Puppies in training get tick of approval
The key to becoming a good dog handler is to be positive and have great motivation, according to a renowned Dutch dog trainer.
Dick Staal was invited by the Defence Force and Police to hold a nine-day long conference on working dogs at Trentham military camp in Upper Hutt.
About 170 people and up to 40 working dogs from organisations that included Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), Customs and Blind Low Vision, as well as the Australian Defence Force and police forces from Western Australia and Victoria are attending the training.
“The most important thing [to become a good dog handler] is to be positive,” Staal said. “Also, it has to be motivation. Before you train a puppy and teach them something, you need motivation.”
The Defence Force’s military working dog capability manager Alan Inkpen said working dogs in New Zealand were diverse, from police dogs, military working dogs that were trained to detect explosives, guide dogs for the visually impaired, to detector dogs that pick up pests like Argentine ants.
The conference was the first time that many government organisations could gather together at one place and have an expert like Staal to teach his methodology, Inkpen also said, and there was something for all attendees to take away and consider from the conference. “It’s training the people for the future,” he said. “We need to have a pathway and knowledge given to our staff in order to move forward.”
The conference was broken down into three seminars covering picking up odours, puppy development to development for different types of dogs, as well as focusing on tracking.
Yesterday, Staal gave a demonstration on using a banana inside a pot to teach a beagle puppy new scents, preparing for it to keep watch on New Zealand’s biosecurity once it started work for MPI at the border.
Inkpen said the handlers there had learnt good ideas and new processes. “For example, obedience. Every dog needs to be obedient so those principles cover every classification dog we’ve got.”
Inspector Todd Southall, the police’s national police dog coordinator, said the seminar was about checking if New Zealand’s current training pathways for working dogs were up to scratch. “The feedback from Dick is we’re looking good,” he said. “[The conference] is not about changing everything dramatically, it’s seeing if there’s anything we can do to help training.”
Staal said the attendees were very positive and he could see they loved dogs. He also hoped the attendees picked something up from him during the conference. “I think if they train in this way, they will have a lot of success with those very good puppies.”