Testing Dogs A Perspective on Selection

Temperament – Courage – Hardness – Sharpness and Instinctive Drive, all dogs have these characteristics to some degree but not all dogs make good working dogs. It is only when these characteristics produce certain behaviors in a dog, under certain conditions, that the dog is of value to us all other dogs must be viewed as less then desirable for selection.

The following are some basic view about the thing we look for in dogs and how we test dogs to determine if they are suitable for work.

Temperament is described as the dog's overall outlook on life. The sociability, playfulness, desire to be active and to explore the immediate environment and a number of other such behaviors provide us with some insight into a dog's temperament.

The ideal dog will have an even temperament, that is to say it will not become overly emotional when exposed to a wide variety of NORMAL daily sights, sounds and activities. It will have a strong desire to play and be active but will also have the capacity to be reserved and cautious in a quiet environment.

Evaluating temperament often involves what I call exposure testing, walking the dog up stairs and on slick floors, moving in and around strange looking objects, piles of trash and in general experiencing the ragged edges of life. It is important to note that many of the imported dogs will never have seen stairs, the inside of buildings, and the other things we take for granted. Most imported have experienced only the kennel, almost everything else will be new to them.

A dog with the proper temperament will be sociable. When walked toward a group of people the dog may appear alert an cautious or may appear aloof, in any case it should be a good citizen and must not display unwarranted aggression.

A dog with proper temperament will investigate intriguing sounds and strange looking objects, it will appear to be inquisitive and not at all hesitant about venturing out away from the handler to investigate something that catches its attention. The dog should constantly look for something to do if only to be active and feel the thrill of life.

A good test for determining a dog's steady nerves or the evenness of it's temperament may involve exposure to heavy traffic sounds at close range or any other such situation where there are many things going on at one time. The gunfire test properly comes under the temperament testing section but should be viewed as nothing more than exposure to sound. Gunfire should occur by itself neither preceded nor followed by any confrontation between the dog and the man firing the shot. In the best of situations the dog will not even know where the shot comes form, it will simply occur. This test is to determine the dogs nerves and temperament, not to test its courage of heart.

Courage is defined as the lack of fear in a threatening environment. The ideal dog will stand tall in the face of threat and when pushed will hold his ground with aggression. This is not to say a dog should go off the deep end when a threat occurs but neither should it stand totally passive and in any case it MUST NOT RETREAT. At the conclusion of threat the dog should return to its normal state but may remain vigilant and alert for some time. A good courage test will involve some sort of confrontation with a man to produce a level of threat.

You may consider testing the dog away from its kennel, in the darkness of a closed building, at night, tied out away from the handler and in a number of situations where the dog is on its own. The decoy may increase the threat by making sounds, pounding a club on the ground swinging a stick at the dog, and approaching the dog quickly in a determined manner.

It is important to be realistic when testing a dog for courage, do not for example expect to see a green dog act as courageous as a fully trained two year old dog. You must always consider the dogs age, mental maturity, previous training and a number of such factors when conducting a courage test. Remember almost any untrained dog can be intimidated with overwhelming threat, the goal of a courage test is not to force a dog into submission but to determine the point at which courage begins to appear and the point at which it begins to diminish.

Hardness is defined as the ability to overcome the tendency to avoid situations in which there are known undesirable forces at work. A hard dog in the wilds will chase a rabbit into a thorn patch day after day regardless of the pain involved, until it eventually catches the rabbit. In other words a hard dog will exhibit little inhibition to experiencing some pain or uncomfortable stimuli, on the way to achieving gratification.

It is difficult to test a green dog for hardness, about all I can do is suggest that you find something the dog likes and then arrange for some distress for the dog on its way to obtaining that thing. If the dog likes the ball for example, toss it into the corner of a building where there are many chairs and tables stacked haphazardly, if the dog is hard it will climb in and around the pile to get the ball with little apprehension, if it does less than this you will have an idea about the level of hardness.

A hardness test for a fully trained dog may involve a chase into a thick nasty field to catch a man running away or a bite where the dog must enter a heavy thick bush.

Some like to use the stick strike to test hardness, the animal is exposed to this while it is on the sleeve. While this provides obvious results it must only be used on fully trained dogs, not on dogs that are described as bite proven or sleeve proven, these dogs only have a basic introduction to bite work and may not be prepared for this test. Hardness is part instinctive and part the result of experience, if a dog test will in all other factors but appears to be slightly softer than you desire you can assume that it will become somewhat harder if proper training methods are used during he initial training process.

Sharpness is defined as the tendency to respond in aggression. There are three degrees of sharpness which are implied in the terms: Sharp, sharp shy and Shy.

A sharp dog will respond in aggression at the drop of a hat. A sharp shy dog will respond only when the hat is picked up and waved in its face. A shy dog will respond in aggression only when it is cornered.

The sharp dog may at one time have been acceptable for work, this is no longer the case however, given the nature of police work the sharp dog is now viewed as a liability.

Shy dogs never have been and never will be acceptable for police work and so should be eliminated from consideration.

The ideal dog will be sharp shy. The sharp shy dog has the capacity for aggression but is slightly more reserved than a sharp dog. Proper training methods will go a long way in determining the point at which aggression erupts and the point at which it subsides and so much is left to this process.

Do not assume from this that I believe a dog should be unsteady or some how soft until trained, this is far from the truth. A sharp shy dog will indeed bite you even before training, it is simply that training brings out the sharpness and inhibit the shyness to a point you feel comfortable with the overall results. A good test will include some exposure to a wide variety of sights and sounds that frequently occur while on duty.

One test that is very productive in this area involves the dog standing on leash between the handler and a person who is shouting and otherwise animated but with NO obvious or overt threat. In this test the dog may bark, posture and other wise be alert but must not go completely out of control lunging and trying to get free for the bite. Another test may include walking into an area where a person is laying motionless in thick brush to observe the dogs response to the presence of the person. Ideally the dog will display strong aggression in this case and if the dog does not perform in this way the handler should have no difficulty in eliciting the aggression.

This test like all others must consider previous training and is generally not well suited for testing fully trained dogs. Testing a dog for sharpness must be done apart an away from anything that resembles bite work. You must see how the dog responds to stimulation, not to the presence of a sleeve or the familiar bite situation.

Instinctive drive is the best seen as an internal force which motivates a dog to act in the absence of previous experience. If an instinctive actions provide the dog with some benefit it will probably occur again, if it does not provide the dog with any benefit it will probably disappear. In either case the instinctive drive to act will remain in place regardless of what happens to the behavior. This is how habits are formed and followed, the strategy by which the canine is intended to survive, it is the one truth we can depend upon in dogs.

Because instinctive behavior is constantly being modified by experience, it is often difficult to see where it starts and where it ends. While the instinctive drive compels a dog to search for a decoy it is experience which ultimately determines how that search will be accomplished, by following a track on the ground or following a scent cone in the air. Because of experience's influence on instinctive behavior it is impossible to say in short order exactly how to evaluate behavior to determine the state of instinctive drive. At best this is an art relying greatly on experience, therefore I strongly urge handlers with questions on testing instinctive drives to contact trainers who have accumulated experience in this area to discuss first hand their questions and concerns.