Last week Tarheel Canine hosted Dr. Terry Fleck for a K9 legal update in Baltimore, MD. We attracted close to 60 participants from NY, NJ, PA, MD, DE, VA and NC including handlers, supervisors and a state's attorney.  If you haven't been to a legal update, make arrangements to do so. Not only are the most recent federal cases discussed, but Terry also does research on state case law for the state in which the seminar is held.

I think one of the biggest eye-openers of the seminar for anyone who hasn't been to one before is how the legalities of K9 usage need to impact training. Issues in patrol work such as:  how announcements are given, when such announcements are given during a tactical operation, what kinds of methods should be used in training building searches (as in clear, down and cover which we teach at Tarheel Canine), and where the dog is TARGETED to grip in an apprehension. There will be a blog post on here shortly to discuss both the training and legal reasons why targeting should absolutely be taught, and police dogs should not be taught or encouraged to bite just "anywhere," despite the loads of conventional wisdom to the contrary, and active instruction to the contrary.

I want to thank Terry for his knowledge, insight, and expertise and if you haven't had a chance to work with Terry, visit his website and make contact with him. www.k9fleck.org he will be retiring from his work in 2012 - so take advantage of his expertise while you can.

One of the main things that separates a great K9 handler or trainer from a good K9 handler or trainer, is what I call "Canine Intuition." Canine Intuition is developed through quiet observation, experience, aplying training and problem solving skills with both successful and non-successful outcomes, and a lifetime of being open to learning new ideas and seeking new ways to train efficiently.  The antithesis of this ethic in dog training is the "Know it All." The real experts in our field are self-evident by their accomplishments and the demand for their expertise as teachers, but in my experience these truely accomplished people are open, like to share their knowledge, can admit failure (but don't associate the failure of a training exercise with a personal failure but rather a learning experience of high value), and they tend to give credit to others rather than heap it on themselves. When they see a good idea, instead of criticizing it, they ask questions, they try to adopt it, and tweak it in their own way, but give credit not just privately but publicly to those who had the intutiion first.

The Know it All Canine Handler - This handler, after getting his dog for approximately 2 weeks, has, by some divine intervention, become the world's leading authority on training dogs although he has yet to train even one dog to completion. If a training exercise is not successful, he wants to buck the system and try to do things "his way" - even though he hasn't had enough training experience to anticipate the flaws in his idea of training - usually with disasterous outcome.  These handlers go home with their dogs outside of training and usually do exactly the opposite of what their trainer has told them to do. If the trainer says lay off the obedience, the handler does excessive amounts of obedience. He knows so little, he has no idea how what he does will affect the overall outcome of the dog's training. His one good attribute is his drive to be successful, although it needs to be channelled into openness rather than arrogance.

The Know it All Canine Trainer - This person is in charge of training other people. This person has little humility and a boatload of arrogance. They tend to live in the past of their accomplishments, and do not look to change anything. They most likely started their careers as the "Know it All Canine Handler" and had success and promotion to their present position where they can exercise their authority over others. The know it all feels like less of a success if he didn't develop a technique, or has to admit that it is time to change something he has done for years, and so it becomes easier to criticize new ideas and stagnate. These trainers are usually people who are "Big Fish in a Little Pond" in some region of the country, out of which they rarely venture, because that would put them in the position of having to be faced with new ideas, techniques and approaches. They surround themseves with sycophants who worship them. Look out for these people, because their arrogance is infectious, and they tend to create copies of themselves when training handlers. Remember the bible proverb: "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Humility will, eventually, find you. The fact is that when you open your heart and mind to become a student and not seek to show what you know, or behave arrogantly because you have experience or past success, you grow and change with the times.  You add more to your toolbox as a trainer, and you come to realize that there is always room to improve, change, adapt your training to new knowledge of canine behavior, or new techniques that are proven to work, even though you may not have thought of it first or used it in the past. Embrace your own development and learning.

Seek out trainers with real expertise and standing in our profession, and they will tell you that they have reinvented their training programs many times as they have grown and learned new things. This experience, this openness, is what having canine intuition is all about. Training isn't about "my method" which is an egocentric view of training, but rather training is about doing what is best for the dog and handler team. It is driven by having a successful outcome, no matter who had the idea to fix a problem, or get the dog out of a training issue that was holding the team back. From these experiences a real trainer will simply absorb the experience for the next time.

See Jerry's new article in Police K9 Magazine "The Power of Reward: Obedience" in the March/April issue, available now! If youa re not a subscriber, go to www.policek9magazine.com and subscribe!

Jerry Bradshaw and Tarheel Canine will be at the upcoming HITS conference sponsored by Police K9 Magazine, in Louisville KY in April 2009. Come stop by the booth!!

Tarheel Canine welcomes agencies from around the east coast to the Terry Fleck Legal Update seminar in Baltimore, MD tomorrow at the Ramada Inn at the BWI airport.

Schedule your legal update with Terry Fleck at www.k9fleck.org

I have been slack in completing my New Year’s Training Resolutions (what’s new? They are New Year’s resolutions) that I started on this blog in January. I completed the first two in that original post, and now included are 3-5, and so for completeness, I have all of them here in one place:

1. Establish Goals
2. Break Down Training into Steps
3. Train from the result to the start (Back Chaining)
4. Anticipate Outcomes and set up for success
5. Use more Reward, and Compel Efficiently

Establish Goals

Too many police dog handlers fail to establish goals, whether for a training session they are about to begin, or for a more medium term goal such as the dog indicating on a high find deep in a building on a building search. As a handler you need to take control of your training program and understand why you are doing a particular exercise in a particular way. You should set up training to achieve specific, defined goals. Don’t just set out drug hides to run the dog on without regard for difficulty or objectives you may have in training. In every session you should be working on particular skills, such as the alert, or the searching behavior, or ignoring distractions you set up such as food or novel odors to proof the dog’s odor recognition. Training record forms set us up for lazy training: We fill in drug odors and amounts, and rate performance. Don’t confuse your records with training goals. Know what your dog needs to improve upon, and note it in the narratives, and then set up training to directly address those weaknesses. Set up training to reinforce strengths as well. You should be able to state your training goals with your dog for every skill set he possesses at any time. If you can’t do that, start thinking about it so that you can. Write down everything you want your dog to be capable of doing (within reason) and set those as long term goals. Then decide how to break each goal into a set of manageable training steps you can consistently train.

Break Down Training into Small Steps

 Let’s say a dog has an issue you are addressing in training. Say the dog is having trouble with the bark alert in the building search. If the alert is the problem, we need repetition of the alert to train and condition the response we want. So set up your session to address that specific issue. Having the dog search a giant building for one alert opportunity is inefficient and lacks focus, and is poor training planning because it fails to break down the training to focus on the issue your dog needs to have addressed. A simple search problem which will not tire the dog out and an easy find is what we want to create so we can concentrate on training the alert behavior. As the alert behavior becomes a habit, we can slowly make the search problem more complex, and if the alert maintains, we add further complexity. I hear so many times how handlers have been “working hard” on an issue and the dog isn’t responding, but working hard and working smart are two different things. You can dig a ditch with an ice pick, and yes, you will work hard at it and it will take a lot of time. Training must be goal oriented, and the session must be focused to achieve those goals, and this is accomplished by breaking the problems down into small manageable concepts and training in a progression, step by step.

 Train from the Result to the Start (Back Chaining)

One of the biggest novice mistakes in training is to train a sequence of behaviors in the same order that you view them in the final result. For example, when sending a dog to search for a suspect in a building search and perform a hold and bark on the hidden subject, the biggest mistake you can make is to not train from the result backwards to the start.

 Let’s take an even simpler version of this exercise, the hold and bark in a Schutzhund I. The dog searches 2 blinds one blank (first) then comes around and is sent to the hot blind where the decoy is passive, and the dog must bark at him for a fair bit if time before disengaging.

 I start with the dog on the back-tie developing the barking behavior – barking brings the decoy to the dog. The bark must be developed to the extent that the dog will bark at the decoy for the period of time defined in the rules, and this is developed with variable reward for the length of time the dog is barking with a grip reward.

 The decoy starts at a distance from the dog from behind or inside the blind. He moves on each bark in a quick prey-like step toward the dog for each, or every other bark, until the decoy is a step or two away, and on a good bark, give the grip as a reward. When the dog does this easily, every time, drawing the decoy our of the blind to him, and barking at him on a loose line when the decoy is within striking distance (this in itself is a process – getting the dog to settle in close), we can then transition to sends to the decoy. We start close to the decoy, first from only a few feet away (I like to do it on slick floors to control the dog easily without a lot of correction). Then the handler moves back from the decoy around the blind in the direction he wants the dog to run.

This is repeated systematically, using reward and correction (also varying fly-out bites with hold and barks of variable length followed by a reward grip), until the handler and dog are all the way to the start position called for in the trial rules – i.e., we have moved away from the decoy, around blind #5 (empty in the trial) back into the middle of the field.  The result, a hold and bark in the blind, is developed by starting at the result, and working backwards toward the start position.

 The building search for a police dog is developed with the same process, although there are some more variables that have to be accounted for.

Anticipate Outcomes and set up for Success

 A good trainer anticipates outcomes. Training is by definition setting up a process for the dog to complete where we, as closely as possible, set up the scenario such that we insure the outcome that we want, and we repeat this again and again to condition the response.

 For example, when training or maintaining a dog to out on command, I always have a line on the dog, ready for correction if the dog fails to comply, and I always have a reward (grip) available for rewarding the out when completed properly, no matter what scenario I am working on. Let’s say I am training a building search, and I send in the dog and he locates the bad guy, and we throw open the door for a grip, and then after a good fight we are ready to out the dog – but we have no way to enforce the command because there is no line on the dog – should you be surprised if he fails to out on command? The dog will learn in what context you are able to influence him, and in what context you are not.

 What I do is affix a short correction line on the dog once the dog is on the grip during the fight with the decoy so that either myself or my “back up officer” – just another trainer - on the apprehension can make a correction if the dog does not out, and if he does, the decoy will give him another grip as a reward for the release. No matter what I am working on with my dog in training, there must ALWAYS be a way to make the dog comply, and as well a way to reward compliance. I am ALWAYS anticipating the possibility of non-compliance, and setting up the training session to achieve the outcome I desire – clean outing in every context. I never rely on the dog to “be good” I always assume non-compliance, and am pleased to reward when that assumption is wrong! Imagine if your training as a cop was to assume suspects were unarmed, and rely on them to not take advantage of that assumption! Yet there are handlers who work their dogs with no way to ensure outcomes all the time in training!

 Use More Reward, and Compel Efficiently

 In 2009 I hope to get police dog handlers to use more reward in general. Forget about the old idea that praise is enough for the dog. This is outdated nonsense. When will you stop working for a paycheck and work for only praise from your superiors and the public? Tangible rewards (Ball, Jute roll, grips – or money for you) are far more effective in motivating behavior than praise. The idea that praise is enough is based on an ego-centric notion of the alpha - that your dog somehow lives to please you, the “great master.” Get over yourself right now, and give your dog something he really wants!  Not that praise isn’t nice, but to your high-drive K9, a jute roll and a vigorous game of tug is much more satisfying!

 And when you do have to correct, for a dog’s willful disobedience, do it efficiently. Don’t nag your corrections, do it once, get compliance, and then reward that compliance. Dogs will go down the easiest path. Make that path a clear one in terms of what to avoid doing (with correction) and what to perform (reward).

 Look for my article “The Power of Reward Part 1: Obedience” in the current issue of Police K9 Magazine which discusses in detail how to use reward in your obedience training to powerful effect!

I recently watched one of those police shows on spike where the Special Enforcement Unit did a drug raid, and then they called in a drug dog. The dog searched very nicely off leash without interference from the handler, until the dog grabbed a hold of a duffle bag and then started scratching and biting it, with the handler encouraging the behavior with "Did you find the drugs?"  and "Get it boy!"....before opening the bag. If you ask your dog a question, and he answers you, please seek professional help. But be careful with overpraising and rewarding on the street!

I see this all the time with handlers praising their dog and even rewarding with a toy for an UNCONFIRMED alert - meaning the handler has no idea if he just rewarded the dog for finding drugs, being frustrated and tearing something up, or for locating with excellent precision, a ham sandwich.

No matter how reliable your dog is, rewarding unconfirmed finds on the street is likely to cause false alerting somewhere down the road, because no matter how good your dog is, he will eventually alert on something at some time, that isn't cotnraband. he is a dog and is not perfect.

The proper approach to a street alert is to gently praise the dog off the find, place him in a down or walk him away and confrm the alert. If the dog is correct, allow him to search from a different angle than he did previously (disorienting the dog so he doesn't run to the location on memory but rather searches with his nose) and then when you get the  alert on confirmed contraband reward him with a toy and generous praise. This brings your reward system into the variable stage and will make your dog's alert behavior stronger and stronger.

I saw this on my Google news alerts the other day, and thought it was interesting and fairly clever how these folks managed to train the dog to detect low glucose levels in diabetic patients - can you imagine the use of these dogs for people who live alone....

http://www.tri-cityherald.com/901/story/494543.html

You can spot a seasoned detection handler by how he approaches a search area, whether on a deployment or in a certification. They look at their area before they leap into action. New handlers tend to step off at 100 miles an hour into a search problem before giving a moment's thought to how to approach the problem. Here are some tips:

1. Survey the area you will search and identify your anchor points. Determine if you will free search, scan, or direct the search. If you can't free search or scan, your training is incomplete, so learn from someone who can how to teach your dog to do all three.

2. If trained properly with well thought out hide placement, and the dog has a nicely conditioned search pattern to locate productive areas, you won't have to be too involved so you will likely scan or free search (safety is a consideration). Then your role is to note where he doesn't go, and where he does go, and complete the pattern with this knowledge and some direction.

3. Identify your hazards, to you and the dog with a safety check before proceeding as well.

4. Identify obstacles to a thorough search: something preventing your dog from going deep into an area, or high into another , or low somewhere.

5. Read the Air: Understand the likely air movement and ventilation of the area, both mechanical and physical. Are there vacuums created with gaps under or over exterior doors, where scent might gravitate? Are there intakes or vents in the area that might push or pull scent? Is the wall (sun beating down on it from behinde, say) or window near your search area relatively cold or relatively warm compared with the rest of the room, thus inducing convection currents?

5. Note places you will particularly want to present high or low, because of the air movement or ventilation. 

6. Then start your search, and watch your dog and read his behavior. Think about each search problem thoroughly prior to starting. It will likely take less than a minute to notice all of these things.

If you have trained like you should have, you will trust him. If you haven't trained like you should have, make a commitment to be better than you have been, but don't get pissed at your dog. He's not the one who would rather watch the game than train.

Have you ever got into a verbal altercation with another person who argues back very forcefully, or turns the argument around to attack you? Yes, we all have, and usually it makes you even angrier, and prolongs the fight.

Have you ever gotten into a similar argument with someone, who instead of arguing back, or turning it around on you, says something like "I see you are upset, please don't yell at me, let's talk about it," and they keep a calm, non-combative, demeanor? It diffuses the argument, and puts you back on a productive road.

Relate this to dealing with your police dog. Do you have a dog who sometimes comes up the leash out of frustration, or reactivity to a correction? In the old days, we were instructed to not let the dog "win," by fighting fire with fire, if you get my drift. But the real work of solving handler aggression does not come in the moments when we see handler aggression, it comes in how we structure the relationship with the dog in the 99% of the time when he isn't showing us handler aggressive behavior. You need to learn K9 Judo rather than K9 Karate. Reject the model of the Alpha, and learn the model of the Super Alpha.

What if instead of going full bore, you stay calm, hold the dog up a little, and then calmy redirect him into some obedience. Give him something to do with his conflict - sit, or down or heel with you a little - before you address the issue that caused the argumant in the first place.  What if in the time in between these episodes you set the dog up tfor te kind of relationship where he is eager to show you the deference you want him to show you. Here are some tips:

1. Disorient his expectations, and set the dog up to have to show deference to get anything he desires, including affection, rewards, food, etc.  (including toys, bite sessions).

2. Use obedience as a pre-cursor to his favorite activities or those where he gives you problems (e.g. obedience for bites).

3. Keep a level head – leaders do not explode with anger. Be results oriented, and do not become upset if you need a few trials to get the desired behaviors. Regiment his life. He makes no decisions, and he makes no choices on his own.

4. Use negative punishment to reduce unwanted behaviors (dominance behaviors). Positively reinforce appropriate behaviors. Use rewards in obedience (food rewards work well – little chance of fighting over possession of the reward).

5. Focus on the pre-cursors to aggressive responses, and plan your training to set yourself up to win any possible confrontations. (e.g. You know he gets frustrated and impulsive prior to bite work, and challenges your authority to control him).

6. Desensitize the dog to triggers (e.g. corrections, by focusing the dog outwardly during the use of physical correction, and planning ahead).

If anyone would like more information on this topic, email Jerry at malinois_jb@mindspring.com for a copy of the powerpoint presentation on this subject of handler aggression and dominance in Police K9s.

The book continues to get good reviews and feedback from police K9 schools, and trainers from as far away as Finland's customs service who we met at the Vegas Law Dog Conference.

Link to the publisher's site:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback_book/controlled_aggression/2317473

For large bulk orders for police K9 classes, please e-mail Jerry at malinois_jb@mindspring.com There is a substantial discount for bulk and educational orders.

Thank you to those who have purchased the book and given me feedback!

 Dominance aggression is usually shown by male dogs (85% of cases) and is most intense as social maturity is approached (2-2.5 yrs). Social maturity takes a lot longer to arrive than sexual maturity. This means that with the typical dog in a police training program, you can expect dominance aggression to rear its head later in your relationship than sooner if you are starting with a young dog (12-16 months).

Dominance aggression is both genetic and learned. The genetic component is formed while still in the womb when a testosterone surge “masculanizes” the brain. If no testosterone surge occurs, a female brain is created. Therefore, castration has little effect on correcting this behavior. However, since the behavior is also partly a learned behavior, extinction, to some degree is still possible.

 Dogs tend to direct their dominance aggression toward those that are threats to their social position (i.e. the K9 handler, or family members if the dog is allowed to interact with the family). Because family members interact with the dog less often than the handler, they are often perceived as passive and generally submissive from the dog’s point of view, thus easy targets for the dog to exert and "try out" dominant aggressive behaviors. For these reasons we suggest limiting all free interaction with the family, and only supervised, limited interaction until all the obedience training and drive focusing training is completed.

Common Triggers of Dominance Aggression: K9 Handlers must learn how to desensitize their dogs to these triggers.

n      Affection

n      Placing or removing collars/leads which initiate control on the dog.

n      Punishment (staring/discipline).

n      Withholding rewards (e.g. keeping the dog under obedience when he thinks he may do bite work).

n      Grooming (Postural)

n      Can be context driven (e.g. place associated)

n      Can be psychologically dominant and physically submissive (e.g. allow physical touching/handling).

n      Handler Over-protectiveness.

n      Can be psychologically dominant yet physically submissive.  

If you are having problems with dominance aggression with your police dog, email Jerry at malinois_jb@mindspring.com for a copy of his power-point presentation on the subject which includes strategies for reducing this response in your police K9.

I saw a detection handler training tip on another website (www.caninesolution.com) which said "Take control when you have to, not because you want to."

For new K9 handlers, this is often one of the hardest things to do, which is to allow your dog to work without influencing him. Your detection dog is trained to search an area, locate a scent cone and work into source, and if properly trained, he won't likely need your help. In fact, intervening will more than likely break his concentration and take his mind off of the problem he was solving and put it on you.

In detection, tracking, building searches, your dog is the one with the capability to solve the problem (nose) not you, and so you must let him work it out.  Another tip on the website said, "Searches are 90% dog and 10% you." I agree. Keep out of his way, use your eyes to note areas he missed - your function is as his spotter - so you can make sure he makes a complete search of an area. Your function is not to solve the problem.

You need to work on known hides and known blank areas in training in order to learn your dog's behavior and behavior changes when searching - if you do this you will soon develop the confidence to allow him to work uninfluenced.

A long time ago when I first started in dog training I was part of a Schutzhund club in North Carolina, and I was one of the main training decoys for the group. I worked with a woman who owned a nice Doberman for a number of months prior to leaving the club to pursue other training opportunities. About 6 months after I left, she called me and told me of a problem with her dog. Apparently, when on the back-tie, the young Dobe would no longer come up off the ground to get the grip when offered, but rather would wait for the decoy to present the sleeve low and push the grip into the dog's mouth.  After working the dog privately I realized the decoy she was working with was not making the dog come to the grip, but rather jamming the sleeve into the dog's mouth when he delivered the grip. The dog was just waiting for the decoy to provide the valet service of placing the sleeve in his mouth!

In my book, Controlled Aggression, I make the point that when working young dogs we need to develop the dog's strike by making misses, and holding the sleeve high upon delivery so the dog gets used to driving into the grip, rather than having the grip be given to the dog. This was a rookie decoy mistake, but it highlights an issue: patterns you get into in training, even if inadvertently, will become conditioned responses in your dog over time.

A second example: You use and practice tactical removals in your patrol training almost universally, and then when certification rolls around your dog will only out if you are right on top of him, and he ignores the verbal out at a distance.  Clearly in a real apprehension you are going to go hands on your dog and remove him from the grip. Therefore, you do need to practice this skill. The problem is that by not varying the mode of release in training, you create a habit, or expectation, that letting go is associated with the handler being hands on and close to the dog. The dog comes to ignore you when you are away from him and he is biting, because you do not practice influencing his behavior in this context often enough for it to matter to your dog. The dog becomes dependent upon you being near him as part of the cue to release. When that cue is missing the dog fights on. This pattern of training created an unintended consequence.

A third example: You send your dog for a long apprehension. The dog bites firm, full and hard as he is supposed to. From a distance you tell him to release, and he does not. You run towards him, and when you are about 10 feet away coming in like a thundering herd of buffalo, the dog releases into a guard and holds the suspect. As a result of his compliance you do not correct him. Your trainer tells you the dog just doesn't respect you. In reality, you have never actually enforced the release from a distance, and have come up on him to enforce it, so the dog makes an association that the out process is one command at a distance that is ignored and he must only release when you get close enough to deliver the consequence. You have created a pattern that the dog has learned well.

A fourth example: You are teaching the dog to do a focused heel using a toy, such as a ball or jute roll. The jute roll is held under your left arm to attract the dog's attention up, and you reward the dog for his attention at variable times during the heeling pattern. You are getting ready for your first trial with the dog. You then enter the trial, and when you ask for attention at the start line, the dog looks up and sees no jute roll, and then gives you no attention. But you have trained diligently for months! You never saw him blow you off like this! The problem is in the cue you created. The dog expects to see the jute roll, and there was never any consequence for looking away when the jute roll was not present and in view, and in fact you never asked for attention when the jute was not present. The dog doesn't see the situation in the trial as equivalent to the situation you set up in training, and therefore doesn't understand the need for attention, because the presence of the jute is not there to confirm the behavior.  In this case, in training you must work from a lure (jute attracting attention) to a reward by making the attention mandatory, and placing the reward out of sight. The rule must be: "attention is required even when the jute is out of sight, but when you give attention, you will be rewarded."  The jute comes from a hidden place to deliver the reward for the behavior(I put it in the small of my back inside my belt for easy access). This will mimic the trial situation far more closely than the jute being under the arm. Rewards must proceed in a sequence of:

LureàRewardàVariable Reward.

Each of these examples is a real situation that happened to a real dog handler. The upshot here is to make sure you are not creating unintended responses in your dog because of the way you are doing your training by falling into patterns that are conditioning a response that is ultimately at odds with what you desire to create.

This article is meant to get you to think about your training, and is not a how-to or fix-it article, but one meant to get you to think about what you would do to make more out of your training time. I will expand the article in the near future to cover the remedies for these problems outlined below.

Recently at a police K9 decoy seminar I spoke to the decoys about how to organize their inservice training time more efficiently.  I asked them how they set up their building search training, and as usual, during an an service day a building search scenario is set up and the dog is sent into the building and it is "one and done."

I asked them to think about how a building search is broken down: (1) Taking the Start (2) Searching and Locating the Subject and (3) Indicating that Location. Then I asked them how many times they ever, in training after their academy, separated out the 3 components and trained each one of them with sufficient repetitions to allow the dog to actually improve in either one of the areas.

When approached in this way, you can actually set up training to make progress, but only if you work repeatedly on the same concept, instead of always training the whole. One exercise which incorporates one repetition of all three components does little to help improve any one of the individual skills.

Supose your dog takes the start poorly, perhaps goes in the building after you release him with little enthusiasm, or in fact gets confused and shows a behavior like searching for narcotics, or he looks to the handler to help him out. The typical remedy is to show him the decoy, and then send him in, but this creates a dependency on what we call "hot" starts, where the dog associates the behavior with the visual or auditory stimulation of the decoy. This is necessary initially in developing the behavior, but must be faded out of the cue for the start before we can say we have a finished exercise. Once the decoy appears the dog may search with enthusiasm and locate and indicate well. But this is moot if the start doesn't go well. The answer is that you must train his start, to be sure that each time you deploy, he is in the right frame of mind. You need exercises to improve how he takes the start, because if he can't take a cold start (by cold I mean without any stimulation, as he would for a hidden subject) it doesn't matter how well he searches or locates or indicates. This training requires repetitions, and needs to be separated out of the rest of the building search and trained with sufficient repetition to develop a solid and reliable behavior.

The same can be said about tracking. I have seen a number of dogs that, once on the track, track well, and locate their subject easily, however, they have a hard time actually casting and locating the track. This, taking a cold start on a track, or taking a cold start on a building search for that matter, is a skill unto itself that needs to be developed.

Now, expand how you think about your building search training to include the other two areas: Searching and Indication. Many dogs I see usually have one part of the whole that is weaker than the others. This is normal for any K9 team. If this is the case you need to get multiple repetitions on the weak link in order to develop the entire skill.