|
Labradors at work: Police Dogs
What is Elbow Dysplasia?
Similar studies: Child of our Time & Up
Dogs turning 1 year of age
Labradors at work: Police Dogs
Dogs play a very important role in police work. Their agility and stamina to work in varied environments using their sense of smell (and often acting as a deterrent), make them invaluable in situations such as searching for missing or wanted people, detecting drugs, firearms or explosives, crowd management (e.g. at sporting events) or recovering victims.
Different breeds of dogs are used for different tasks within policing. For example, at Strathclyde Police Dog Branch, Labradors are used for explosives detection and victim recovery while Cocker Spaniels are used to detect drugs, cash and firearms, and German Shepherds carry out criminal work, tracking and searching.
Dogs join the police either through a breeding programme or by members of the public donating them. At Strathclyde Police, breeding programmes have been set up for German Shepherds and Cocker Spaniels. These dogs are Kennel Club registered. All the Labradors that are part of the force have been donated from owners who can no longer look after them. The dogs soon settle once their training begins and they can focus their energies. The preferred age of dogs joining is 1-2 years although older dogs may be considered if their qualities stand out. Dogs of a younger age are favoured as they will have more years of work to give after carrying out their training.
The dog and handler are given two weeks to bond before training begins. Initial training involves playing games such as retrieving a ball; a fun way to teach the dog commands. By using this method, dogs learn to enjoy working with their handler and start watching them to see which game is next! Respect and obedience easily follows. The length of specialist training depends on what the dog’s role will be. At Strathclyde Police, training to become a Victim Recovery Dog takes 4 weeks. During this time, dogs are taught to find people in difficult environments such as a collapsed building. Training to become a Drugs Search Dog takes 6 weeks by the end of which, dogs will be able to search for drugs amongst groups of people or in private houses, commercial buildings, vehicles or on open ground. Explosives Dogs carry out 8 weeks of training to learn how to detect and find explosives in places like airports and seaports as well as in areas due to be used for VIP visits. The training for General Purpose dogs is 12 weeks as their role is the most varied encompassing agility, criminal work, locating suspects or stolen property, searching for evidence and missing persons.
A police dog’s work often follows the handler’s shift patterns (e.g. 4 days at work followed by 3 days off). A typical day’s work for a Labrador that is an Explosives Dog, involves checking a building for explosives if a VIP is visiting. The search is organised weeks in advance and on the day, Explosives Dogs will arrive and split up into allocated search areas. Once a dog is in their harness, they know they are working. They may also lie down before beginning the search to show they are in work-mode and ready to start. Searching for explosives is very systematic and the dogs are kept under close control by their handler. If the dog indicates a find it will signal this to its handler. Labradors often adopt a freeze stance whereby they stand and look at the find. The handler will then recall the dog away. The Police Search Adviser is then called to investigate the find further and take appropriate action.
When dogs are not required to work, they undergo training by a qualified instructor. Explosives Dogs must train for a minimum of 10 days over the course of the year where they have to search and find explosives. The reward during training is a ball. The dogs know when they get to play with this, their handler is pleased and they can have fun. Dogs are rewarded with praise, keeping them happy and keen to work. Nationally, police dogs are re-licensed every year. In the case of Explosives Dogs, they will undergo a bomb threat scenario to test their abilities. All police dogs are registered and could be called to attend a situation anywhere in Britain.
When dogs are not on duty, they are just like a family pet. They spend their time off like any other dog; going out for walks and playing with other dogs!
The length of a police dog’s career depends on its health. The training centre keeps a record of the dog’s health and they are assessed every year when they are vaccinated. Vets are on call 24 hours a day to tend to any health problems. Common ailments include cuts and strains (e.g. from working on slippery floors). All being well, a police dog’s working life is between 8-10 years. Handlers can tell if their dog starts to ‘flag’ and it is time to retire. Handlers take the dog home with them during the dogs working life but the dog is owned by the police force. At the end of the dog’s career, the police will sign the dog over so the handler officially owns the dog on retirement.
Many thanks to PC David Auld from Strathclyde Police Dog Branch for his contribution to this article
Back to top
What is Elbow Dysplasia?
Canine elbow dysplasia is a term used to describe a group of conditions which affect the elbow joint of dogs. They tend to affect young, developing dogs as they progress towards skeletal maturity (i.e. adulthood), and are manifest by lameness on the affected limb and elbow joint pain. Precisely what proportion of dogs are affected by elbow dysplasia is unknown. A number of dogs which develop the disease are affected on both their elbow joints, which can make identifying lameness difficult.
The most common conditions recognised by the term elbow dysplasia are fragmentation of the medial coronoid process (a crack in the bone or bone chip on the inside of the elbow joint, Figure 1), osteochondrosis of the medial part of the humeral condyle (an overgrowth of cartilage) and ununited anconeal process (a failure of a bony prominence at the back of the joint to attached to the rest of the bone, Figure 2). Although the conditions are all different, dogs can be diagnosed with one or more of them in the same joint. Sadly, each of these diseases usually produce osteoarthritis of the affected joint as the dog becomes older, where the cartilage of the joint wears out which results in pain and discomfort of the joint.
Figure 1: A computed tomography scan showing a fragmented medial coronoid process (dotted arrow)
Figure 2: An X-ray showing an ununited anconeal process – the arrow points to a black line which indicates the process has not healed onto the rest of the bone
Elbow dysplasia has a genetic basis, although the heritability (the proportion of the disease for which we can find a genetic basis) is less than for hip dysplasia. This makes it harder to identify the genes which cause the disease, and to date none have been identified. Just like hip dysplasia, the severity with which dogs are affected by elbow dysplasia varies from individual to individual; some dogs can be extremely lame and some may not demonstrate an obvious lameness at all.
Like hip dysplasia, the diagnosis of elbow dysplasia is based upon clinical examination and X-rays. Unfortunately, some of the conditions (such as fragmentation of the medial coronoid process) can be difficult to identify on an X-ray, as other bones “get in the way” of the abnormality thereby making it difficult to identify. Consequently, vets will sometimes use advanced techniques such are computed tomography scans (Figure 1) which allow the elbow joint to be visualised in cross section or in 3D. Arthroscopy (placing a small camera into the joint) is another way of identifying the problem.
A British Veterinary Association / Kennel Club screening scheme for elbow dysplasia exists to allow breeding dogs to be checked for the disease. X-rays of the elbow joints are checked for the signs of osteoarthritis, and given a score of 0-3 (where a score 0 is normal, and 3 is the most severe). Dogs with grades 2 or 3 are not recommended for breeding.
There is no single universal treatment for elbow dysplasia; the treatment depends on many factors, such as how lame the dog is, how long it has been lame and which condition it has. Medical management (pain relieving medications and rest) or surgery (the surgical removal of bone fragments or cartilage flaps which cannot be re-attached, or surgical attachment of the bony prominence) may be recommended. In the long term, a lot of dogs will develop osteoarthritis which may require further medical treatment. Research into the genetic basis of elbow dysplasia is ongoing at many institutions, and will hopefully provide tests which can be used to reduce the frequency of the disease in the general population.
Back to top
Similar studies: Child of our Time & Up
There have been a couple of high-profile attempts to follow children through their lives, in the same way that we are following Labrador Retrievers in Dogslife. These include the Up series (7 Up, 14 Up etc) and Child of our Time. Both of these series have followed a small number of children and documented their lives on film.
The Up series (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series) followed the lives of 14 children in the UK, starting when they were 7 years old in 1964 (7 Up). The documentaries of their lives have been made every 7 years since then, with 56 Up planned in the next 12 months. The participants were chosen to represent a range of social classes, and the original hypothesis was that the children’s lives would be predetermined by their social class at birth. This has largely been supported by the positions the subjects occupy in their adult lives. Because the data is presented through edited documentaries, the series has been criticised as being manipulated to create associations between the past and the present which may not really exist. Since there are only 14 children, the numbers are not large enough to provide statistical significance to any findings. Nonetheless, the series has won a number of awards and attracts a great deal of interest as each new documentary is released.
Child of our Time (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_of_Our_Time) is presented by Professor Robert Winston and follows 25 children (in 22 families) who were born early in 2000. The children come from very different families, and include identical twins, non-identical triplets, children in single parent families, children with disadvantaged or disabled parents, children with no siblings and those with several siblings. Geographically, they come from all parts of the UK, including Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and many areas in England. They will be visited each year until they are 20, in 2020. The children are given a series of tests, aiming to show the relative roles of genes (nature) and environment (nurture) on various aspects of human development, performance and behaviour. Because of the very diverse backgrounds and the small number of children, this study, too, cannot be analysed statistically. However, it will provide interesting ideas which can be followed up in larger studies which are specifically designed to look at particular aspects of the gene/environment question.
Although Child of our Time and the Up series are endlessly fascinating to TV viewers, and provide interesting insights into changing social structures, they are limited in the analysis and facts that they can reveal. Dogslife is a much larger study where we hope to recruit 3000 Labrador Retrievers over two years. This number will give our study the power to examine many questions about the influence of environment on a dog’s life. Ultimately we hope to be able to make recommendations based on our findings that will help prevent common and undesirable conditions in dogs. We thank you for being part of this exciting study.
Back to top
Dogs turning 1 year of age
Over the coming year, dogs born in 2010 will be having their 1st birthday. When dogs turn one year of age, their Dogslife record only needs to be updated every three months. On the dog’s birthday, we will send owners an email to wish their dog a happy 1st birthday and to remind them that their dogs record now only requires three-monthly reports about their dog’s health.
At the same time, we will invite owners to upload four specific photos of their dog to enable us to assess their dog’s mouth, ear and body. We ask for these photos because we plan to evaluate the usefulness of digital images for the assessment canine health, with reference to the information owners have already kindly detailed. For example we can assess tartar build up on the teeth, in relation to the diet fed, and the relative size of individuals in relation to the quantity of food fed.
For more information on how to take the photos and upload the images, please login and click on the following link: www.dogslife.ac.uk/owner_upload/manage. These details can also be accessed by clicking a button entitled 'File upload' which will automatically appear on the dog’s profile page after their 1st birthday.
Back to top
Don't forget to come back to Dogslife to update your dog's record www.dogslife.ac.uk
|