force. The second aspect of training is positive reinforcement; dogs training in contraband search are given treats and affection from their handlers for successfully completing challenges in which they are required to find samples of restricted substances, ranging from drugs to bombs and sometimes even hiding people.
Risks and Challenges of a K-9 Cop Career
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The actual nature of police work for a K-9 team can be challenging for a series of reasons, not the least of which is the emotional impact of losing a partner. In an attempt to escape, criminals often place less value on the life of a police dog than a human being, making the threat of violent injury to police dogs rather high, even when compared to their human counterparts. Losing a partner, even a canine partner, can have a profoundly stressful psychological impact on their handler. Even in the more likely event of a full and healthy career for the police dog, dogs have a relatively short lifespan; German shepherds, the most popular police breed, only have an average lifespan of 10.3 years, according to "Pet Tips" from the Pets.ca website. It is also unlikely that a police dog will serve the entirety of its life in active duty, meaning that a single K-9 police officer may have three or four canine partners during a 20-year career.
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- Photo Credit German Shepherd image by Terraina Lambert from Fotolia.com
