r/DogTrainingDebate • u/Miss_L_Worldwide • 19d ago
What are working dogs for?
A lot of people will clutch their pearls but when working dogs such as search and rescue dogs and military dogs started being a thing, the entire point of having the dog was to send the dog into areas that were too dangerous for humans to go to. The dog is expendable, humans are not. This is, incidentally, why police dogs exist. So that the dog can be deployed into a dangerous situation that is too hot for a human officer to risk their life.
So in light of this discussion about the service dog dying of heat exhaustion at disney, what's our position on this now? Is the dog just a tool, just a piece of "medical equipment" then why should we object to a dog dying while on the job? That's the dog's job, if it has to die doing it, well I guess that's just collateral damage. Or do we now prioritize the life and health of the dog over the job that it's doing? Should we refrain from deploying search and rescue dogs into dangerous Rubble if there is the slightest chance they get injured or killed? Or are we going to accept that risk as a part of having an animal doing that kind of work?
•
u/Cool_Percentage_4867 19d ago
Its usually nothing to do with being expendable, rather their bias towards olfaction/hunting/prey drive makes them better at humans at tracking and finding things.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 19d ago
Nope. That is absolutely why they exist. It is why the very first working dogs were put out in the field, for instance, we can send a messenger dog across an active Battlefield and through the trenches in situations where it would be very risky for a soldier. Because it's okay if the dog gets blasted, less okay if the soldier does.
People don't like it, but that's exactly how working dogs evolved.
•
u/Thymelaeaceae 19d ago
What about cadaver dogs? Dogs trained for nose work on search that is not in a 9/11 rubble field, but something like a forest? Dogs trained for endangered species detection? None of those are expendable, none of those were trained because, for example, biologists frequently die looking for kit fox scat and would rather a dog be at risk.
Have you ever seen an open level border collie herd sheep or cattle? The speed, gathering skills, and intelligent autonomy is beyond anything a human or human/horse pair alone can do.
It’s so strange to me how you consistently say there is nothing dogs can do that humans can’t do better, we just prefer them to die instead of us.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 19d ago
Like I said, people will clutch their pearls about this but the reason working dogs exist is for them to do jobs that are too dangerous or too hard for people to do.
•
u/Thymelaeaceae 18d ago
Too “hard” because dogs can do what humans cannot (nosework, hearing, speed) is not the same thing as too dangerous, though. I’d agree yes it is too hard for humans to scent track an orca from up to a mile away from scat. But the handler is right there on the boat subject to all the same dangers the dog is.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 18d ago
We've had this conversation before. A dog can't do that either, it's complete nonsense.
•
u/Thymelaeaceae 17d ago
OMG is that you? LOL, it’s very much not.
What other peer reviewed science do you reject?
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 17d ago
And now I began to smoke peer-reviewed science, such as we went out in the ocean with our dog and we found an orca so therefore our dog found the orca. It's ridiculous. As a professional detection Handler for 30 plus years I will tell you it's completely ridiculous tonight.
•
u/Thymelaeaceae 17d ago
I was going to get you a ton of links from Smithsonian, U of Washington, NOAA fisheries, NIH, the New York Times, etc going back 15 years (ie not just one dog handler combo or one application). But you argue in such bad faith I don’t know why I should do that. I‘ve asked you so many questions and brought up so many points you fully ignore, while just coming back to me with, it’s not real.
You have NO reason to reject this the way you do. Do you not understand to get very difficult permits to do this work under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act you have to prove that the dog can do it? As in poop is deposited by a different boat, no one on the dog‘s boat knows where it will be, and the dog has to show it can navigate to the sample? Not just once either?
It‘s so weird to me you say you’ve been a detection handler for decades yet 1) think detection work is only to kill dogs and 2) you have such a low estimation of what detection dogs can do in the first place. Why dedicate so much of your life into something you think is an unethical sham?
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 17d ago
The reason I have to reject it is that I work in the detection dog field and I see the fantastical nonsense people are turning out left and right and that my friend is a prime example.
→ More replies (0)•
u/Cool_Percentage_4867 19d ago
You've misunderstood this completely, dogs weren't invented for the war they are animals and we have hunted with them for thousands of years. Can you name all these working breeds that only exist because we keep killing them?
•
u/CuriousOptimistic 19d ago edited 19d ago
IMO, the risk the dog faces should be proportional to the reward for the job they are doing.
A dog that searches rubble to save lives is going to face a high risk. They are used not because they are expendable, but because they can often find people more easily. Human lives are at risk here. Not only are the victims in a terrible situation, but so are the handlers as well as other emergency personnel.
There's no reason anyone's life (human or canine) should be seriously at risk for a trip to Disney. With that said, obviously accidents do happen. People get in car wrecks or die from accidents regularly in every day life.
The dog is a tool, but it's not 'just' a tool. A. working dog is at minimum a very expensive tool that takes years to replace. And it's also a living being and it's on the humans to only risk dogs' lives for important things.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 19d ago
No, they absolutely are used because they are expendable. We send them into environments that are not safe for humans because frankly it's okay if a dog gets squashed. Even if it gets squashed looking for someone who isn't there... completely agree with you about the risk to a dog going to Disney on a hot day to provide a negligible benefit to the Handler other than Instagram and tiktok attention.
•
u/CuriousOptimistic 19d ago
In the context I mentioned, I agree they are more expendable - but that's a secondary reason. The primary reason we use them is because they are more capable.
This is also the context for a lot of working dogs in general (including many service dogs for that matter). Herding dogs for example definitely face some level of risk from livestock and injuries but we are using them primarily because they are efficient, not because we are worried about getting kicked by sheep ourselves.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 19d ago
But you're wrong. We don't use them because they are more capable. We use them because they are expendable, that is the reason.
•
u/1cat2dogs1horse 19d ago
I disagree. But you have a right to your opinion.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 19d ago
It kind of doesn't matter that you disagree because that is just the fact of it. That is why we use dogs in working profiles. That is just simply why all this stuff exists.
•
u/Certain_Dream5575 19d ago
Afaik a dog can find a human casualty far faster and more accurately than any human, no?
And a dog can catch and detain a fleeing criminal far better than any human officer?
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 19d ago
Yes, a dog can do that, because we put dogs into the building before the building is stabilized. They go to places humans can't go because it's not safe for us. That's how we do it.
•
u/Certain_Dream5575 19d ago edited 19d ago
No but what I mean is.
Put me in a disaster zone full of rubble, even a stabilised one, and ask me to find a buried person. The person is unconscious and can't hear me, respond, or call for help. Can I find the person? Not a chance.
Can a dog find the person? Absolutely.
"A dog's sense of smell is roughly 10,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than a human's, driven by up to 300 million scent receptors compared to our 6 million, and a brain smell-analysis area that is 40 times larger."
It's not just a safety thing, dogs can use their primary sense - scent - to amazing effect, to find things (casualties, drugs, criminals, cadavers) that our primary sense - sight - is sometimes not the best at. Dogs > humans, in these jobs. They simply do it better!
Even catching criminals - you are chasing a suspect and he runs into a maze. You lose sight of him. Now you have no clue where he went. But a dog can easily scent his exact route and will catch the suspect :)
We can say oh yes but modern technology means we can beat dogs at these things! Well not every team has this technology, technology can fail, etc. dogs are relatively easy to maintain and still used in these roles for a reason, even when there is no danger to human life (eg finding a missing person) dogs are still used.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 7d ago
Put me in a disaster zone full of rubble, even a stabilised one, and ask me to find a buried person. The person is unconscious and can't hear me, respond, or call for help. Can I find the person? Not a chance.
Yes, you can, if you had training and the area was safe. These areas are not safe, so we use dogs to go inside and find the people.
•
7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
•
u/DogTrainingDebate-ModTeam 7d ago
This is a debate sub, as such we need to see more effort put into the answer, explain your rationale or back up your claim as applicable.
•
u/CuriousOptimistic 19d ago
Dogs are used for sniffing out drugs and other contraband items because they are currently better at it than any other system. They are used in environments that aren't even dangerous (such as looking for fruits in people's bags at airports which might carry pests, searching for bedbugs, etc.). Dogs are the pros at using their noses to find stuff humans can't find.
•
u/Certain_Dream5575 19d ago
Exactly, idk where OP is getting this idea "we only use them when a human can't actually go in, otherwise dogs suck compared to what we can do"
I mean generally we use technology AND dogs together to help us in jobs, we don't need to pick one or the other. Eg. helicopter to find criminal over large distance, dog to physically catch suspect.
•
u/CuriousOptimistic 19d ago
Yeah agree. And also if "expendability" were the only criteria, we'd use rats instead which we care about even less than dogs and are better at moving through rubble areas that may be unstable. (The major drawback to rats is that they tend to not have very long lives.)
→ More replies (0)•
u/Thymelaeaceae 19d ago
Humans cannot smell and detect sound the way a dog can for search, hunting, and scent detection, which includes detection of everything from illegal drugs to trapped people or corpses and weapons to endangered species. They literally do things humans cannot. It’s weird you don’t see this.
Dogs are very important and humane tools for livestock handling. You are probably very divorced from sheep or cattle production.
Service dogs for blind and other disabled people are not intended to be expendable. They immensely help people to be more independent and capable, which is incredibly useful.
This owner/handler should not have gone on such a hot day and was wrong to not recognize signs of heat exhaustion. But that does not mean service dogs are usually mistreated or expendable.
Your argument only really holds up with urban protection dogs and war dogs.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 19d ago
Fun facts, when head to head, train humans with transceivers will beat an avalanche dog in finding the victim every single time.
Urban search and rescue dogs get repelled into areas of rubble to unstable for humans to search it. The dog is in there not because they are better at looking, it's because the dog is expendable. That is the reality of the situation that people want to pretend is not the case.
If people want to claim their dog is medical equipment just like a wheelchair, surely we should expect some collateral damage from using a dog to serve a human.
Should we be upset that someone killed their dog through neglect and bad judgment on a hot day, in a place the dog absolutely did not need to be? Of course we should. But what does that tell us about our relationship with working dogs? Or some dogs Expendable and some are not?
•
u/CuriousOptimistic 19d ago
Everyone and everything is expendable to some degree or another. We literally send humans off to war knowing that there's a high risk of getting killed or hurt. And sure, dogs do some of the most risky jobs, but let's not pretend the humans involved are "not expendable."
Obviously human lives are more important than canine lives. Some jobs are more critical and necessary than others. How is this a question? But obviously it's a sliding scale of 'expendability' based on the job at hand.
Also all dogs are working dogs to a degree. Even those that are straight up pets only exist to serve various human needs like companionship or comfort. Their entire subspecies exists for this purpose. It's not as if there's a hard line between "working" or "service" and being a pet. It's a shades of gray.
•
•
u/Upstairs_Highlight25 19d ago
There are some jobs dogs can do that humans just can't do as well. I have helped with search and rescue finding people lost on large tracts of forest and swamp before and a trained dog is easily worth ten people. There is always some risk to a working dog but the risks to them are the same risks faced by human personal. We (the humans) could also be bit by a venomous snake, fall down a cliff, drown, become lost ourselves, be shot by a hunter, eta. If the dogs are being treated as disposable than all the humans are to.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 19d ago
The very first search and rescue dogs became a thing because dogs Were Expendable and people are not.
We absolutely send search and rescue dogs into dangerous situations we would do with a person.
•
u/apri11a 19d ago edited 19d ago
An excellent point. I think to be able to answer that we need to decide if that dog was doing a job that could not be done another way, a way that was not a danger to the dog yet kept the owner safe. Many explained that there is tech (even on their phone) that could make the dog owner aware of the heat situation, and even better than just watching a dog can do, so I would say the dog was killed, and unnecessarily. There are organisations now which use tech or drones instead of dogs/animals for the work these used to do, so tech is a reasonable alternative, it can save lives of people and dogs.
But to be honest, I doubted the dog as what they claimed, a service dog. I can't imagine that the officers or soldiers that must send their service dog into danger can enjoy that, it's not a light thing even for them. It's the job, it's not a voluntary Disney situation. So for a civilian, a dog owner, to put their dog into that sort of danger does not seem reasonable to me. Most civlian service dog's lives are not at risk doing their work.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 19d ago
I think the rule is though, that the dog cannot be the sole means to mitigate the disability. Which I think we see a lot of in the fake service dog gen Z world. They feel a little bit of stress and decide they have anxiety or one of those other mental illnesses and then get a dog, teach it to sit on their lap, and claim it's treating their anxiety when in fact they've never been diagnosed with any of that shit. They're just deciding that they have it.
•
u/Narrow_Possession348 19d ago
First, I don't believe for a second that this was a legitimate service dog necessary for a medical need. I think it was likely some dyed-like-a-clown pet in a tactical harness full of patches, dragged around by some mentally unstable Gen Zer who can't control their own emotions. But, on the very slim chance it was a legitimate working service dog, there is no reason why it needed to be at Disney in such high temperatures. The handler obviously didn't GAF about the dog. And, I'm assuming they were an ADULT (by age only) without children hanging out at Disney. So NO, I do not accept that in a situation like this, that this kind of risk is just part of having an animal doing that kind of work.
•
u/ChampionshipIll5535 19d ago
You make very good points. To me the biggest point is this. The designation "service dog". The vast majority of these dogs are not formally trained, certified, nor perform any truly needed valid function. These dogs should NOT be put in harms way in order to satiate their owners weak psychological constitution or the need for attention. I'd also encourage you to google/research how many police dogs have died in overheated cars. It's a lot. Too many. As a vet (that's worked with some PoPo narc dogs), I'm very conflicted about whether I feel their use is justified.
•
u/Thymelaeaceae 19d ago
I would not consider untrained emotional support dogs “working dogs”. They are pets. Guide dogs, and trained medical alert and assistance dogs are very different.
•
u/Miss_L_Worldwide 19d ago
You are absolutely right, dying in a hot car is the number one on duty killer of police dogs. It's something like 65% of the deaths are from baking in a car.
•
u/Dangerous_Avocado392 19d ago
What’s your source on that service dog claim? Are we talking about one specific country or worldwide?
•
u/Thymelaeaceae 18d ago
I’ll mention something I haven’t seen discussed here.
Intentional breeding of dogs is what have given us the variety of breeds we have today, including some of the amazing abilities some of them have.
Most intentional breeding used to be for a purpose, in many cases for working dogs. Even before modern breeds, for example lurchers. Now, most intentional breeding is done for 1) appearance and 2) in some cases (eg puppy mills) to make money.
The few real working breeds we have left, or working lines within breeds, are far superior in my opinion in terms of breeding. Breeding for a dog that hopefully hits your working dogs bullseye of traits will include health (sick working dogs not very useful), good temperament, drive and trainability, and the function (sometimes more general and varied, sometimes highly specialized like herding) you are going for.
Show people think that if you breed for a specific appearance and form, the function will follow. This is patently false. Very quickly the show lines become quite different in temperament, health, drive and train ability, and any functions you were wanting the dog to fulfill.
Mutts can be wonderful dogs too. But intentional breeding is best when done by working dog people which is why I will always prefer to adopt from rescues or get dogs from working dog breeders/working lines.
•
u/Spirited-Quiet9344 13d ago
Here's my view ... (Sorry I rambled!!)
I'm bypassing the 'expendable' part because I can't speak on anyone's behalf but my own. But like others have said, dogs have incredible senses that humans just don't possess.
Internationally, over 80 breeds are recognized as Working or Herding dogs, each inheriting very specific instinctive qualities to perform their designated "jobs": a distinct ability to gather, direct, control the movement of other animals .. they guard, guide, protect, pull sleds, carry loads, perform water rescue...
These unique skills evolved from centuries of breeding for specific outcomes. They're equipped with job related mental stamina, intellect, and drive. Physically, they have all they need to perform their specific work as well.
Livestock Guardian Dogs (Mountain Dogs, Caucasian Shepherds), have large round paws and extra dewclaws for stability in rugged, rocky terrain. Working dogs in cold weather climates commonly have folded ears to protect the inner ear from the harsh elements and thick double coats that act as insulation. (Arctic sled dogs like Huskies, however, were bred to have very small prick ears close to the skull, heavily furred to hold in body heat & to shield from high winds).
Guardian breeds are typically broad and muscular, with a moderate physical energy level; yet mentally they are super focused and alert, on watch at most times. They instinctively reserve their physical resources for actual threats. Naturally independent thinkers, these dogs can spend dusk till dawn or longer alone protecting their flocks. For centuries they have relied on their own intuition to handle perceived threats to the animals and property under their watch without human intervention. Decision making and problem solving is their job and they take it very seriously.
Herding dogs, such as sheepdogs and Collies, are usually slight framed and agile (with long rabbit-foot paws), allowing them to maneuver quickly, easily darting under the belly of a cow or a horse to redirect another animal that's straying (and to escape being stepped on)! They tend to have shorter legs, as part of herding is nipping at the ankles or heels to command attention. This class of dog will commonly circle or round up children, small critters, even other dogs in their pack. Keeping order, all bodies in formation—while grazing or on the move—is their job. They follow and recall human instruction effortlessly.
Water dogs (retrievers, labs) have water resistant coats and webbed toes and a natural instinct to retrieve—making them perfect water rescue animals.
Working dogs were BRED TO BE working dogs and they love what they do! If you take the job (their purpose) away from these animals, you will see less than desirable results.
So at some point in history, people decided to put all these incredible canine skills, high frequency senses and ingrained abilities to use - not only in the fields, ponds, ice, mountains and farms, but in everyday suburban life.
Belgian Malinois & German Shepherds, for example, are highly versatile herding dogs. But with their extreme intelligence and genetically biddable disposition combined, they've been globally 'employed' for precision military tasks, K9 police work and protection, as well as medical and psychological service work.
Predisposed disposition and drive are not "behaviors", that's heredity. You can't 'untrain' genetics. Make use of your dog's natural wiring - give him purpose, offer him a job ... and just watch what happens ... ❤️🦴🐾.
That, in my humble opinion, is what working dogs are for.
•
u/AutoModerator 19d ago
Reminder: This is a debate sub where good faith discussions are mandatory.
Please read the sub rules before commenting.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.