Dog Health Questions: I talked to a police k/9 friend today, about dog training?

I asked him how they get to have so well behaved dogs and he told me with plenty of praise and a little spanking when necessary. I thought spanking was wrong, they say they make dogs hand shy, but all the dogs he trained are not hand shy at all. He told me that in nature alpha dogs do much worse and that is the way dogs learn to respect their owners. Even though I hate the idea of spanking, if dogs do this in nature why is it so bad if humans do it? He doesn't spank hard but enough for the dog to feel it.

Dog Training - A Vital Component of Your Dog's Life

Recommended Answer:
different departments may handle their dogs differently.
i know one of our local agencies here they don't spank but praise with a tennis ball.

a local bomb dog trainer and drug dog trainer goes to local shelters to find "ball driven" dogs to train for those particular tasks. when they look at the dogs to chose from the dog must be "ball aggressive" because the ball is given to them for a job well done (in addition to praise).
many hours of training, handling, and bonding goes into k9 handling!!

however "in nature" it's about body language, barks, nips, eye contact etc ... do you think the alpha wolf gets upset at the other wolves, madly raises her paw to smack them across the butt?? no! it doesn't make much sense to me why he -the trainer - would want a dog "hand shy" since he, well, works the dog WITH HIS HANDS. duh.
perhaps talk with him again, could you have misunderstood him?

How To Use Dog Training Collars

• Take his advice, he is more right than you may think, however just as with a small child you must be judicial in metting out this kind of training/knowledge and for gods sake do not hurt the dog, that is how and why they become hand shy. Listen to him!! he does it for a living.


• Well, of course, no one speaks of beating the hell out of the dog when she misbehaves. That is plain cruel, and further more - the dog will be scared of the owner and there will be no training whatsoever.
  
  Spanking... Well, first of all, it should be done on the nose (in that area). Why? Because they should see it, not actually feel it. If you will touch them on the back - no results. Too much to explain - you get the idea.
  
  Second - it is wrong to "spank" a dog with your hand. Your hand should never be a punisher. It should give them treats. The dog may become afraid of the hand, or have negative associations with it. Hand signals are also considered: you command your dog with a hand as well (your police friend would know what I am talking about). You should not use hand to physically punish a dog. Now, a newspaper is great! It is soft, it will not harm the dog, and yet, it makes noise. )


• It takes a dog with high drives, hard nerves, strong will and independent decisiveness to do most any "job" to a high degree. This type of dog is not going to respond to treats when he's good, and "you naughty boy" when he's bad. Each dog has a "breaking point"...each has "recovery time"...and each has a "tolerance level". If my dog disobeys a command, it may take a sledge hammer to the head to get him to even acknowledge that he's in trouble. That is not cruel. However, if saying "you naughty boy" is enough to get his recognition, but I opt to use the hammer, THEN I'm being abusive. Most of my dogs require a very heavy hand...but they are also the type that will go through a brick wall to fetch a ball, bite the bad guy or pull a child to safety. The dog that is soft enough to respond to things like "you naughty boy" as a correction will NEVER have the determination to work at that level. I would rather correct one time than nag the dog forever with threats of a correction. Have you ever seen the kids of parents that never correct them??? The tree huggers need to stick to saving trees. Some dogs need "spankings" (or near death experience...whatever gets there attention). It sounds like your friend gave you the "soft" version of what REALLY happens in training.


• If the human handling the dog does not know what he/she is doing, than spanking can be very detrimental to the welfare of the dog, however when placed in the right person's hands it can be used successfully. This is one of those topics that people will always be sittting on both sides of the fence. It's like the topic of spanking kids. Some believe that spanking children teaches them wrong and to be respectful others believe it belittles children and makes them violent. Also when people use the word spank some tend to automatically think "beaten". A small swat on the rear isn't abusing your dog, while I personally do not do it, I haven't had a reason as of yet, I do believe that it can be necessary sometimes. What people need to understand about Police K-9's is that they need an extraordinary amount of training and need to be overly conditioned. While the lay persons dog has contact with people they live with, people at the park, or while you walk them around Petco, Police dogs are in the public all the time. They are trained to attack and take down criminals one moment and in an instant become the happy go lucky dog again.
  
  ADD: I just read someone's post about using s rolled up newspaper. We had a dog that was deathly afraid of pool noodles because the people who handed him off ot us would use a pool noodle to swat him when he misbehaved. He was so afraid and insane over the pool noodle my kids couldn't go outside with them. So just because it's soft and doesn;t hurt, doesn't mean it won't become aggressive towards it. As for popping on the nose, it's rediculous. As a police/drug/bomb dog they need their keen sense of smell in tact. Popping a dog on the nose can have a very serious adverse effect on it, hence why police dogs aren't treated that way.
  
  Also yes you shoudl use your hand. The dogs realize as police departments do not use stupid dogs, that the hand is good. They get praised a lot more by that hand than they do punished. They learn to trust that hand which makes the dog even more aware it has done something wromg when it does seldomly get swatted on the rear.
  
  As for tennis balls, they aren;t good for dogs. They contain a gas inside that is toxic to dogs if they manage to pop it and inhale the gas.