Police Officer Preparation & Law Enforcement Resource - Archive

I am an experinced handler who is about to retire my partner. My department wants to transfer a young but very hard dog, to me, from a handler who is being reassigned. The dog is less than two years old and is strongly imprinted on the other handler. Myself and the other handler realize what is required to do this however my department does not. Is anyone aware of any articles that cover this in any detail. I am dealing with supervisors who have no k9 knowledge what so ever.

Thanks for any help.

I'm not sure what your asking about? :confused:

While it's not easy transfering a service K9 from one handler to another it can be done. It will just take a while for the dog to bond with the new handler.

The military has done it for years. It's not as complicated as you think. The dog is trained, you are trained, so you both know what each is capable of. Leave the dog in a kennel for a week or ten days, nobody but you feeds or waters it. Sit and talk to it, ignoring any aggression the dog may demonstrate. After a week or so the dog will want to come out of the kennel. Once you have a leash on him, don't start giving commands right away. Just give that a few days walking him. Then put him through your training regimen so you can start preparing for certification.

DFrost

Thanks for the advice. I have never had to go through transfering a dog from another handler, all of my dogs have been green and were only assigned to me. I have read books in the past that talked about slowly weening the dog off of the origional handler but that takes a great deal of time, at least a couple of months. I hadn't thought about contacting some of my military friends. A resource I am ashamed to admit I don't tap into as often as I should.

You'd be surprised just how short a dog's long term memory is. I'm thinking weeks rather than months. I don't let a dog sit for months before being reassigned. Week, maybe two at the most. It's reassigned, entered into training and put back to work. The length of time in training depends on the amount of training the handler has had.

DFrost

The military has done it for years. It's not as complicated as you think. The dog is trained, you are trained, so you both know what each is capable of. Leave the dog in a kennel for a week or ten days, nobody but you feeds or waters it. Sit and talk to it, ignoring any aggression the dog may demonstrate. After a week or so the dog will want to come out of the kennel. Once you have a leash on him, don't start giving commands right away. Just give that a few days walking him. Then put him through your training regimen so you can start preparing for certification.

DFrost

We do it slightly differently but basically the same thing, dog is seclusion for 7/10 days kennel staff do not speak to him just clean out and place his food down, no verbal contact whatsoever..........at the end of this period you come to the kennel talk to him, I'm not too big on food but at this stage a bit of grub will win him over. He will be busting to have a pal. When confident take him for a stress free wandering walk and allow a week to bond, be as right as rain......I don't know about you guys of a GP rehandling course is approximately two weeks?......:)