Trained To Attack With Military Precision

[~JoLu~]

Saw this small piece in the local Advocate paper:

Link (with picture): www.advocate.inmycommunity.com.au

Trained to attack with military precision

03/Nov/2010

By Denise Cahill

MILITARY attack dogs remain no more than 20cm from a trainer’s left side at all times.

While it seems impossible, witnessing such discipline in a dog that is trained to attack is inspiring. About 15 german and belgian shepherds are trained and housed at the RAAF base at Pearce and all spend months bonding with their assigned dog handlers.

After successful training, the handler has the ability to instruct their dog when to attack and when to back off.

On a recent visit to the Pearce base as part of Cadet, Reserve and Employer Support Division’s Exercise Executive Stretch, Karrakatta-based reservists gave a group of their employers and media a taste of the discipline.

Two handlers showed off the skills of 10-year-old German shepherd Ralph and five-year-old Belgian shepherd Fax. While the former was a little slower because of age, both would strike fear in any potential offender.

Corporal Jason Thompson said the dogs had a working life of 10-12 years and were then put down because it was too dangerous to release them to the public as pets.

Cpl Thompson said the bitches, that were not desexed, were harder to train but handlers often developed better relationships with them.

The dogs are predominantly used to patrol the Pearce base 24 hours a day.

[Staranais]

Corporal Jason Thompson said the dogs had a working life of 10-12 years and were then put down because it was too dangerous to release them to the public as pets.

That's a bit sad, but I guess they've got liability to think about, if they adopted them out then they'd need to be incredibly careful where they placed them.

At least they have a good working life for the 10 years before that.

[Tempus Fugit]

Not so in the USA, where there is now a website dedicated to MWD adoptions. To the best of my knowlege the change in policy came about after a long campaign following the withdrawal of US forces at the end of the Vietnam War, when of roughly 3000 dogs sent to Vietnam, only about one tenth were ever repatriated.

There was also an outcry over the practice of using retired MWDs for training US army medics. The dogs would be aneasthetised, hung in a sling and shot, then used to train the medics in treating gunshot wounds. (I think nowadays they use sheep or pigs).

If you search the web, there are a number of sites related to MWDs.