There are plenty of
reasons why dogs are considered best friends of men, and one of these reasons
is their usefulness in emergency situations. Just like it happens with agility
and obedience training, rescue dog training requires for a few principles to be
observed.
Training Their Obedience
One trait of rescue dogs is constant obedience since they can't do their jobs
if they don't do as they're told. They should be used to obey commands like
sit, heel, stay, come and jog exercises. All these should be met, so their
handlers can be sure that their commands will be respected when it's needed.
Training Their Agility
Not just sports dogs need to be agile, but also dogs that are trained to rescue
other people. At its most basic level, rescue dogs will be helped by agility
training at the physical level, letting them do even the hardest tasks. This
can come in handy when they're rescuing people. If they're trained by someone
that knows their job, a dog that goes through agility training will be able to
surpass many obstacles that he might encounter.
Retrieving
Retrieving is a huge part of any rescue operation. A dog needs to be able to
retrieve either items or even a person from a place where other people can't go
in.?If you want a dog to be able to
retrieve a person, he will need to go through retrieving exercises. He will
learn how to retrieve anything, from leather, to wood or even an injured
person, all by using the command "fetch".
Training On The Right Positioning
One part of rescue training teaches the dog how to adapt to different
exercises, and that part is positioning. Positioning training is achieved both
with compulsive and inductive training.
Positioning training should be something that is taught from the time that he's
still a puppy. He needs to learn to types of positioning: the front position
and the heel. The heel position teaches the dog to stand near the trainer,
parallel to his left foot. The front position teaches him to sit in front of
the trainer, aligned with the front legs of the trainer.
You can teach a dog to adopt the right position in two ways. The inductive and
the compulsive method.
The compulsive way, when used to train the dog how to adopt the front position
will teach him how to sit in the front of the handler. If you use it together
with an order like "sit", the same principle is used - the owner
needs to help the pet stand, then sit in front of him. The position needs to be
parallel to the owner's left foot if he asks for the heel position.
If we're talking about the inductive method, it will need the use of food or
treats to teach the dog how to respond to the owner's commands to assume one of
the two positions. One example of the inductive method is offering the pet a treat
before you give him an order. If he accepts the treat, give him an order like
sit, come or down right before giving him the treat. Remember, offer it, but
give it only after the does the command.
If you're using the compulsive method, you might use some physical guidance,
but you should never use it in a way that might injure the dog. Don't make it
harsh, use it gently and firmly. If you're harsh, that could harm the training.
If you're training a rescue dog, you should know that it's not a single thing
they need to learn. It's a mix of different commands and abilities that they
need to learn.