But the officials say that the dogs didn‘t take to the work of crowd control, weapon detection and drug sniffing.
“We worked hard with the dogs to develop their skills of sniffing out the odor of guns for detective work,” said Sgt. Doug Roller, chief trainer for the K-9 platoon of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Metropolitan Division. “They pretty much mastered the task, but once they got out of the training environment, they got distracted in the real world.... A leaf would blow, and they‘d go chase it.”
After trainers saw that they lacked enough focus and consistency for the job, the dogs, named Daehan and Mingook have been
placed in private homes. Many say that Jindos are often overly independent and difficult to train due to them being very affectionate dogs. In other words, they don’t exactly fit in the ‘police dog’category.
Roller and fellow department trainer Jeff Miller traveled to South Korea last fall to select dogs for training. Jindos, brought to South Korea by Mongolians in the 13th century, were promoted by the breeders in South Korea.
Jindos have been declared a national treasure in South korea because of their intelligence and hunting skills. A breeding association offered two free Jindos to police departments in Los Angeles and Glendale.
Glendale police decided not to accept the dogs for training after the LAPD rejected the Jindos. David Inglis, a Ventura County dog trainer who contracts with Glendale police, said Jindos were wild hunter dogs that became domesticated over the centuries.
“It‘s difficult for a true hunting dog to do the things that police want them to do,” he said. “It’s like taking a horse used for plowing and trying to make it a racehorse. You could race it, but it would never win.
Jindos are very street-smart. But they‘re not police dogs.” The LAPD’s Miller and Roller handled the dogs in the officers homes. Migook was excellent at sniffing out gun odors but was aggresive around other dogs. Daehan turned out to be a good companion dog.
“Most puppies go through adolescent periods where they do dumb and irritating things, such as chewing on things, but I trained her right away that there were rules and boundaries. And she followed them,” Roller said.
“She wasn‘t a knucklehead. She was easygoing, even if she did demonstrate a little dominance over other dogs.” Roller, with four other pet dogs, said he would keep Daehan as a pet. He said a few more generations of selective breeding will be needed to weed out unsuitable habits.
“Daehan just wanted to please me, while a good police dog does its work to stay on the hunt and stay focused to satisfy a drive, not to please its master,” he said. “If I wasn’t there, she‘d go off task. We kept waiting to see if things would
change, but they didn’t.”
(아주경제 송지영 기자)
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