The American Beagler Forum

in deer gun season here in ohio my dogs dont get out for about a week in a half...instead of being inergetic when i come down to feed them a couple moped around..i thought maybe they were sick...but i took them out and ran them the were a different dog then what they were in the kennel...the day i thought they were sick is when i ran them....what do you fellers think

I have two friends of mine...one a canine officer for the local sheriff...the other a search and rescue handler.
The canine officer recently got promoted from drug search and seizure to explosive ordinance detection (new thing since sept. 11th). He spent the time to retrain his dog, who took to the training wonderfully. The thing is...the dog didnt get to work as much. He wasn't called out on all the house raids, traffic stops, etc. He got to go when he was the only dog on duty, but if there was siezure dog on duty...they didnt want to risk thier only bomb dog on chasing down idiots. The dog acted very sad and eventually stopped eating. A trainer/behavioralist said to make sure he get to work at least twice a week...so now on his two days off a week he takes the dog out on demonstrations and such to keep him working. Old Paco is back to him former self.
The search and rescue guy I know had a dog that he trained at the world trade towers. He tells me that after the third or fourth day the handlers were having to hide off duty firemen and workers in the rubble so the dogs could actually find a living person. A few of the rescue dogs had stopped eating and drinking and had lost all motivation for thier work.
Take it for what you will...both of those situations sound like depressed dog to me.
I say they definately do get depressed!