There are plenty of reasons why dogs are considered best friends of men, and one of these reasons is their usefulness in emergency situations. Just like it happens with agility and obedience training, rescue dog training requires for a few principles to be observed.
Training Their Obedience
One trait of rescue dogs is constant obedience since they can't do their jobs if they don't do as they're told. They should be used to obey commands like sit, heel, stay, come and jog exercises. All these should be met, so their handlers can be sure that their commands will be respected when it's needed.
Training Their Agility
Not just sports dogs need to be agile, but also dogs that are trained to rescue other people. At its most basic level, rescue dogs will be helped by agility training at the physical level, letting them do even the hardest tasks. This can come in handy when they're rescuing people. If they're trained by someone that knows their job, a dog that goes through agility training will be able to surpass many obstacles that he might encounter.
Retrieving
Retrieving is a huge part of any rescue operation. A dog needs to be able to retrieve either items or even a person from a place where other people can't go in. If you want a dog to be able to retrieve a person, he will need to go through retrieving exercises. He will learn how to retrieve anything, from leather, to wood or even an injured person, all by using the command "fetch".
Training On The Right Positioning
One part of rescue training teaches the dog how to adapt to different exercises, and that part is positioning. Positioning training is achieved both with compulsive and inductive training.
Positioning training should be something that is taught from the time that he's still a puppy. He needs to learn to types of positioning: the front position and the heel. The heel position teaches the dog to stand near the trainer, parallel to his left foot. The front position teaches him to sit in front of the trainer, aligned with the front legs of the trainer.
You can teach a dog to adopt the right position in two ways. The inductive and the compulsive method.
The compulsive way, when used to train the dog how to adopt the front position will teach him how to sit in the front of the handler. If you use it together with an order like "sit", the same principle is used - the owner needs to help the pet stand, then sit in front of him. The position needs to be parallel to the owner's left foot if he asks for the heel position.
If we're talking about the inductive method, it will need the use of food or treats to teach the dog how to respond to the owner's commands to assume one of the two positions. One example of the inductive method is offering the pet a treat before you give him an order. If he accepts the treat, give him an order like sit, come or down right before giving him the treat. Remember, offer it, but give it only after the does the command.
If you're using the compulsive method, you might use some physical guidance, but you should never use it in a way that might injure the dog. Don't make it harsh, use it gently and firmly. If you're harsh, that could harm the training.
If you're training a rescue dog, you should know that it's not a single thing they need to learn. It's a mix of different commands and abilities that they need to learn.
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