K9 SEARCH AND RESCUE DOGS VS K9 POLICE DOGS

K9 SEARCH AND RESCUE DOGS VS K9 POLICE DOGS

First, it is important to note that K9 police dogs are search and rescue dogs with specialized training related to law enforcement. For this vignette, though, I will make a distinction and use “K9 police dogs” to represent any and all K9s used by police and other authorities (customs inspection), and I will refer to “K9 search and rescue dogs” as all those generally part of civilian organizations and trained and handled by civilian volunteers.

While there are many similarities in the training, handling, and skills of a K9 search and rescue (SAR) dog and a K9 police dog, there are some distinct differences.

K9 police dogs often have more specialized, comprehensive, and complex training than civilian K9 SAR. Importantly, the K9 police dog can be trained in any of the SAR competencies included for the K9 SAR dogs. However, the K9 police dog is likely to be trained in additional, specialized competencies. These include drug detection, handler protection, explosives detection, article search, criminal apprehension, and evidence recovery. Thus, a K9 police team (handler and dog) could be trained in drug detection, human tracking, and handler protection, while another team might be trained in explosives detection and handler protection. Another team could be expert in criminal apprehension, human tracking, and handler protection.

K9 police dogs have other specialties, like those at ports of entry that search for agricultural products. As I mentioned above, any of the specialties of the K9 SAR dog can be applied to K9 police dogs.

A civilian K9 SAR dog is most often trained in either trailing or tracking or both. A trailing K9 SAR dog may be trained to trail on a leash or as a free-ranging area search dog. Additionally, K9 SAR dogs can be trained in human remains search, water search, disaster live search, disaster human remains search, and avalanche search.

K9 police dogs can be very specialized, and they are very expensive to train and maintain. Because of this, law enforcement calls out specifically trained civilian K9 SAR dogs, such as an area search dog, a cadaver dog, or a water search dog when needed.