Police Dogs
In addition to being man's best friend, dogs can also serve great humanitarian and civil purposes, such as the case with police dogs. Police dogs, or K-9's are specially bred, raised and trained dogs who work alongside law enforcement officials while serving to protect society. Dogs, known for their inherent loyalty and intelligence are the perfect match for this important job and choosing breeds known for strength and ability is the best way to ensure a loyal and capable K-9 partner.
Often times police dogs are breeds such as Labrador Retrievers or German Shepard, known for acute intelligence, retrieval ability and athletic builds. These dogs are often bred and raised for the sole purposes of someday becoming police dogs. Training police dogs is a very important task from which the consequences will be felt for many years and sometimes in dangerous situations. There are a few inherent personality traits which must be present in a dog before they can be considered for training as police dogs. These include good temperament, a good balance of aggressiveness and passiveness, alertness and not being gun shy or skittish. If a dog presents these traits and seems like a good candidate for training, he may someday join the ranks of his fellow police dogs.
Training for police dogs is intensive and includes many aspects of endurance, agility, obedience and retrieval skills. Although all police dogs are generally trained in all areas, police dogs may also be specially trained to have certain areas of specialty or expertise. For instance, some police dogs are used as patrol dogs and must know a myriad of different situations and skills; however, other police dogs such as search and rescue dogs are highly skilled in such tasks as retrieval and wilderness searches, while detection dogs are able to sniff and alert their handlers to drugs, bombs or other evidence. Police dogs provide a valuable service and provide additional proof that dog is really man's best friend.