Every person who has ever taught a pup to sit and stay has done part of the basic training that all police dogs must go through.
Yes, the first objective when training a police dog is to help them master obedience training.
They MUST obey their handlers, and they must obey instantly for the safety of the handler, the safety of the public, and the safety of the dog.
Police dogs are armed police officers.
They do not carry guns, but they do carry teeth - sharp teeth that they can use to kill a person within seconds.
And police dogs are trained to kill.
They aren't pets.
Police dogs are highly trained working dogs.
They have jobs, and they take their jobs very, very seriously.
We've all seen the movies about police dogs like "Starsky and Hutch" and "K-9.
" You do need to remember that these are movies, and the dogs that star in them are trained to be actors.
They are not trained to be police dogs.
There are some misconceptions about how police dogs are trained.
For example, many people think that police dogs are given the "attack" command in a foreign language in order to prevent someone from accidentally ordering the dog to attack, but this isn't true.
The reason why the attack command (as well as other commands) is given in a foreign language is because many of the police dogs in service today were born, bred, and trained in different countries.
It's the language in which they learned the commands.
It's easier to teach handlers to give commands in the language that the dog already understands than to teach the dog the commands in English.
After a police dog fully masters obedience, then he is given additional training in a specialty.
Some police dogs are trained to find bombs, while others are trained to find illegal drugs.