Chapter 1: Selecting the Correct Dog and the Yerkes-Dodson Law Selecting the Correct Dog

Training a police dog is a large, multifaceted project. Unfortunately, on the very first day of this project, many trainers inadvertently and unconsciously doom themselves to failure by selecting the wrong type of dog. Good police dogs must be able to learn and solve problems when they are highly excited, and therefore, only dogs with the ability to think clearly when excited and quickly calm down when it is appropriate should be taken into training. Time and time again we see trainers testing canine candidates for confidence, environmental soundness, approachability, aggression, hunting behavior, and other important qualities and do nothing to evaluate the dogs’ ability to keep a clear head and calm down quickly. This is regrettable, since these are the qualities that allow us to teach aggression control later.

There seem to be two major conditions for confident dogs with high levels of aggression: one, the aggression can be accompanied by a clear-headed attitude or, two, the aggression can be unreasonable and expressed when the dog is unprovoked and remain high even after the original provocation has ceased. Police dogs are supposed to react to how people behave not how they are dressed. If a dog flings himself aggressively at the decoy when the decoy is acting normally simply because the decoy is in a bite suit or wearing a sleeve, this is unprovoked aggression that will make extra work for us later. If the dog is uncontrollable in this situation, we will probably have trouble with impulse control later. When the aggression level of a dog remains high even after the stimulation for aggression has stopped, the dog is telling us as clearly as he can that he is going to give us control problems later. Unfortunately, many trainers see dogs like this and think they are “high in drive,” score them highly, and pay money for them when in fact they are not superior candidates; they are simply wild animals that are not suitable for training to be a modern, approachable police dog. Please do not mistake the intent here; a high level of aggression is indeed necessary to produce a good police dog, but it is not enough by itself. We need a dog that is highly aggressive but also able to remain calm, to solve problems, and to learn new things in exciting situations. Calmness is a behavior, and it can be selected for and rewarded just like any other behavior. Unfortunately, very few trainers do this.

Testing for Calmness and a Clear Head

There are several ways to test for calmness and a clear head, and if you already have a good method, you might want to stick with it. If you are inexperienced or have no favorite test, the following method will get you started.

Take the dog to a location he is not familiar with and have a person dressed in a bite suit or wearing a sleeve stand passively in the middle of the test area, not stimulating the dog in any way. If the dog is trained in obedience, do some on-leash obedience around the decoy to see if the dog can focus on the handler, even with the decoy near. If the dog cannot break his focus on the decoy to pay attention to the handler, the dog is reacting only to how the decoy is dressed when he should be reacting to the peaceful behavior exhibited by the decoy.

If the dog is not trained in obedience, have the decoy display the same passive behavior while you produce the dog’s favorite toy or treat, and see if the dog will leave the non-aggressive decoy to play or receive his favorite reward. A dog that can shift his focus away from the decoy can easily learn neutral reactions, which are very important and will usually result in good impulse control later. This will reduce the number of bad bites you experience and decrease your liability problems in the future. A dog with mental balance also can learn to bite passive suspects when the time comes, so you need not worry about that.

Once you have determined that the dog is not biting things without reason, you can stake him out (back-tie him) to something solid or have a person who is unknown to the dog hold his leash. Have a competent decoy work the dog while you evaluate his potential for the types of aggression you are interested in. See my book K9 Decoys and Aggression: A Manual for Training Police Dogs (Brush Education, 2015) for descriptions of the different types of aggression. When you have seen enough to be certain that the dog has high levels of the appropriate types of aggression, have the decoy stop working with and stimulating the dog and wait a few minutes. Then have the decoy approach the dog in a neutral or passive manner, again without displaying any threatening or stimulating signals. A good candidate dog will not show aggression at this point since there is no justification for it and he has had sufficient time to calm down (see Figures 1.1 , 1.2, and 1.3).

(Figures missing)

If the dog continues to act aggressively when there is no reason for such behavior, he will likely have control problems later. This doesn’t mean you can’t train this animal, but it does mean that there is a better dog out there and that it’s in your best interest to keep looking for him.

Whether you use the above described method or have your own approach to testing dogs for the presence of a reasonable attitude and a clear head, make sure that this is an important item in your decision to accept or reject a canine candidate. A dog should react aggressively only when the decoy shows bad behavior, not any time the decoy is in a bite suit or sleeve. When bad behavior from the decoy ceases, there is no longer any reason for the dog to be aggressive, and he should calm down in a reasonably short amount of time. Dogs that can do this will easily learn aggression control taught using modern, positive techniques. Dogs that cannot keep a clear head will have difficulty.

So why do we see so many dogs with unreasonable responses? We see them because we keep paying people money for such animals. When we refuse to pay money for unreasonable dogs, breeders and vendors will stop bringing them to us. The good ones already have. If we keep our standards at a low level and reward providers for showing us difficult animals, such animals will continue to appear. We must stop rewarding the providers economically for bringing us unsuitable dogs. When we do, we will start seeing strong but balanced, clear-headed dogs that are suitable for aggression control training. We control the economic rewards—it is up to us.

The Yerkes-Dodson Law

As stated above, aggression-control work requires dogs to be able to think while they are excited. Many of the imported dogs we have been working with lately are having difficulty with this, so a look at the relationship between excitement and cognitive abilities seems to be in order.

In the early 20th century, psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson began looking at the relationship between emotional arousal and performance. They published a paper in 1908 in which they described what is now known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law, or the inverted U.” As Figure 1.4 shows, they noticed an optimum level of excitement or arousal for any given task. As excitement levels drop or increase from this optimum, performance decreases.

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Consider Natural Excitement Levels

Dogs that start on the left side of the inverted U need to have their excitement levels increased to reach good performance levels, whereas dogs starting on the right side of the curve need to have their excitement levels decreased to perform well. All our decisions need to be made in light of where we think our dog is on the curve and which way our actions will push him. While there are bound to be minor exceptions to every rule, the Yerkes-Dodson Law has been well accepted for a hundred years now, and we should pay attention to it.

The natural excitement levels of the dog are heavily influenced by genetics and early experience. If we did not personally breed and raise the dog we are training, we have had little influence over his natural excitement levels, but we are still responsible for recognizing animals that are too excitable to make good police dogs. We should learn to recognize dogs whose arousal levels are optimum and those whose levels are too high for good performance.

One of the major differences between police service dogs and sport dogs is that police dogs must think well enough to solve problems even when highly excited and under stress. Their ability to release the adversary and return to cover with only a verbal command from their handlers is critical for their survival when, for example, an ordinary deployment surprisingly turns into a gun battle. More than this, we must never select animals that will be so difficult to control that their handlers will be tempted to break cover in a dangerous situation, simply because their dogs are being difficult. In a tactically difficult situation, there’s nothing better than a good dog that thinks well and is controllable, and this is directly linked to the type of dog we select for training in the first place. We must select dogs whose genetics and upbringing place them in the upper left-hand portion of the inverted U so that when excitement levels increase, they will still be capable of good performance.

What is happening far too often is that we are accepting dogs into training whose genetics and upbringing place them in the upper right-hand part of the curve. Then when the procedures and situations involved in training and deployment increase their excitement levels, these dogs are pushed too far to the right on the curve and their performances suffer terribly. This eventually puts their handlers at risk, all because we made a bad choice about which dogs to take into training. It is time for us to recognize that highly motivated dogs can focus on the task at hand. Any energy the dog cannot focus is simply wild and uncontrollable, not a sign of “high drive.” All too often wild, uncontrollable dogs are being confused for highly motivated dogs and are selected for training.

Adjust Your Technique to the Dog

The training and handling procedures we employ generate characteristic amounts of arousal or excitement. We must be careful to choose techniques that are appropriate for each individual dog. Dogs that start out on the left side of the inverted U will require more excitement from their handlers, whereas those on the right side of the curve will need calm or even dull procedures.

Trainers must constantly adjust their techniques to match the dogs they are training. Years ago, the only dogs that were available for training had medium excitement levels, which placed them somewhere in the middle of the left side of the curve. Consequently, training techniques were developed to increase their excitement levels. With time these techniques became standard and were applied to all dogs indiscriminately. Now that we are training more imported dogs with higher excitement levels, these old techniques are getting us into trouble. We can no longer excite dogs randomly and get away with it. We must develop calmer techniques that keep our high-end dogs in the top part of the curve and maximize their performance. What the future holds cannot be predicted except that as our dogs’ gene pool changes, we must make whatever adjustments are necessary to keep them at the proper excitement levels.