By Scott Prater
Mountaineer staff
FORT CARSON, Colo. — Civilian law enforcement and military working dog handlers get a chance to build their knowledge and skills at Fort Carson next week as the 69th Military Police Detachment, 759th Military Police Battalion, hosts the Street Level One Development Course.
Expert local training-academy contractors will instruct the three-day course that takes traditional decoy work to an advanced level, preparing dog teams for real-world operational deployments. It is designed for domestic law enforcement and military handlers who regularly conduct or support street deployments and high-risk operations.
“This is a development course for working dog teams (military working dogs and their handlers), said Antonio Rodriguez, a DOD contractor and instructor for the course. “We also provide training for an organization’s decoys (personnel who don protective suits and act as perpetrators or suspects during dog-team training scenarios).”
Decoys are vital in dog-team training, partly because they can simulate real-world activity and provide real-time feedback, and it’s important for decoys to be trained and proficient as a means for avoiding injuries to themselves and dogs.
More than a dozen military and law enforcement teams have already signed up for the training, while Staff Sgt. Brandon Spears, 69th MP Det. plans and training NCO, said organizers expect as many as 20 teams to take part.
Military and civilian law enforcement dog teams from Idaho, Montana, Fort Bliss, Texas, and local police departments are slated to participate in the seminar along with a few 69th MP Det. teams. Instructors will provide classroom training during the seminar’s first day (Feb. 23) to build a framework for the course and will follow that with hands-on field work during days two and three.
“We want to expose the dog teams to various environmental and stress conditions to help develop their combat effectiveness or law enforcement domestic capacity,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll finish the seminar with a few capstone events that will be scenario based and help diagnose problems, identifying dogs that have challenges and then solving those problems.”
Spears indicated that this specific training is different than what 69th MP Det. instructors usually teach. The advanced curricula will expose handlers to different types of stress and cover specific decoy techniques and practices.
As opposed to most Army units, military working dogs and handlers, typically deploy as a single team, so holding superior confidence is vital to success as they embark on deployed missions in unfamiliar areas along with unfamiliar units.
“We were looking for some opportunistic training that is outside our normal day-to-day activities,” said Capt. Andrew Blasczyk, commander, 69th MP Det. “We want our Soldiers to get some extra training in while we also build a network (with local organizations). At the end of the day, we’re making sure our teams are ready to deploy. We don’t want any of our teams heading out the door questioning their confidence and competence. This (training) helps provide them with a breadth of knowledge and an understanding of different scenarios and situations.”
| Date Taken: | 02.11.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 03.04.2022 13:12 |
| Story ID: | 415790 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 18 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Working dog detachment offers unique training, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
