Episode 82: Police Dogs and Positivity

Victoria talks about the newly-announced Victoria Stilwell Academy course dates for 2018 and walks through how the Academy works. Also, how to find a Victoria Stilwell-licensed VSPDT trainer in your area. Victoria discusses the challenge she set for herself to see if positive training can work when training high-drive working dogs like police dogs.

On the Positively Hotline, K9 handler and Guardians of the Night star Shawn Humphreys from the Lawrenceville (GA) police department calls in to talk about the police dog world, including how he’s training his new police dog, Ali, using more positive methods. Topics discussed

• How officers go about getting matched with a police dog.
• Shawn’s journey towards using more positive methods that are even more effective than the traditional, punitive methods he originally was trained to use as a K9 officer.
• The importance of consistency when using humane training methods with working dogs.
• The biggest differences in the characteristics of dogs trained aversively versus positive training.
• The difficulty of K9 units training to go to work in the public and the pressures that K9 units face both from within and outside of their departments to ‘get it right.’

Ask Victoria questions include:

• Lab is great with kids but doesn’t get along with other dogs, especially when going on walks with strangers.
• Two-year old Rottweiler is leash reactive and needs to be muzzled.
• Hound with history of separation anxiety beginning to shiver when being around new people and experiences.

This episode brought to you by Zukes.