Dutch Shepherds Behaving Badly?

[centrop67]

I do a news search from time to time to provide links to news stories that involve Dutch Shepherds. Almost all the time it's about our canine heroes, and rarely is the news negative.

I need to be fair, so for discussion purposes only, I bring you the following news story from Charlottesville:

Link --> http://www.c-ville.com/police-k9s-attack/#.WEbJbrIrJhE

You can see from the get-go that the reporter has already made up her mind.

In early November, an Albemarle County police K9 bit and injured a colt owned by an Augusta County farm owner—just a year and a half after a dog with the Charlottesville Police Department attacked a child. Is it time for man’s best friend to be laid off?

I know that accidents happen, and that shouldn't happen with a working canine, but that's not really the problem with this statement:

When Ringo, a Dutch Shepherd working for the CPD, was accidentally released from the back of his handler’s patrol vehicle in June 2015 and immediately sunk his teeth into a 13-year-old girl standing nearby, Captain Gary Pleasants said he believed the dog reacted to a quick movement she made.

When she says that the dog "immediately sunk his teeth into a 13-year-old girl standing nearby" it's definitely alarming, but this is her unofficial, unwitnessed account of the incident. That's not great journalism. That's incorporating her own thoughts and feelings into a story.

At no point does she tell us the extent of the girl's injury, and later in the story the dog is cleared for continued work.

I have experienced an incident with Radar where while I was looking away, someone started yelling at me that Radar had bit him. This person became irate which amped Radar up. I tried to explain to the guy that it wasn't vicious, because if it had been, we'd be calling 911. But, of course at that point Radar didn't help the cause, because he was going nuts. I asked the guy to show me where he was bit, and at that point he said he was calling the cops. I said that was within his rights, and I would stay until they got there. At that point his buddy appeared and they started threatening me that I wouldn't be so tough without my dog. I said if you're not calling the cops, I am leaving, and I did.

You could say that Radar sunk his teeth into this guy. I believe if there was bite, it was Radar's clacking nip, because like i said, if he wanted to bite someone there would be blood.

Of course, I can't say that there wasn't a serious injury to the girl in the story - but why would the reporter leave that info out unless it hurt her characterization of the incident?

Anyway, as always I would love to hear your thoughts. Perhaps, I am wrong.

EDIT: BTW - this is a "news" story classified on the site as such and not an editorial, though that's what it appears to be.

[ralbucks]

I was wondering why the DS bolted like that out of the car. I thought police dogs are extremely well trained and it should not be a difficult task for a police dog to sit and wait to get out of the car. So I think the dog is not at fault, but may need more training or has some medical problems or be stressed. Unfortunate situation for the girl however, because even if she was not hurt she probably got scared. The article does not give a lot a detail and is confusing to me a little. :geek:

[Owned-By-Hendrix]

K9s are trained that when the door pops it's work time. And actually it's not so much as "training" as association. If an officer is down, he doesn't have time to hit the latch and yell "here" or whatever release word he has. Second that door opens the dog is rushing out. This is left this way for officer safety. The reverse of this is if the handler is standing there when the door opens and catches the dog to leash up, or tells the dog to load up and wait. However, they do not train boundaries like that for safety reasons. Just like how police dogs are trained that if there's certain movements around the handler, they bite, no command needed. For officer safety. (note, this is dependent on the department and their training policies, and important to note that various departments use different procedures to train the dog to defend the handler, but I'm using the blanket example to show that K9s are not trained like how we would train a house pet)

If the girl made a quick movement towards the officer, from a jump to a twirl to throwing her arms around emphatically, I totally believe the dog would react to defend the handler or at the very least, in prey. Perfectly normal for a K9. No need for more training or medical clearance. Simple mistake. I've seen worse in training.

Keep in mind, too, not every K9 is social. There are K9s more suitable for PR events, and some more for apprehension on SWAT, and some who can balance. Depends on what the department needs them for and what exactly this K9 was trained to do (search versus apprehension versus street versus dual purpose).