Page 13 - Chiron Autumn 2016

Detection Training
By LCpl Randles
Letter to the Editor
From Mrs Wendy Courtis, Cornwall
Sir,
I am the wife of Mr Maxwell Courtis and we live in Cornwall. Max is desperately trying to make contact with members of the RAVC who were at 6 Guard Dog Unit Royal Military Police. Amongst his great RAVC friends that Max remembers were SSgt Carter, Sgt McDine, Cpl Dawson, Cpl Parsons who also served in Northern Ireland with Max at Magilligan. Jack was a Dog handler with 1st Devon and Dorset Regiment and he was the longest serving dog handler in the Regiment. He found dog handling in the Army most rewarding and he has numerous photographs with other handlers and dogs which he is willing to share with any RAVC lads who are still around.
While serving in Magilligan Max and his dog Barbary were responsible for stopping three prisoners escaping from internment. Sadly, Max is unable to write owing to problems with his hands, but he would love to hear from anyone.
Yours sincerely,
Mrs Wendy Courtis
Contact details can be provided by the RAVC Regimental Secretary.
Having been recently posted to the Defence Animal Centre, I was placed on the Detection Training Section within the Canine Training Squadron (CTS). This section is responsible for training Arms Explosive Search, Vehicle Search, Drug Detection and High Assurance Search Dogs. I was tasked with training the High Assurance Search Dogs with Cpl Hewitt.
There are four dogs currently in training called Max, Bandit, Doerak and Joy. We started their training by teaching them basic obedience and agility.
Doerak has improved the most in obedience and agility. She picked up agility very quickly and now uses her new found talents to get to where she wants to go, even if it does involve leaping through a cat ap sized gap in a fence and nearly getting stuck.
The main bulk of the dogs’ training is the ground pressure search which is getting each dog to search the ground whilst walking in a straight line. For the start of
this we placed a mine tape line on the oor for the dogs to search along. All the dogs learned this discipline very well apart from Joy who decided it was a good idea to attack the mine tape.
Joy had to do a lot of training at this stage to get focused on the search. She also showed the most amount of proactive behaviour by biting all of our training aids. She destroyed everything at rst, we quickly learned to search with Joy last so that we didn’t have to repair the search area each time. She can’t even sit still for a photograph.
Our next task was to nd an outdoor training area and we managed to nd a disused quarry with a large area, so it now belonged to us. This area was ideal for the start of outdoor searches and will be used throughout the dogs’ whole training. Our training with these dogs’ is on going and we hope to have them completing the course before the end of Autumn.
Upon my arrival at the Defence Animal Centre at the beginning of this year, I will happily admit that whilst I was excited to start a new chapter of my career, I was also quite nervous!
Until my new posting, I had handled dogs, but realistically, I had never trained any? Nor did I even know really where to begin? I knew that I wanted to be part of a training section to develop these essential trade skills, but which section would I be placed into?
Patrol dogs (PAT) are a unique classi cation of Military Working Dog, there is no other speci cation that can provide the capability any better. We all pass out of Phase 2 training and began our career within the RAVC as protection handlers and it is here that I would begin my training again, but this time I will be expected to teach a dog, rather than the dog teaching me!
I have quickly learnt that like us, all dogs are different and not all of them can be trained the same way. Which training methods work on one dog may not necessarily work on another and because of this we need to be understanding and patient with our dogs in order to nd what helps them to learn best.
The dogs we receive here from Europe are without a doubt, extremely high driven dogs but not all of them will work best using the traditional Kong-on-a-string reward methods. Although this is still a useful tool, our section are also concentrating on other techniques, such as Clicker Training, using high value food based rewards like cheese and sausage, Marker Training during bite work, as we focus primarily on providing full suit dogs taught to target areas on a decoy that will best incapacitate any would-be intruder, such as the inner arm, back and legs.
The Protection training section is a great place to start within the DAC and I have been made to feel welcome within a close knit team of likeminded dog trainers, passing knowledge and information between us all, learning about different drives within a dog, correct techniques to perform as a PTA and understanding and solving problems we come across. I look forward to the rest of my time on this section and the new challenges that lay ahead of me.
Patrol Dog Training at the DAC
LCpl Spencer
Chiron Calling 13