What Trainings Are Involved in Rescue Dog Training

There are plenty ofreasons why dogs are considered best friends of men, and one of these reasonsis their usefulness in emergency situations. Just like it happens with agilityand obedience training, rescue dog training requires for a few principles to beobserved.

Training Their Obedience

One trait of rescue dogs is constant obedience since they can't do their jobsif they don't do as they're told. They should be used to obey commands likesit, heel, stay, come and jog exercises. All these should be met, so theirhandlers 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 rescueother people. At its most basic level, rescue dogs will be helped by agilitytraining at the physical level, letting them do even the hardest tasks. Thiscan come in handy when they're rescuing people. If they're trained by someonethat knows their job, a dog that goes through agility training will be able tosurpass many obstacles that he might encounter.

Retrieving

Retrieving is a huge part of any rescue operation. A dog needs to be able toretrieve either items or even a person from a place where other people can't goin. If you want a dog to be able toretrieve a person, he will need to go through retrieving exercises. He willlearn how to retrieve anything, from leather, to wood or even an injuredperson, all by using the command "fetch".

Training On The Right Positioning

One part of rescue training teaches the dog how to adapt to differentexercises, and that part is positioning. Positioning training is achieved bothwith compulsive and inductive training.

Positioning training should be something that is taught from the time that he'sstill a puppy. He needs to learn to types of positioning: the front positionand 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 ofthe trainer, aligned with the front legs of the trainer.

You can teach a dog to adopt the right position in two ways. The inductive andthe compulsive method.

The compulsive way, when used to train the dog how to adopt the front positionwill teach him how to sit in the front of the handler. If you use it togetherwith an order like "sit", the same principle is used - the ownerneeds to help the pet stand, then sit in front of him. The position needs to beparallel 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 ortreats to teach the dog how to respond to the owner's commands to assume one ofthe two positions. One example of the inductive method is offering the pet a treatbefore you give him an order. If he accepts the treat, give him an order likesit, come or down right before giving him the treat. Remember, offer it, butgive 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 itharsh, 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 thingthey need to learn. It's a mix of different commands and abilities that theyneed to learn.