[Tim Martens]

Selena and/or any of our other Dutch members, could you please answer these questions for me?

1) Is it MANDATORY for a dog to get a PH1 prior to being certified and used as a Police Service Dog?

2) If a PH1 is mandatory is there another certification a dog has to get before working as a Police Service Dog?

3) I believe there is a tracking certification, is this mandatory for a Police Service Dog?

I'll answer these same questions about our dogs:

1) There is no sport title mandatory for our dogs prior to becoming a Police Service Dog. Some dogs get imported here with their sport titles, but it is not necessary.

2) Each state has a certification test that the dogs must pass prior to becoming a Police Service Dog. In California, we have to pass this test once a year for Patrol Dogs and Drug Dogs also have to pass a test once a year.

3) There is no tracking certification. In fact, many departments don't train their dogs to track because it takes so much time to do it well and because so much of our terrain is streets and hard surfaces, it takes even longer to train the dogs to track well on those surfaces.

 

[Selena van Leeuwen]

1. No not mandatory, also dogs who are almost certified or had some training. But PH 1 is a good foundation for the PSD certificate.

2. Yes, before a dog can work on the streets, the combination must have its PSD certificate (ministerieel certificaat politiesurveillancehonden). This is a national (official, made/controlled and conducted by the gouvernment) certificate (but the Netherlands are smaller than a state).
This exam must be passed every 2 yrs. if the dog bites on the hold and bark (schijn) or don´t come back on the recall or they dont have enough points on this excercises (must be 60%), they fail and they can have a retry. If they fail more than 3 times the combination can´t work together anymore.

3 No not mandatory. There are special police tracking dogs that have their own certificate, which is different from the PH tracking certificate (this could also be a foundation).

Dogs are usually bought after their PH1, then they´re about 3 yrs. They work untill they about 10 yrs. After their working period, they stay with their handler for their pension. The dogs must be owned by the gouvernment (legislation) during their working period, for their pension they´ll be given to their handler.

We don´t have combi dogs, so they are tracking dogs human scent, drugdogs (who all don´t have biting experience) and PSD´s. PSD´s can search buildings and for little articles, but if they expect there must be a longer track they call for a search dog. If they expect dangerous situation
they use PSD´s (armed suspect). There were some legal questions about this, so they seperate the disciplines.