BENGALURU: Not all police dogs are inspired by a call to duty. There are ‘canine officers’ who would rather chase a ball and others who would like a break to dig for a bone. And the department has heard them; they have hired a psychologist who will figure out what drives each canine squad member and design training modules to suit that.
Bengaluru City Police has appointed ‘dog guru’ Amrut S Hiranya, a certified canine psychologist, as a consultant for the police dog squad.This is the first time a city police is taking such an initiative in the country. Suneel Kumar T, Bengaluru Police Commissioner, says, "This training will help save lot of time, since we won’t have to transport the dogs to various places for training. Also, the handlers may not always understand the behaviour and needs of the dogs. So, having a psychologist will help keep the dogs in good health and improve their training and performance."
Presently, every police dog is trained for obedience and then a specific task - explosive detection, crime and narcotics. Select pups, who are three months old, undergo the first-level of training for three to four months. In all, the present form of training takes eight to ten months.
This new training module, Amrut promises, will be shorter but more effective. He will do psychological tests on the dogs to determine their strengths and weaknesses, and then design lessons according to their drives -- which could be play, prey or hunt drive.
If the combination of prey and hunt drives are good, they will be assigned to crime detection such as murder, rape or theft. Amrut says, "Their sense of smell and identifying and tracking the scent will be good. During the night patrolling, the team can arrive at the spot in about 30 minutes after the incident. The criminal would not have gone too far from the crime scene and the spot will also not be contaminated because there would not be too many people at the scene late night. So, dogs with prey and hunt drives will be used trackers."
Dogs with play drive will be trained to identify explosives and be rewarded with toys or balls, which is what this particular dog would be most fascinated with. "If the dog has food drive, he will be trained to dig into a spot till he or she finds hidden narcotics," says Amrut.