THE Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) in Davao Region trains street dogs, commonly called "Askals", to become certified members of K9 units.
Lieutenant Colonel Jude Thaddeus M. Besinga of PCG Davao Region, speaking at the I-Speak forum at City Hall Thursday, said 20 street dogs that underwent training for K9 units graduated from the course.
However, Besinga said the problem with Askals is that the attention span of these dogs is shorter than those other dogs that they usually train to become members of the K9 units.
"Mas gusto ng mga askal ang mag-laro lang kaysa sa mag training (Askal dogs prefer to play than to train)," Besinga said.
Besinga said local breeds of dogs have the potential to become good K9 units, which can do just the same task like other imported breeds if given the proper training.
He said the usual breeds of dogs that they train to become K9 are Belgian Shepherd and German Shepherd dogs.
Besinga said these breeds basically have longer attention span than those local dogs, making them more trainable for such purpose.
"Training high-breed of dogs can be very expensive and our local dogs can help us on this," he said.
Besinga said that in training a dog to become a K9 unit, each dog should at least respond to handlers for its entire training which usually lasts for months.
According to Wikipedia, a web-based free encyclopedia, K9 or K-9 is an abbreviation and homophone of Canine. It has also been said that the term came from in the military, where designations such as G2 are being used in reference to various person or thing. The term originally refers to war dogs but was carried on to police, sentry and assistance dogs.
