NY Times does that war dogs thing

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Thursday, May 12, 2011 - 10:59 AM Share

And salutes our chief canine correspondent at the end of the story, which is only proper.

Tech. Sgt. Manuel J. Martinez, U.S. Air Force/ DoD

EXPLORE:REBECCA'S WAR DOG OF THE WEEK
 

GUSHUNGO

7:41 PM ET

May 26, 2011

The art of dog training

Vaguely interesting article in the NY Times but it doesn't really get to the heart of the matter. My cousin is a dogtrainer and specializes in training dogs for military service. He says that it is a very different process to training dogs for other purposes - even police dog training is not comparable. And don't even think of comparing dogtraining for the blind or training pet dogs that have attitude and obedience problems. For a start, dogs that are trained for military use in combat zones need substantial training to get them used to the explosions and other loud noises. Put a guide dog in that situation and it would soon run off and leave the blind person stranded. Finally, what is 40 thousand dollars? The article makes it sound extortionately expensive, but what value on the life of a human? How many dogs would need to be trained to cover the cost of one human death. Sniffer dogs used to detect explosives are just about the best value that the military can obtain.

 

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008.

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