Working Dog Training for the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Dogs are trained for a variety of working roles including assistance, protection, and detection work. Many canine working roles, in their modern iterations, were developed at the turn of the 20th century and training practices have since largely been passed down from trainer to trainer. In parallel, research in psychology has advanced our understanding of animal behavior, and specifically canine learning and cognition, over the last 20 years; however, this field has had little focus or practical impact on working dog training. The aims of this narrative review are to (1) orient the reader to key advances in animal behavior that we view as having important implications for working dog training, (2) highlight where such information is already implemented, and (3) indicate areas for future collaborative research bridging the gap between research and practice. Through a selective review of research on canine learning and behavior and training of working dogs, we hope to combine advances from scientists and practitioners to lead to better, more targeted, and functional research for working dogs.

Description

© 2021 Hall, Johnston, Bray, Otto, MacLean and Udell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Keywords

Training, Conditioning, Detection Dog, Assistance Dogs, Behavior, Learning, Working Dogs

Citation

Hall NJ, Johnston AM, Bray EE, Otto CM, MacLean EL and Udell MAR (2021) Working Dog Training for the Twenty-First Century. Front. Vet. Sci. 8:646022. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2021.646022

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