The work that we do is very special, unlike many dog training videos you may see on YouTube, we don’t use any food, balls, or tugs for reward. The training concept that we use at CCK9 is very simple, it’s called communication. As humans, we have a tendency to talk when we shouldn’t and don’t talk when we should. We work our dogs at a very young age, in fact, we start are pups at five weeks. We feel that this is the most important time of the pups life, from the age of five weeks to eight weeks, this lays the foundation for the pup for the rest of its life.
This weekend we did a marathon training session with all of our dogs, from all age groups from thirteen weeks to three years of age. We started at 6 a.m. with basic obedience, then moved on to advanced off leash training. After a short break, we were on the agility course to get the dogs use to different environments and surfaces. A good Protection Dog has to be confident in any situation, whether they have to swim across ponds or climb a ten foot wall.
After taking time out for lunch, we then worked our dogs doing article searches. We were extremely proud of our new KNPV German Shepherd puppies; Max (thirteen weeks) and Tina (six months of age) had no problem doing a 100 yard article search for the key and cone. We then loaded up the dogs into the trucks and drove across the Kennel to have the decoys getup to do the bite work. We role played as many scenarios as possible, using many props, such as guns, knives, baseball bats. These props help to condition the dogs to take out the weapon hand.
As a daylight fell we gathered the dogs for man scent tracking in the deep woods. All the dogs did extremely well including the two female German Shepherds that were in heat.
This work that we do is all in a days work. Not a day will go by that all our dogs are doing some form of training, even if it is merrily walking on a busy street we will take that opportunity to develop their street smarts.