My son and I were waiting for a bus at a busy intersection yesterday, on our way to see “Avatar.” (an incredible experience, incidentally.)
A canine-unit police car was also waiting, for the light to change. It’s a very long light, and the whole time the police dog in the back was barking his or her fool head off in our direction. There were no dogs around, or cats, or squirrels that I could see.
5 minutes later, the same cop car drove by going the other way, and the dog barked at us again as it passed.
I thought police dogs were pretty well-trained. Do they bark at random stuff like other dogs do, when they’re not actually working? I have heard that everybody’s money has faint traces of drugs on it - do they react to that? What if someone is carrying medicinal marijuana, legal here? (I wasn’t.) Do they react to people carrying various controlled substances by prescription? (I wasn’t.)
It’s interesting, the implications of a method (the dog) which constitutes an unreasonable search except in certain specific circumstances. How do police handle this?
My guess is that a dog sitting the back seat of a police car isn’t working. It’s not just been put into “work mode” for lack of a better term, and so acts like a regular dog. Once it’s put on its lead, or giving the proper commands to start work the behavior changes. You can easily see this with seeing eye dogs, who are just like regular dogs when not in their harnesses. Once they are in their harness they become very business-like.
I don’t believe all police dogs are drug dogs. But even if it was a drug dog, from what I’ve seen they are not trained to bark when they smell drugs. If watching ‘cops’ has taught me anything, when searching, they scratch at the source of the odor and then sit.
I’ve watched plenty of “Cops,” too. The drug-sniffing canines are pretty mellow, but the “run-down-and-bite-the-suspect” dogs are much more excitable. If they see something they want to pursue, they’ll bark and bark until released. At any given time they’ll readily obey a police-issued command to heel, if said command is issued in a loud and forceful manner - but for the most part, from what I’ve seen, they don’t stop barking until the chaos of the scene settles down and the suspect is placed in a squad car.
My boy scout troop had a couple of times where we had a K9 unit come and give a demonstration. One time they demonstrated how the dog searches for drugs as well as how it is trained to attack. When searching for drugs the officer told us that the dog does not want the drugs but his toy (in this case the dog was still young and the toy he was looking for was something like a pvc pipe). When the dog smells drugs it starts to scratch in the area and the officer then gives his dog the “toy.” When they demonstrated how the dog attacks he said that once the dog has gone after a bad guy the more the bad guy struggles the more the dog is likely to hold on, bite and get him or her to the ground. In short, if you are a criminal and a police dog is after you the best thing you can do is stop moving, or fighting to get away from the animal.
As to what the dog is like when it is off duty, the officer said he is just like any other dog. I agree with Telemark in that the dog you saw was not in “work mode.”
As a side note, police dogs are normally trained in a different language, like German, so not any person off the street can give commands to the dog.
Dogs know when they’re “working” and when they’re not.
My dog acts completely differently in different places and situations because he associates those places and situations with types of behaviour. At agility is is calm and well behaved, and extremely obedient - almost to the point of showing off to everyone just how good he is. It’s his “job”, and he acts accordingly. At home he is cuddly and less obedient (although still fairly obedient). In the car he’s a nightmare.
My guess is that the dog was probably trained to bite, rather than being a drug dog. These dogs tend to be more aggressive and irritated by people near their car.
If you were at a busy intersection, you probably had people milling around all over the place. Maybe a jogger or two. Maybe somebody yelling for the bus. Police dogs are trained to key on movement (like joggers), yelling, or just on people other than their handler. In fact, when they are off-lead, you will notice that all the regular cops start getting really close to the handler so they won’t get accidentally bitten (although it does happen).
A little follow-up to this interesting side note: this is not deliberate (although it would make sense). Many police dogs are wash-outs from Ringsport (a sport I freely admit I do not understand very well). I guess there is some American Ringsport, but it’s mostly popular in Europe. Here’s a youtube videoof the sport. The dogs come over trained to bite, but the commands are in a European language, i.e. French, Belgian, German, etc. It’s not worth the time or confusion to re-train them when you can just teach the handler the basic commands in another language. Since the dog already knows how to bite, you just have to teach it to work effectively in a police environment.
I think everyone else nailed it, but here’s an anecdote…
I had an acquaintance who was a K-9 handler and his dog barked constantly when off duty. He kept it in a little dog-proof building at his home and no one was allowed anywhere near it because it would rip them to shreds. He trained his wife to shoot a gun, and it wasn’t for home defense or to protect herself from a rapist. He taught her in case the dog ever got out.
It would follow orders, but the handler pretty much considered it a danger to everyone, especially if he wasn’t around. Granted, that dog may have been the worst ever, I don’t know, but the point is that not all K-9s are the cute “visit kindergarten for show and tell” type.
Another anecdote: My husband is a K9 handler, and we share our home with a narcotics dog. When he’s off-duty, Mojo is just another pet - sleeps in the bedroom next to the 9-year-old; plays fetch in the back yard; chews up unwary socks. Mojo is the sort of K9 that visits kindergarten classes and nursing homes - not even a tiny bit aggressive.
However, there are two circumstances under which he will bark: if he is left at home alone (crated or not) or if he is left alone in the police cruiser. Both of these situations trigger his separation anxiety. Oddly enough, if he’s left alone in the truck or the van, he’s perfectly content. I guess he figures that he’s along for the ride, and that’s good enough; but if he’s in the patrol car, his daddy’s supposed to be right there, because they are supposed to go to work together, dang it!
From my exposure to other K9s (law enforcement and military,) most have their own quirks. They are certainly well-trained dogs, but they’re still dogs, not machines.
I’ve worked with several K9’s over the years (as a fellow cop, not a handler), both apprehension dogs and drug dogs. They are just like other dogs, and tend to bark when excited. It usually has nothing to do with their work.
In fact, they seem to bark the most when their handler wants to talk on the radio (dispatch is constantly asking them to repeat themselves because they can’t be heard over the dog) and when the lights go on. Just like the human cops, they love a code run!
When I started out as a reserve officer, I often rode with our K9 unit. The dog barked constantly, which never bothered me. The handler, however, nearly made me deaf by repeatedly screaming at the dog to shut up.
This is a dog translation for all the non-dog-people reading the thread.
Remember:
barking is a call for attention or backup
growling is the step on the continuum of force before biting you [Sir, please back away, I’m prepared to use force…]
if it wants to bite you, it won’t bark
